wild hearts He will seem familiar to a certain category of players: the one who has spent hours and hours hunting the great beasts of the monster hunter series. And then your character spins a little whirlwind attached to their arm and manifests a box out of nothing. Is when wild hearts sounds familiar to another class of gamer: those who remember to thank the battle bus driver. EA and Omega Force embraced the idea of bringing the beaten path of the monster hunting genre to life with a ground build point reminiscent of Fortnite. The good news is that his bet paid off, at least in my opinion.
wild hearts takes place in Azuma, a hidden corner of a fantasy world inspired by feudal Japan. Far from the samurai warlords fighting for dominance, the people of Azuma are losing the battle against a much older enemy. The Kemono, huge animals brimming with elemental power, closed in and forced the humans back to the remaining fortified settlement of Minato. It is in this desperate situation that your character, a Kemono hunter of mysterious lineage, walks. Gaining the power to manipulate Karakuri, a lost technology, you set out to help Minato and his people by rendering the Kemono inactive again.
The game has a surprisingly complicated story mode, with lots of dialogue sequences and a rather complicated sense of community in Minato. Players looking for Kemono can even collect smaller beasts to bring to town as pets. Pets even serve a purpose by providing you with small amounts of resources on a regular basis, making them more than just a cosmetic consideration. You’ll also encounter various NPCs, each with their own sense of character and contribution to the overall narrative. wild hearts It won’t lift a dedicated JRPG from the storytelling throne, but it’s nice to have more context for your actions than just hunting monsters for your own good.
The additional story is also helpful, as Azuma’s setting is presented in a new way compared to its peers. where is the kemono wild hearts He uses his elemental fury to change the landscape around him, you do it with the power of Karakuri. During a hunt, your “basic” Karakuri, such as boxes and springs, function as gadgets and generally don’t last beyond a given fight. (However, they will clutter your battlefields as you hunt.) However, his Dragon Karakuri, unlocked through an upgrade tree and activating “Dragon Pits” scattered throughout the map, work as add-ons. permanent infrastructure. You will use the hunting towers to locate points of interest and Kemono meeting places. Flying vine launchers add handy ziplines that you can use to tackle terrain challenges. Wind vortices produce updrafts that you can use with a special glider to travel even further. All that building you can do outside of your hunts underscores one of the concepts of wild heartswhich implies “taming” an untamed land.
Even the Kemono themselves reflect this sense of unbridled primal power. Much of Kemono’s design is based on a design sensibility that boils down to “taking a normal animal, making it huge, and then merging it with the environment”. The Ragetail, your first hunting target, looks like a huge rat slowly being devoured by a monstrous flower garden. Flowers grow from its eye socket, while its tail trails a huge seed pod. When enraged, Ragetail blooms in anger, scattering petals and becoming even more dangerous. The monkey-like Lavaback spews molten rock from formations on its skin, its kick resembling an erupting volcano. In other words, hunting Kemono is like facing the forces of nature itself.
Luckily, you have humanity’s most distinctive ability on your side: the use of advanced tools. Karakuri gadgets that you can manifest from scratch have the distinctive aesthetic of a wooden clock. This sensitivity seeps into the eight weapon types at your disposal. Everyone plays in a different way, but all playstyles and tricks emphasize a sense of transformation and complexity. Even a weapon as simple as a huge hammer works with a number of tricks that allow a hunter to extend their range and add impact to their blows. monster hunter veterans will likely see parallels with some of their favorites in the various wild hearts Weapons The hand cannon, with its slow motion and emphasis on heat control, resembles a heavy crossbow, while the Bladed Wagasa’s parry-oriented playstyle (essentially a mechanical umbrella) is a lookalike of the long sword. . Karakuri’s shape-shifting staff reminds me of my beloved Charge Axe, with its emphasis on dishing out big combo finishing blows with a huge blade. The most unique weapon in the arsenal is the Claw Blade, which combines a short-range dagger-like sword with a rope that allows for extended aerial maneuvers that combine the more flashy aspects of Dual Blades and Insect Glaive.
In general, weapons in wild hearts they don’t feel as deep or precise in their tuning as they do in monster hunter. It’s both good and bad. For me, that’s good, because there’s less pressure to train and master the move set. For the most part, learning a weapon in wild hearts it’s about gearing it up, taking a few shots on a practice bear to remember the buttons, then getting out and whaling in a Kemono until muscle memory sets in. Flashy attacks are relatively easy to access, and you don’t have to worry about fiddling maintenance like sharpening. The flip side of this simplification is that there’s also less motivation to spend time learning the intricacies of your weapon.
Instead, some of that missing complexity was transferred to the Karakuri system. In addition to the base items and the Karakuri Dragon, Fusion Karakuri must be unlocked by seeing “inspiration” in various hunts. Once unlocked, Fusion Karakuri becomes useful gadgets, like the ability to summon a wall to dampen a Kemono’s charge. The added complexity of building a Fusion Karakuri (it must be assembled by laying down a base Karakuri to a specific pattern) adds welcome dimensions to what would otherwise be a mundane combat experience. your way, wild hearts moved part of the skill cap monster hunter fans enjoy mastering gear and dominating the environment (effectively positioning Karakuri to maximize the effects of their weapons).
I can’t say for sure if this change in design philosophy will result in wild hearts the same lasting appeal as its nearest competitor. But for now, at least, Omega Force has crafted a worthy and entertaining alternative that forges its own identity.
wild hearts It is available for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X.