Asmongold TV - Monster Hunter Wilds is a wake up call | Asmongold Reacts | Asmongold

Episode Date: June 17, 2025

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It's actually crazy how well this game is done. I'm like shock. I think even like even my expectations, I didn't expect it to go this hard. 400,000 people. That is fucking insane. Monster Hunter Wilds just bodyed the entire industry. 8 million copies sold in less than three days. That's insane.

I thought it was hard to sell a AAA game nowadays. I thought it was tough out on these streets. It's almost like if you make a good game, people play the game. People buy it. Yeah. I've heard about that. You know, Monster Hunter as a series is only, continue to grow exponentially grow its audience in a way that very few in this industry understand

and I think very few can even try to replicate. I think this is what happened like the exact same thing that happened with Monster Hunter now is the same pattern that happened with Path of Exile 2 and that previously happened with Eldon Ring and that also happened with Balders Gate 3 is because like Larian leveled up and they did Divinity 2 original sin. They did so divinity did the, the, the, the, The Divinity to Original Sent. Like, they're building up, and then finally you have, like, a game that's, like, so good. It's like this massive breakthrough hit. The franchise after franchise, studio after studio, try to broaden their appeal, widen their audience,

only to alienate the core audience that they have. Exactly. Saints Row, Diablo, Battlefield, Halo, Dragon Age. There's a long list of games that have completely left their audiences behind. Monster Hunter Wilds is a testament to just giving players what they want. want. Monsters. Them what they're looking for from your game.

And while I have my criticisms of Capcom, and you guys will hear that here in a little bit, they are one of the very few publishers in the industry that have continued to grow their franchises and continue to be heavyweight contenders. Yeah, they did the same thing with Street Fighter. I feel like Street Fighter now is more popular than it's been since probably the 90s. Like, I think it's probably maybe Tekken might be bigger. I don't know. But in my opinion, I think Street Fighter is like very, very.

very, very iconic, except Mega Man. Yeah, and I don't think Dragon's dogma was handled in the right way. But yeah. That's tough to do. So today what I want to do is I want to talk about the wild success of Monster Hunter Wilds. And I want to talk about the continued success and consistency of Capcom and how it's a lesson and an example that this industry desperately needs to follow. So I just got back from the gym and lo and behold of my porch is yet another display

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at checkout to get the best deal. Make sure you grab one of these before they're gone. Thank you to Displate for sponsoring this video. Monster Wilds didn't just drop. It stomped the industry into the ground, less than not Nine hours after it launched, it had already reached over a million concurrent players on Steam, speaking at 1.3 concurrent players the very next day, all the while helping Steam to break over 40 million concurrent players. Apparently another really big reason for why Steam is growing is that I feel like Wu Kong really brought a lot of Chinese users into Steam. And I feel like the increasing amount of like AAA and like AAA quality games coming from China

that are coming out on Steam. Really, really. Like, I think that's the main reason why you're seeing steam growing so much is that it's becoming a big place. Because the thing is, too, like, I saw this. This is a crazy statistic. I don't know if I can, I forgot if I put this on my Twitter or not. Let me see if I can pull it up.

This is a little bit of an aside, but I think it is kind of important. Look at this. Number of people using the Internet. You have India, Africa. There's also China. Right? China is a massive fucking place. It's got over like a billion.

people in it. So like when you have China being on the internet, that's a lot of fucking people. Two days later, Capcom hit us with the numbers. Eight million copies sold in less than three days, becoming Capcom's most successful title to date. The call that a success would be underselling it. This game is a juggernaut. Heck, it's got games journalists out here writing guides instead of out-of-pocket criticism. So give it time, I'm sure we'll see some of that nonsense soon. Yeah. Coming off of a crazy 2024 where both Powell World and Blacksmith Wukong smash through 2 million concurrent players on Steam, a lot of people thought that those numbers were anomalies,

flukes that wouldn't be repeated. We're used to seeing breakout successes topping out at around 200 to 500,000 concurrent players on Steam, but this is a pattern now, a shift. Certain titles delivering very specific experiences are showing just how wide of a reach games can have and what AAA games can truly achieve. That said, Monster Hunter Wilds could have gone even harder

if Capcom hadn't shot themselves in the foot with the game's optimization. Let's be real. Yeah, the optimization for the game. I mean, I have a really, really good computer, so I didn't feel this at all. But how many of you guys tried to play this game and you had computer issues with it? Because I think there were a lot of people that had this problem.

You see how Capcom uses the word sold unlike Western studios that use something else? Yeah, it's like instead of a game being sold in America, it has that many users because they have like all these subscription service programs that they try to say, oh yeah, we had 1.5 million users. Oh, yeah. You had this user.

You mean they logged into the game. They played it for five minutes and they stopped playing the game because it wasn't fun. Right. Okay. Yeah, let's put them on the list. Yeah, five million interactions. Yeah, exactly. Five million people opened the store page for the game.

This game wasn't struggling on mid-range hardware. It'd probably be sitting well over two million concurrent players right now. And honestly, the Steam reviews that are dragging the game for its performance are completely justified. There is no excuse for a flagship Capcom title to launch like this. Not when it's one of the biggest IPs in gaming, not when it's one of the games that is supposed to be a milestone moment for this company. If you're charging full price,

this game needs to run properly at launch. If you charge full price, people expect full service. It's that simple. The game being non-optimized and badly optimized is an issue that Dragon's Dogma 2 also had. And, you know, it's again,

like I remember when Monster Hunter World came out, people said the game was like majorly graphic intensive as well. I feel like comparatively, this game isn't that much better than Monster Hunter World. Like, maybe this is like a hot take. I don't think that graphically this game is like really like, oh my God, it's so much better. Right?

But like it's good. Right. It's good and it's pretty much the same thing. And I would have expected better optimization. I think everybody should have expected better optimization. Simple as that. Capcom pulled the exact same thing last year. This is all for shareholders because

their fiscal year ends March 31st and they want to just get the game out to appease their shareholders and meet their financial targets. And both the customer and the game are suffering as a result. I wish that these companies would wake up and realize that long-term profits outweigh immediate gains. And if Capcom- I think it's their engine that's the problem.

