Like a slimy ball of tree sap spewing from the jaws of a giant dog, review the code for Wild Heart arrived hot and fast earlier this week. So while the other stores will give their final verdict on the Omega Force monster smash simulator today, I’m afraid I haven’t had a chance to play enough to give it a fair review. It’s pretty good! I really like it, and such a great Monster Hunter fans I’m glad there’s finally a worthy replacement for Capcom’s long-running series. Competition is good!
As I suspected (and secretly hoped), Wild Hearts is a complete Monster Hunter clone. You go to one of many relatively large areas with the intention of killing a very large monster. You attack the aforementioned monster (a big chicken, an odd rat, a tasseled badger) with a comically large weapon. The battles were long and arduous. Challenge. Monsters come in many shapes and are determined to take you down and crush you to death under their hooves/claws/paws. Eventually, they’ll wander off to lick their wounds, and you’ll appear like a mosquito with a shotgun to free them from their misery. You happily tear off their appendages before crafting them into an adorable pair of shoes or a sharper, more dangerous sword.
It’s a rhythm I’m close with at this point, something that Wild Hearts copies so effectively that it’s easy to forget that this is actually something completely new. But it’s new, and along with this newness, some interesting ideas have given Wild Hearts its distinct identity. The greatest of them all is Karakuri, a power that allows you to summon structures from thin air during a battle. Climbing a barrel tower allows you to perform a devastating attack in the air. A spring pulls you out of the impending tusk of a charging pig. A torch that infuses your sword with fire, increasing your damage against enemies weak to fire.
Pair certain combinations together and you’ll create a powerful machine capable of stunning your enemies. Three springs create a giant swinging hammer that can flatten the monster in an instant. The six crates formed a wall that repelled a trampling giant. They are an essential part of the game’s combat, special moves are placed on the battlefield and can be destroyed by an aggressive creature. They have a great sense of flexibility to them. a kind irritability. In Wild Hearts, you are no longer a mythical superhero but a more reckless inventor. A crate here. A fire stick was there. Aha! A firework cannon! That will stop this nasty chicken in its way! They’re more visually interesting than Rise’s string bugs and also less restrictive. There’s a lot to unlock and play around with.
But while the Karakuri system is quite complex, the same cannot be said for combat in general. Weapons are fun to use and each feels different in the hand, but the game’s lack of depth makes Monster Hunter so appealing. Now I’m not saying this is necessarily a bad thing. Overall, I think this is a smart move by Omega Force to ensure that Wild Hearts is more suitable for newcomers than your usual Monster Hunter release.
Let’s face it, MonHunt is dense, complicated, and frustrating for those unfamiliar with the series. By comparison, Wild Hearts feels approachable and welcoming. A short tutorial introducing combat. Karakuri summons. Weapon upgrade. Crafting armor. You can embark on hunts by simply picking a monster icon from the map, while the main story takes you to new islands when you’re ready to move on. It’s not perfect, but it’s certainly less overwhelming and I think that makes a big difference. If Monster Hunter’s edges seem too sharp for you, then Wild Hearts’ rounded corners might be exactly what you’re looking for.
That’s not all good news, though. By the developer’s own acknowledgment, Wild Hearts has Notable performance issues on PC. Hardware editor James has confirmed that the game is severely CPU bottlenecked, leading to frequent stutters and just a general joke that makes things half-hearted. Omega Force has committed to fixing the problem as quickly as possible, but that doesn’t change the fact that the game is set to launch in a bad way. Wild Hearts is perfectly playable, but waiting for this upcoming patch might not be a bad idea, especially for mid-range hardware that sports.
So that’s where I’m at at the moment. Wild hearts are good! Of course, time will tell if it has the depth and complexity to keep me engaged after a few hours of launch, but right now I’m desperate to go back. There’s a chicken that’s been bugging me a bit, you see, and I think it’s time I introduced its beak to my big comedic hammer.
