Monster Hunter Wilds Gets A 2nd Free Update Amid Rough Steam Review Bombs

You may recall that earlier this year your author here was quite excited about the launch of Monster Hunter Wilds. That enthusiasm, like much of the community's, was somewhat muted after we actually put a few dozen hours into the game. It's not that the game is bad; rather, Monster Hunter Wilds is a considerable change in paradigm compared to even the relatively-accessible Monster Hunter World, and many oldheads (including yours truly) weren't too thrilled about it.


That's not why the game is drowning in negative reviews on Steam right now, though. As you can see in the chart above, there were plenty of negative reviews at the game's launch complaining of a lack of difficulty, simplified mechanics, and overpowered AI companions, particularly in the game's story mode. At that time, there were also many negative reviews surrounding the game's performance, and that topic is what's earning it a new glut of angry detractors.


The most recent update for the game, back at the end of May, has actually rendered it unplayable on some people's systems—including many people who were perfectly able to play it before. CAPCOM seems to think these issues are down to shader cache corruption, and it has shared steps to resolve that specific issue, which we'll reproduce above. Make sure to re-enable shader caching after you disable it to delete the cache files.


Of course, that fix won't do anything to resolve the game's overall poor performance that caused so much frustration at its launch. Many players have blamed the game's overwrought (and ineffective) anti-tamper functionality for their low framerates, but it seems to hit GPUs just as hard as CPUs, and other players have accused CAPCOM of relying on Frame Generation (which the game prompts you to enable on first launch) to smooth over the poor performance on otherwise-puissant hardware.


All of this negative energy has to be a downer for the developers, who are preparing to launch the game's second title update this coming Monday. The update, which is completely free, will bring a ton of new content to the game, including two returning monsters—the aquatic Lagiacrus, from Monster Hunter Tri on the Nintendo Wii, and the vicious Seregios, from Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate on the Nintendo 3DS.


A new "Layered Weapons" feature will let players customize the look of their weapons just as they can currently do with their armor, replacing the looks of a weapon with great stats with the looks of a different weapon, if you prefer. The requirements are pretty high—you have to craft the final weapon in that weapon's upgrade tree, and for Artian weapons you'll have to fully reinforce a Rank 8 Artian weapon, but serious players will probably have already done this, anyway.


There are also a ton of other smaller features coming. Players will be able to tag out the handler, Alma, for a male handler named Eric who appeared briefly in the story. There's a new AI-controlled "Support Hunter" too, named Mina; she wields a sword & shield. Photo mode is getting an Effects tab with filters as well as a function to toggle the visibility of your Handler, Palico, Seikret, "and more" to get the perfect picture.


In possibly the weirdest part of the update, Capcom announced a collaboration with Fender—yes, the guitar company—such that players can earn a special emote that allows hunters to rock out with a special-edition Fender guitar. Why? Probably to promote the real-life version of that guitar, which is a limited-run collaboration. The Monster Hunter Rathalos Telecaster is "globally released" according to Capcom, so maybe look for it at a Guitar Center near you?


A third add-on for cosmetic Hunter customization items is also coming along with the update on Monday, and if you don't have any of the already-available add-ons, you'll apparently be able to pick up all four as a Cosmetic DLC Pass at a small discount. That's nice, considering the previously-released Street Fighter 6 content was not available as a bundle, forcing players to purchase it all separately if they wanted the full set.


This roadmap shows a summary of the content, as well as when we can expect the next update to the game. While these updates are coming a bit more slowly than those for Rise or World, it's fair to say that CAPCOM's doing a reasonable job supporting Monster Hunter Wilds with additional content. Now if only the company could do something about the game's truly abominable performance on PC, we'd be cooking with gas. You can hit up CAPCOM's blog to read about the update in greater detail.