It seems like that's the issue because, like, Dragons Dogma 2 got delayed a number of times and they didn't even have a, like, the game, they said they're like, yeah, we're going to make this game. And then, like, five years later, the game actually was made. So I think it's the engine that's the problem. It seems it's also DRM. Yeah, I heard that Monster on a Wilds actually has two forms of DRM. They really don't want people duping decos.

They really don't want, you got to do those hunts, man. Properly optimize this game, they would be making a lot more money. I've had zero issues with the game personally, but I'm playing on a 40-90, so my experience means nothing in this conversation. I feel for the players who physically cannot play the game.

And I feel even worse knowing that there are a lot of people that are out there that aren't even going to get the chance to experience how insanely good this game is. Because, man, is this game good? I don't know what it is about Monster Hunter, but it taps into something primal, like instinctive. It's like Capcom boiled down the essence of what makes video games fun

and just delivered it straight into your bloodstream. The same way that's- That's exactly right. And so I think a couple of reasons why is that it's the quintessential boss fight simulator. Like you're just fighting bosses. that's also really good. It looks so clunky.

It is clunky. And I can see why you'd feel like it is. But if you play the game, I think that you'll get a feel for the clunkiness and learn to appreciate it. I know that's what I did. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you're different.

But it definitely doesn't have the same fluidity and range of motion that's something like Sekiro does. But I don't think that makes the game worse. So yeah, you get used to it. Yeah. And also the monsters function the same way, right? And so, like, you're fighting on the same even ground. but yeah, I think that's a big reason.

And also it's that you don't have to farm forever in order to get most rewards in the game. Like, in order for me to get the Arkfeld set, I had to play an evening. I played an evening, I got my Arkfeld set. And I think also the fact that you can do SOS fights and like hunts. And like usually if you join a group, unless you're like really, really bad

or the group is really, really bad, you will probably have the hunt go very well and go very fast. Side-scrolling Mario just keeps you hooked. get a simple loop, just keep moving forward. Monster Hunter does that with bigger monsters, crazier fights and higher stakes every step of the way. It's boss fight the video game. No filler, no waiting around, just pure unfiltered gameplay. It's like no dinner straight to dessert. Every fight delivers, every hunt adds to the spectacle. And before you know it, you're hooked. I'm sitting here, I'm writing this down, and all I want to do is go back to playing more of the game.

And what makes Monster Hunter Wilde so special is just how fluid everything is now. The game does not waste your time. There's no point. It's true that Monster Hunter is like way more fluid. Like this one is way more fluid than World. Like I think World had was like a little bit clunky. It was more clunky. Like on the clunky scale, I'd say World is like a, I don't know, like a six or a seven. And this game is like a four or a three. Focus system improves it. I think that the thing that improves it is the amount of responsive defensive mechanisms. So things like offset and perfect parry, those are the things that I think really make it feel less clunky

because you don't have to live with the consequences of your character being like in one angle or not. I think that's probably the best decision that they made. It's animation commitment, not clunkiness. I mean, I don't think there's really anime. There's a lot of ways to animation cancel in the game, but yeah, sure. This downtime between fights, everything about the way that you travel, take on quests, and fight monsters has been designed around just keep

you engaged at all times. Pop-up camps mean you don't need to constantly return to town. Mounting lets you sharpen your weapon, heel, reapply buffs, and get right back into combat instead of awkwardly trying to run around. Hell, even when a monster runs away mid-fight, your mount will just automatically start tracking them, giving you enough breathing room to be able to manage your resources before jumping right back in. I think this is what has frustrated me so much lately with a lot of other modern games.

There are so many of them that are going out of their way to slow you down. forced platforming sections in an action game, unskippable cutscenes with meaningless dialogue, pointless gear checks that block progression. Yeah, that was a big issue. Is that like there's a lot of games that just waste your time arbitrarily. Like Avowed has this, for example, is that whenever you would fight monsters of a higher tier, there was like five tiers in the game, your weapons would just simply do half damage. So it was basically a mechanism to where like you had to go.

and like play the game in a very defined way. And I think that's kind of boring. Requests that make you run back and forth between NPCs, even Path of Exile too. A game that I love falls into that trap. Kill all these elites before you can progress. Samoa says Game was amazing. Monster hunter used to mean grind.

Now you can get everything way too fast. I don't even agree with that. I really don't. Like anything I wanted in the base game in Monster in a world, like for example, Like, I just farmed it and I got it in like a matter of hours. Yeah, I really, yeah, I just, I don't, I guess like so. My only frame of reference is Monster Hunter World.

So if you're talking about like the much older games, then I just, I don't know. But for Monster Under World, I feel it's about the same. Why? Just let me play the damn game. Engage me, compel me to play. Monster Hunter doesn't do any of that. Every main story quest throws you straight into a new monster fight or gives you a meaningful reason to do something.

Even the fetch quests they have in this game are actually rewarding. Go catch one fish. Go trap one animal and boom. I did the fish quest last night. To catch this fish, bro. I was literally on the hook with this fish for like, I spent an hour and a half doing a quest because I didn't want to look it up. Now I got the fish.

But man. There's a new fishing lure, cooking ingredients or crafting materials. This game respects your time and gives you something in return. The other day I was getting ready to go to a hockey game and instinctively, because it's coded into my gamer DNA now, I started a main story quest, figuring that it would just be another conversation, completely forgetting that this game has yet to have a quest like that.

And two minutes later, right after a cutscene, bam, I'm in another monster fight. As I carve the beast that I just slain another cutscene plays and I'm fighting another enemy. This game's pace is unrelenting. That pace and fluidity extends, the combat, which feels 20 times faster than any Monster Hunter game that I've played before. The new Woon System, completely overpowered, by the way, but it adds a whole other layer

of strategy, and it keeps the action moving nonstop. I think what's going to end up happening is that the wound system is going to just be recalibrated, and when they do, like, the master ranks, I bet it's going to be a lot harder to get wounds in. That's what I'm kind of expecting. I mean, I could be wrong, but like, that's kind of what I think is going to happen. faster attacks flow better movement is snappier i'm maintaining long sword this time around and i have now three separate ways to keep up my spirit blade gauge i can use my spirit blade combo i can counter an attack or i can just break a wound it's just constant non-stop action and i love it and the level design

oh my god the level design i can't tell you guys how many times i would get so frustrated with monster hunter world fighting a raehan being knocked down off the top of tree tops onto a lower zone and that nest, what felt like an attorney to find my way back to the monster. Wilds is leagues ahead of Monster Hunter World. It feels like they took all the best lessons that they learned from Rise with simpler layouts and just made a game that just feels so much more natural,

so much more readable and easier to navigate. I'm memorizing areas faster, collecting materials more easily, and using the map rather than actually fighting against it. For me, Monster Hunter Wilds is everything that's good about Monster Hunter, polished to a mirror shine. It improves on every aspect of combat, the world design, quest design, and more.

Well, I could criticize the story. I'm not going to because that's just- I don't give a shit. Like, I feel like the story in the game doesn't really matter one way or another. Like, it's kind of, it's not great, but it doesn't really make a difference. It doesn't really matter. It's not what players are coming to this game for. The players know that.

Capcom knows that, and we got what we got. With that said, there is this moment in the main story right after the credits roll, And the game essentially takes you off the leash. I don't want to ruin it for anyone, but it's this obvious nod that basically says, Hunter, it's time to hunt. And it oddly got me right in the fields. I was kind of overwhelmed for a moment because I felt like I'd only gotten a taste. And this was the realization that this is the game that I've waited years for.

And it's finally here. And it's time to play. Capcom didn't reinvent the wheel here. They didn't dilute the experience. They doubled down on what makes Monster Hunter great. And they just gave players more of it. And surprise, surprise, it worked. God, I love it.

Yeah, I feel like the game definitely, it maintained a lot of its identity. And I think that if you watch a lot of speed runs, you're probably going to see a lot of the same types of gameplay. But yeah, now fixed performance. Yeah, I think so too. They gave us Gemma. Yeah, true.

And I just want more monsters to hunt. That's the way I feel too. I want more stuff to do, more monsters to hunt, etc. But I think that especially for like monster hunter players that kind of got into world maybe a bit late, I think their frame of reference is going to be kind of distorted like mine is, because World just has so much content that I never even finished it and I played it for 150 hours. So it's like if you compare that to Monster Hunter Wilds that just came out and you're looking at something

that's had an expansion and like 50 different collab events, like 10 different patches, 20 different batches probably. So that's it. Yeah, it's yours of content. That's what I'm really hoping for, right? And that's why like, I don't know about you guys, but why. Like, have you guys tried to, like, make your gear as good as possible in Monster Hunter? So, like, when the new content comes out, you can play it?

Because, like, that's what I've been doing. Of this game, I cannot stop playing it. Whoever wrote that line of, for the preservation of this ecosystem, the guild hereby authorizes you to slay? Yeah. What a bar. It's straight out of anime. It gets me every single time.

Maybe I'm weird, but it works on me. Now, I don't want to sit here and just glaze the game entirely because there are some things that I have some issues with. There's definitely a lack of build diversity in the end game. I'm upset that Capcom basically boiled it down to two armor sets and already in weapons more than anything else. But I know that over time, the game's going to get more content. Capcom is pretty relentless when it comes to adding content to Monster Hunter games.

But, you'll see. You're honest, man, I'm just having too much fun to actually care because all I wanted was more Monster Hunter. And that's exactly what I got. Yeah. And I think there's a lesson in that. I think that that's something that when I start to contrast this game with the rest of the industry, you know, they're finding success because they're just staying true to what they are.

Simple as that. When I look around at some of these storied franchises, Assassin's Creed is a really good example. A lot of studios try to broaden their audience and they don't do it in a way that's healthy. They basically end up watering down the experience for the existing players while trying to attract a group of players that would never be the audience to begin with. That's kind of the issue of this. It used to be a stealth action game. Now it's a stealth RPG,

random loot mechanics and things like that, things that have nothing to do with the core experience that players expect from that franchise and what they're coming for. And how many times have you guys heard over the last few years, we're going back to our roots with this game. They've been saying that with Assassin's Creed.

They said that with Mirage because they made it a more compact. Dude, they say that with every single game. The only reason why they're saying that, is to capitalize on nostalgia. That's the only actual reason why. There's no other reason. It's just to get nostalgia. Back story and now they're saying it was shadows

because of the stealth mechanics. Why did you guys leave your roots in the first place? That's what made you successful. That's why Capcom is finding success. They left them because they thought they could find a wider audience that way. They thought that they could make more money. They thought by exploring genres outside of, their own, including elements of pop culture, injecting social messaging, or by tailoring the

game to audiences that don't play their game, they could make more money. This is what Wow did in Wrath, is that in Wrath of the Lich King, towards the end of the expansion, Blizzard started making an MMO for people that don't like MMOs. And I think it was one of the biggest mistakes they made. And I feel like it just kind of got worse over time. And like now, like, wow is like, it's such a. known entity that, you know, it is literally it is what it is. But like back then, like you had, everybody was playing the same raid. You had multiple different difficulties. And like,

they basically tried to just keep broadening the scope of the amount of people that would be interested in playing the game. And I think the result of that is that eventually the scope got too big. And it was like it was a game made for nobody. And I think that's what happens with a lot of these games is they keep broadening their audience until there's no one who's actually interested in them. But Monster Hunter proves that's not necessary. Monster Hunter has quietly become one of the fastest growing franchises in the entire industry. Year after year, iteration after iteration, it has steadily expanded its audience, not through massive overhauls or desperate trend chasing, but through small refinements and organic growth. The series has always been...

What was really insane about that is the fact that Monster Hunter, like Monster, like Monster, Monster Hunter World, which is the game that came out, the last like PC release that came out before this one, sold a million copies in the three months leading up to this game. And when I saw that, I thought to myself, holy shit, this game is going to go crazy. The fact that you had a release that came out almost a decade ago that's getting juiced to over a million copy sales, RISE? No, I said a PC release. A RISE originally. came out on the Nintendo Switch. I'm talking about World.

In beloved in Japan, but for a long time, it really struggled to find footing in the West. That all changed with Monster Hunter World back in 2018, a game that served as the franchise's true breaking point, pushing it into the mainstream, but it did it while it retained the core of what made Monster Hunter, well, Monster Hunter.

If you look at most modern versions of legacy franchises today, the vast majority of them barely resemble what they once were. So many franchises have strayed, so far from their roots that they feel completely disconnected from what made them successful in the first place. The ones that have adapted successfully, Narc Souls, Doom, Zelda, Mario, Resident Evil, Final Fantasy. They've... It's a good point with Doom. Yeah, that game definitely did evolve, and it's pretty much the same game. Yeah, it's exactly what you... Like, if you were to go back to, like, 1998, and ask somebody, what would you imagine Doom looking like in 20 years? They would show you

Doom Dark Ages. Yeah. solved, but they've never abandoned their identity. Dark Souls refined its RPG mechanics and combat and world design multiple times through different titles before Eldon Ring perfected the formula. Doom brought back its run-and-gun intensity without becoming a mindless shooter or softening its themes. Resident Evil revitalized itself with Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil 2 remake, balancing horror and action in a way that felt true to the franchise.

The key to all of these? They changed just enough to stay fresh, but never so... crazy to see like this is the way the game used to be right this is where it started from and it's not totally different because the funny thing is that even if you just started playing monster hunter well actually this this is tigrex this is in monster under world uh it's not in in wilds but like you have the mega potions you have the little clock there and you have your sharpness gauge you have your health and your stamina it yeah much that they lost their essence.

Monster Hunter is doing the exact same thing. For years, Monster Hunter was a cult phenomenon in Japan, thriving on handhelds like PSP and Nintendo DS. The portability of these systems made it a perfect fit for the game. What's really crazy about Monster Hunter, too, is that girls play the game. That's crazy. Wow. What? Yeah, I know.

Girls love this game? Yeah, like, what the fuck? Structure. Quick, challenging hunts that you could play on the go with your friends. Net cafes and social gaming events are still incredibly popular. there, so Monster Hunter fits really comfortably into that culture. In Japan, Monster Hunter releases have been treated like holidays, with some companies even recognizing a launch day as an unofficial time off event. It's always been huge there, but it always had remained a regional

powerhouse, never really quite breaking through into the international market. Yeah. The Western market just wasn't ready to embrace its slow, deliberate combat, hardcore mechanics, and sometimes brutal learning curve. But Capcom played the long game. Unlike a lot of other studios, it would have tried to fix the game by completely changing it, Capcom just refined and expanded on what already worked. They took inspiration from other Capcom titles like Street Fighter and Devil May Cry injecting faster and more responsive combat mechanics while keeping the weight and commitment of combat intact. The game remained tactical and deliberate, but over time it became smoother, more fluid, and more intuitive. A lot of the early monster.

Yeah, I think a big difference is that, like, they never really went. And so, like, and this is going to be kind of a personal opinion. but I actually really liked Dark Souls 1's combat better than Dark Souls 3 after playing both of the games for hundreds of hours. I like the more slow, methodical, like slower-paced combat. And I feel like they didn't, they never really Dark Souls 3'd Monster Hunter. They never really did. I heard Rise was kind of closer to that, but like it's definitely not anywhere near that. How about Dark Souls 2?

Bad game. And anyway, so back to good games, I think really, like, kind of Eldon Ring was like that little middle ground where, like, you can play certain types of combat builds that are like really fast, but not all of them are like that. Dark Souls 2 power stance, though? Yeah, yeah, there were a couple of good ideas that were in Dark Souls 2, for sure. There was like 100 bad ones, too. Last or 100 titles lacked proper explanations for mechanics.

Players were thrown into a world and just expected to figure it out. and it was part of the appeal for a lot of the diehard fans, but for new players, it was intimidating as hell, especially with how plunky the combat felt. Over time, Capcom gradually... It's also like how punishing the game is, too.

Because if you watch a speed run of Monster Hunter, a lot of people that watch it think, oh, that's cool, but people don't understand the amount of animation reading and, like, the amount of, like, pre-planning a person has to do in order to be very good at it. Like, knowing where to stand, where, like, it's not impressive to know what the monster's going, like, what the monster's doing.

Really good speed runners know what the monster is going to do. And where, instead of knowing, like, where to attack, they know where to pre-attack. And I see that a lot. Introduced better onboarding, clear UI elements, and actual explanations for how things worked. I don't view this as dumbing the game down, so to say. They just made it easier for players to understand and made the game more comfortable to play. Monster Hunter Freedom Unite was a breakout hit on PSP, introducing deeper combat mechanics

in a stronger multiplayer experience that made a must have in Japan. Then came Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, which experimented with underwater combat and expanded onto home consoles. Monster Hunter 4 pushed mobility. Is that the gun lance? Water combat.

Oh my God, it is. It is. Damn. I think that that's another really cool thing that Monster Hunter has, is that because they're using all the same monsters, there's like an element of nostalgia where it's like okay well what is the like they showed like zin ogre or like teegrex what are they going to look like in the new game monster hunter four pushed mobility even further with climbing mechanics and aerial attacks making fights feel more dynamic then monster hunter generations introduced hunter styles and arts allowing players to customize their play styles in ways they'd never even seen before each step built on the last fine tuning the formula and gradually bringing in more players into the fold then came monster hunt

Hunter World, the game where everything just, it's crazy how good the graphics for this game are. Like for being a game that came out such a long time ago. Like, I don't even think that Wilds looks that much better. It's, this is really, really good.

It just clicked into place. It was the perfect balance of staying true to the franchise's roots while also creating an experience that was more inviting to a global audience. The game ditched the handheld limitations and pushed for the AAA scale and environments and it refined its multiplayer accessibility. The result, well, it's the best-selling Monster Hunter game of all time so far.

Yeah, see, that's the thing, is that, like, if you look at the way this happened, see how, like, the game kind of started growing in, like, 2018 and then 2019, like, all of the new games just keep getting better. And, like, look at the amount of people that bought Iceborne that played World. Like, if you're at 20 to 14, that's... basically like over half, almost 75% of the people, like more like 65% bought the expansion to the game. That is an insane comeback ratio. Crazy ratio to have. COVID effect? No, Iceborne came out in 2019. So that wasn't COVID.

44.8 million copies sold across all editions. Yeah. A complete transformation for the series. World didn't just succeed. It changed the franchise forever. It acted as a force multiplier where every subsequent release after the sale of Monster Hunter World exploded. Monster Hunter Stories, which sold 600,000 copies in 2016. I didn't know what this is.

Well, its sequel in 2021, it over 2 million in sales. A spinoff like Monster Hunter Rise, it almost 17 million in sales. Just like how Eldon Ring became the most successful Souls game by staying consistent, Wilds is which to the wildest audience the series has ever seen

because they understand what people love about Monster. Look at the quality of this game. Like the graphical quality? This is really fucking impressive. It looks insanely good. About Monster Hunter, and they keep delivering on that. That's why this series has continued to grow. It makes concessions to playability, sure,

but only in ways that enhance engagement, never at the cost of depth. One of the biggest hurdles for Monster Hunter that kept it from being a true mainstream hit for years was just sheer inconvenience for new players. just felt too stiff, too demanding, and too punishing. Things like awkwardly trying to dodge around an enemy so that you can sharpen your weapon mid-fight.

Unintuitive movement and terrible... Wait, this is... Yeah, this is Wilds. No, I legitimately thought this was world. I'm a fucking retard. I don't know... where is this in the game? I've never been here. I thought this was the top of the... of the jungle area. Yeah, I've never been...

It's the top of the tree. I never went to the top of the tree. You can go to the top of the tree? I didn't know that. trolls and clunky multiplayer restrictions that just push a lot of players and potential fans away, including myself. I tried the game for the first time many years ago back on Nintendo DS, and I was filtered by a Kulu-Yaku egg carrying quest.

While many veterans have thrived on these mechanics, the general audience has only experienced frustration. With Wilds, Capcom just smoothed out the edges. Combat still remains deliberate and positional, but players have a little bit more flexibility. You still need to know when to commit to an attack, but you have better tools to adapt, running away to sharpen your weapon?

Well, that's been streamlined. Now you can do that while you're mounted. Multiplayer, no need for awkward cutscene restrictions before being able to invite a friend to a hunt. Every iteration of the franchise has made small, incremental, quality of life improvements, all without losing what makes Monster Hunter, Monster Hunter. And that's why Wilds is doing so well.

It's the result of decades of refinement and not trying to desperately try to invent the wheel. It respects its history, its fans, and more importantly, its own identity. Now, while I've seen some people complaining that Monster Hunter Wilds is leading too hard in the casual direction that it's too easy in comparison to some of the

other titles. What was the hardest boss when Monster Hunter World came out? Like what was the hardest challenge the game had? Like on release of the game? Nergaigante. Just base Nergaigante. Not

not tempered elder dragons, but not arc tempered. Just base tempered. Like purple, not not orange. Kieran is pretty insane. Yeah, I did Kieran Ark Tempered. That was annoying. Honestly, I would say that Bass tempered Nurga Gantae or like Elder Dragon,

I don't know. I mean, like, I feel like maybe, like, if that difficulty is like a nine, then I would say maybe tempered Gore Magdalas like an eight, maybe. I think Gore Magdalas pretty hard. Am I crazy? Like, I think so. World definitely had harder encounters. Some of that just comes from, well, being experienced and familiar with the game, understanding its mechanics and combat in a way that very few people do.

Friends of mine that are playing the game for the first time, they're getting filtered, they're having a hard time. They're SOS flaring any chance that they get in trying to get as much assistance as they can, but they're having a great time playing it. This is another component is that you have, this is another big issue that I think that like Eldon Ring did this the right way to, where Elden Ring didn't make the game for people that beat Sekiro seven times. They didn't make the game for people that played mods of Dark Souls 3

to make the game even harder than it was at a baseline. They made the game for a large audience, and good players will find new ways to challenge themselves by doing speed runs. So like sweats ruin gaming? Yeah, exactly. Sweets do ruin gaming. And I feel like if you design a game around sweats, that's all you're going to have playing it.

that's what happened with wow. Is it like, in my opinion, retail wow is designed entirely for sweats. It's not designed for average, normal, everyday players. These are people that have been historically critical of this series and never wanted to touch it

that are playing it for the first time and are loving it. That's exactly what you want to see. You know, one of the things that I was thinking about because I was talking to one of my friends is I'm like, think about how big of an impact it has, being a player that's played this franchise in the past, and you understand how to counteract

certain elements. You understand how to stack certain items like Mighty Pill and Demon Drug and Demon Powder and things like that. A lot of other players aren't going to know those things and that gives you a massive, a very massive advantage in a lot of these fights. Yeah, like I felt this way with Elvin Ring, especially now that I've played it before. Like, I mean, when the DLC came out and I like just made a new build, you know,

you just face roll the whole game, right? like especially like base Eldon Ring. So like I think people really, especially people that have played other games like this in the past, I think that they really downplay the amount of the amount of value that being like being somebody who's played the game before and understanding that, the amount of value that brings.

Because like there's all these things that you never have to wonder, you never have to be sure about. So like you basically have already played the game before. Yeah, you have experience, right? Yeah, I've always told people like, you know, game knowledge is the strongest secondary stat you can have. And I think with this game, it's the same as it wasn't wow, is that that's definitely true. Well, I know that veterans and purists are going to have their differences. There's going to be some people that are definitely going to criticize what my opinion is on this.

But I think that Monster Hunter, its core experience remains intact in a way that very few franchises can pull off. They're giving players more options rather than just taking things away from them. And I think that's what really makes the biggest difference here. because the players have a choice. Palico's too strong. Leave it at home. Mounting cheapens combat. Don't mount while you're in combat.

The wound system's overpowered. But, well, yes. And it's also keep in mind that speed runners and people that are really good at the game aren't utilizing these tools. So if you want a bigger challenge and you want a more,

a more comprehensive challenge, then you can adjust that yourself. Just don't use the tools given to you is fucking retarded. Well, no, it's really not. I mean, I think that if you want to, and also it's not efficient. Like, it's not efficient to get on your mount and, like, ride away from the monster just to get a heel. Like, you don't want to do that.

It does add a lot more flexibility and makes combat a heck of a lot more dynamic and much more forgiving in a lot of cases. when you see some of these veteran players using it, they look like, it looked like Virgil from Devil May Cry 5. That has to feel good. You can't tell me that doesn't feel good. They just give you more tools and it's your choice to engage with it.

And I think that's the essence of how some of these long-standing franchises can continue to find success. More tools, less friction, let the players define their experience. Never forget what you are. Those are the keys here. you know, when I look at a lot of other franchises,

yeah, no summoning is a great example, right? A lot of people in Elven Ring don't use summons because they feel like it cheapens the fight. So it's like if you feel like something cheapens the fight, just don't use it. And I think that like in Eldon Ring, there's like 50 examples of that,

of things that make it way easier that a lot of players choose not to use. Like mimic tiers, summons, you know, like different types of like really big buffs, etc. Yeah, so it's quite common. fear that they've forgotten and they don't care. They don't trust the players to give them more tools.

Shield. They don't think that they can handle those kind of things. Instead of letting players define their experience, they want to define that experience for them. Limit their expression. Dictate how they play games. That's not working. No, well, I'm sure I'm going to have some people disagree with me

because I know that veterans of any franchise are going to have their own shade of criticism. It's not uncommon for us players to want to harken back to the old days. Don't recite to me the ancient text. I was there when they were written, but the heart of Monster Hunter is very much still intact. The same cannot be said for a lot of other games in this industry.

Too many studios don't just change. They lose their identity entirely, warping their friends. Well, the problem with Monster Hunter's combat originally is that it was really punishing and it felt bad to play if you were bad at it. Like, basically, the game felt bad to play, and it felt good to play if you were good at it, but bad to play if you were bad at it.

at it. Now I feel like the game feels good to play if you're bad at it and better to play if you're good at it. Skill issue? Well, it is a skill issue, right? That's the thing. But like, if you make, if you insult the player's skill and you make the player not enjoy playing the game, then they're not going to play the game. So, like, really at the end of the day, a skill issue is secondary to enjoying the game. And if you're enjoying the game, that's what really matters. So casualized? Well, it's not casualized. I don't think that's an accurate way of explaining it.

...chranchises into something almost unrecognizable, either through trend chasing, misguided ideology, or a growing obsession with dictating how players experience games. Look at Diablo, World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, Dragon Age, Battlefield. These aren't franchises that evolved. These are franchises that compromise themselves. And every time... 1.3K?

What the fuck? That's crazy. and they want to fix the damage, they say the same thing. We're going back to our roots, but the problem is they don't even know what that means anymore. They've spent so much time stripping away what's unique about their games from their foundation that they have nothing to go back to.

And honestly, I think the Diablo is probably the best example of this because not only is Diablo actually started this channel, but it's a franchise that I grew up on. Diablo 2 wasn't just a great game, it was a definitive game. It had some of the hardest hitting narratives and cutscenes in the industry, insane build diversity and challenging, rewarding gameplay that gave players full control over their experience.

Diablo 3, by comparison, was practically Gauntlet arcade. And while I love gauntlet, that's not what Diablo was supposed to be. Tell me, why is it that for so many... I feel like Diablo 2. I mean, like, I mean, people still play Diablo 2. I feel like Diablo 3, that game's basically... I mean, the game was dead even when it was out, right? And so, like, now it's just, like, super dead.

many studios, reaching a wider audience to somehow translate it into social political messaging, childproofing their narratives, shoehorning mechanics in that do not belong, turning action games into RPGs and immersive RPGs into action games are just straight up dumbing down the experience because they don't think their audience is smart enough to handle it. Like sure, Diablo 3 sold well, so did Diablo 4, but when you actually look at how the fan base feels, it's almost entirely criticism. They're not delivering what players want. And the proof of that. that is in their low engagement. Notice how Blizzard is dead silent on the sales of their latest expansion.

That's not normal. Historically, I think everybody knows why. Everybody knows why. In a way, I feel bad, but I really kind of don't. Yeah. Nice up.

Yeah, why? Because I think the game hasn't sold as many copies. And I don't think it's as popular as it used to be. That's really the reason. I just don't think so. It seems like a lot of people have moved past playing the game, et cetera. And so, like, yeah, I don't think people really care. Like, the game kind of lost a lot of its edge.

Was D4 ever popular? Yeah. I think Diablo 4 is a good game. But it just doesn't really have, it doesn't have the amount of depth to it that makes a game like that fun. I can't really explain it because it's like Diablo 2, I felt like at least the part of it that I played, which was very minimal. It felt like it was in between Diablo 4 and POE 2 or POE 1 really. They've had no problem shouting out their victories, but they know it's a little bit too simple.

But I think Diablo 4 is not sustainable. I think Diablo 4 is a good game. It is a good game. It's a great game for casual players. And it's a great ARPG for casual like average, you know, games. or dads. Constantly move away from what made your game you need.

I think PUE is way better, but that's not it. We've seen this pattern echo across the industry itself. World of Warcraft went for being an MMO about brotherhood, loss, player-driven choice, were community. Oh, what is this? How did you do this? How did we go from, we

will never be slaves to this? Arthus, my son, to this. This was so fucking lame, bro. It's just so lame. I just I don't know what to say. Yeah, we will always be fairies, slave to

DEI, I don't even know. Like, it's just so cringe, man. Soy, wow, it is. It's totally soy. And the characters don't even look that good either. It actually mattered to a game about friendship and rainbows, quick matching players with no interaction,

bloated grinds, and shallow engagement loops that feel more like a second job than actual progression. Call of Duty keeps layering on more and more surface level mechanics, yet somehow loses precise, skill-driven gunplay. The thing that actually made this the king of FPS games. All the while, they're stuffing a mature theme game with music, Hollywood, and Ninja Turtle crossovers. Battlefield 2042 launched with no meaningful squad play. I mean, I think this, to be fair, right, I think this is cool. This is definitely cool. But the only time that it's not cool is when it's coming at the expense of the actual game, you know?

Quad play or a class system. The two things that made Battlefield what it was. Dragon Age abandoned deep player-driven role-playing in favor of cinematic, streamlined storytelling and progressive social messaging. They stripped out any of the strategic combat, tactical depth, and character progression and just made it a generic action game. For what? All this comes down to the same.

It's so easy, too. Like, Dragon Age is so easy. like every spell that you cast gives you immunity eye frames so like anytime a boss is going to do a really big hit all you have to do is wait to cast a spell and then as soon as they do the hit you just cast the spell and then you don't take damage i'm serious like it's actually that easy game issue trust in identity studios just don't trust players to engage with their games

and you have other i frames too i think that players are incapable of appreciating a challenge depth or nuance. So they try to force on these unnecessary changes to fix things that aren't broken. And the result is a game that just doesn't appeal to anyone. Too watered down for longtime fans and too unfocused for new players. That's exactly it.

There are so many of these franchises now that try to, they try to do both and they just don't really, they don't maintain their identity. So you play it like a soul's like? Yeah, kind of, right? But it's just better.

game for journalists? Yeah, I guess so. That's basically what happened to rise, by the way. Yeah, well, I mean, I feel like that's the reason why, I mean, World, like, you know, Capcom didn't do return to rise. They did return to World. And I think there's a reason for that. Appeal to a new audience of non-gamers. Yeah, yeah, we're going to get this mythical audience of people that have no interest in playing video games to play our video game. All we need to do is add this type of social messaging and then put yellow paint on everything. And then all the stupid people that watch TV shows

will play our video game. Yeah, welcome to AAA game development in America. Of course, it doesn't help that the media just keeps egging this all on. Players complain about a lack of interactivity and avowed and how bare bones the experience feels. PC Gamer goes out and writes an article dismissing their

criticism entirely, hyperbolicly reframing the player's concerns so they can smugly write, I don't care about being able to kill everyone. You don't have to be Skyrim to be good? Yeah, but you should at least be oblivion though, right? Like, maybe you should at least be oblivion. I don't know.

One and steal the mayor's pants in an RPG like a vowed, and I'm tired of pretending like it's mandatory. So now, instead of developers taking valuable feedback to improve their game, they're being encouraged to challenge themselves less and lower the bar all in the name of progress. And of course, this extends to Monster Hunter, too. I just started playing Monster Hunter Wilds, and this health bar mod might be the first one I install. Over 80,000 Monster Hunter Wild...

That's fun. If you want to install a health bar mod, that's completely okay. It's your game and you can play it the way you want to play it. It's your game. Like, that's fine. You don't have to mod. Yeah, you don't have to mod. I don't think that you need a health bar.

I think that the boss behaves and acts in a way that's very indicative of its current health. But if you want to do that, then you can do that. It destroys the essence of the game. then that's your right to do that because it's your game. That's it. That's fine. For the most part, it's a single player game. And if people want a mod a single player game, go ahead. Like, I just, it ruins the game.

Well, here's how it works. For some people, it ruins the game. For other people, it doesn't. If you think it ruins the game for you, don't use it. There are a million, there is an Eldon Ring mod that turns you into an Apache helicopter that shoots nuclear bombs that kills everything in one hand. it. I would say that ruins the game. The way I solve that problem is I just do not download that mod onto my computer.

It's a great solution. It's players want to see health bars. Ah, yes, 80,000 out of the 8 million players that bought the game, let's celebrate the literal 1% and ignore the 99 others that love the game as it is. I think that that's, I mean, if you were to ask a lot of new players, I think that you would get like people that don't play the game adding in health bars

would attract in new players but it's not really the thing is that I think adding in health bars would make sense I remember I talked about this with like Lost Arc Guardians but like with Monster Hunter it doesn't really make sense

and it doesn't really you don't need to have health bars and Monster Hunter because of the different ways that the monsters respond to gameplay so it's just not necessary dude's talking like pull their player. Yeah. And I think also make it a toggle, default off.

Um, I mean, if they did do that, I would prefer that they just leave it up to being a mod. Because I think that when you put something in the game, you do have people that are going to always use it. I think it would be better for it to just, just leave it. Let people mod it in, though. I think it's fine if you want to mod it in. But I don't think it needs to be a default setting. Yeah, leave it as a mod. And I think if you want to use it as a mod, it's completely okay, and I'm non-judgmental about it completely. Exactly how franchises get chipped away at. It starts as a helpful mod, then becomes a demand to make it official,

and then eventually the entire philosophy of a game changes because certain people can't be bothered to learn how to play it. And I'll give you another example. I wish that there were numbers in Dragons Dogma. I would rather have numbers in the game. That's it. I want numbers in the game. Now, like that's you, same. Yeah, I know.

I know. This is my opinion. But it's in Monster Hunter. I like that. So if there's a damage mod for the monsters, then I'd be fine with that. Yeah, sure. But like, I play it without the mod and that's okay.

Why the gaming industry keeps failing to grow its audiences properly, because they're not building on what makes their games great. They're tearing them down. And then they wonder why Monster Hunter, a game that stays true to its identity is out selling them all. I know that I'm not alone in feeling that some of our favorite franchises

have just compromised too much over the years. They've changed far too much. Yes, you have to adapt. You've got to be flexible. And sometimes that means losing some of your unique flavoring to be a little bit more palatable to a wider audience. But I think that in a lot of cases,

these games have just sacrificed too much. They've lost too much. And as a result, they can't go back. Well, like, for example, the monster hunter. So like the addition to a health bar and monster hunter wilds, the reason why that's like such an issue is that wanting that indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of the way the game works. And I think that's really whenever you have problems. When you take away nuances and like special features that your game has in order to appeal to a wide

audience. Explain? Well, a monster, like for example, monsters limp, whenever they're low enough health in order to be captured, they fly away at certain different health intervals as well. And they also, you know, can show that they've taken damage based off of the amount of parts that are broken and just like, you know, does it still have the tail? Stuff like that. They are drooling, yeah. And then they're also, they get exhausted, tired. Yeah, exactly. Part breaks. Yeah. And so there's a lot of examples of things like that. So whenever you say that you want a health buyer for Monster Hunter, what you're saying is that I don't really understand the way the game works. And so that's very different than a lot of other features that can just, in some cases,

make the game feel better to play, like the defensive mechanisms in the game. The skull on the minimap makes it easy. Well, it also, the palico tells you that it's going to happen too. Hunter is one of the very few franchises in this industry that I can point at that isn't a Nintendo title and say anyone of any age can enjoy this game. And they've made it that way. But it's still the exact same game, at least from my perspective, that it's always been over the years. And I think a lot of that is just coming down to the fact of how the game plays. It's so focused on gameplay.

It's like the only thing that these guys care about. You can tell that's the case because... Imagine only caring about gameplay. the story. Nobody cares. Graphics, nobody cares. Story, nobody cares. Crafting mechanics.

Items, literally nobody cares. It's the same items that were in the game in the PSP. Nobody cares. So basically, but now the gameplay is really good. That's the only thing that matters. It's just a vehicle to get you to go right back into combat again because that's where this game shines. And if you're doing that the most out of anything else, well, all you're going to do is just want to play more of the game, the more you play it.

And that's how it ends up working out. This right here. At least that's my experience. I think a lot of games have gotten away from that. You know, while I was playing Monster Hunter, I was sitting back and thinking about it, and I'm like, you know, most of the things that we complain about games today

don't actually have anything to do with the actual playing of the game, how it feels, how the controls are, and things of that nature. It's always performance, or maybe it's some type of social political messaging or whatever it might be. Yeah, gameplay is the bottom line.

If a game has good gameplay, the game will be successful. If a game has bad gameplay, the game will not be successful. That is the defining characteristic and the only true thing that matters. They've moved away from certain things that we enjoyed in the game before and remove certain mechanics and stuff like that. But with Monster Hunter, there's just such a focus on how the game plays that I think that's the real key to its success more than anything else. If we got optimization.

Yeah, but that's separate. That's not game play. How does that get lost? Where does that get lost along the way? Where does the play? The way that it got lost is people like Neil Druckman trying to be Hideo Kajima and making movies into, sorry, making video games into movies. And then you have an entire industry of theater kids that are now old enough to try to make video.

games and they do their best and they try so hard but in the end it doesn't matter and they make shitty content and bad games that are boring and that that's really what happened that's the reason is that you have a lot of these people that have tried to oh now it's the graphics it's representation it's all of these like secondary like it's systems and it's like a replayability and and actually Reprobability can be gameplay, right? Depending, right? Like battle passes. And so there have become all of these abstract reasons and like abstract like noise that video games have that ultimately doesn't fucking matter.

Like none of these things fucking matter. And I think the best example of this is Assassin's Creed Shadows with the hideout system. Oh, you can build a hideout and you can customize the dogs and the hideout. What game is this again? Is this Assassin's Creed or Assassin's Crossing? What's going on? You don't have to? Exactly.

Exactly. That's what I would tell them. But they did. It's ridiculous. Same as in Hogwarts Legacy? Yes, Hogwarts Legacy, the hideout, like, special area was totally unnecessary. And I think that these games, they add, you see what my point is, though, is like, they're adding in, like these features and functions

that really nobody gives a fuck about. This doesn't make the game better. It doesn't add anything into the game. It's not really actual real replay value. It's just bullshit. The ability and enjoyability of a game become a secondary trait of the game. How does that get lost?

I just don't understand it. The only thing that I can think about is talent leaving. Because over the years, talent leaves. They go somewhere else. They work in another studio. they go start their own studio or whatever it might be. That's the big issue.

Is that you have talent leave that made the good games and then the people that replace them make bad games. Like there's a term for this. It's called brain drain. And I feel like we've had a few studios that have had a very, very bad case of brain drain. Officer, whatever. And then I start thinking about it further.

And these Eastern studios, they keep their employees. I don't know if you guys noticed this but like Japan specifically these people are stuck No no like I absolutely noticed that The same guys that were in the credits For Super Mario World Are the guys now that are running Nintendo

Like Shiguro Miyamoto To me that is so cool That's awesome Their jobs They don't go anywhere else And if they do go somewhere else It's big news headline news. I remember when the guy that was part of Capcom, he was, I cannot remember his name

on top of my head. He was the combat director for Devil May Cry 5 and he went to go to work at Square Enix and he worked on Final Fantasy 16. Which had great combat. That was on news headlines like paper headlines in Tokyo. It's a big deal for them. People leaving their job and going somewhere else is a big deal. Well, when the guy that made Dragons Dogma left Capcom, it'suno, that was a big deal too. Because for me it was very disappointing. I was holding out hope that they would probably make a Dragon's Dogma 2 expansion

that would be like Darker Risen, that would just make the entire game a million times better. They didn't do that, very unfortunate. And they haven't done that yet. And like with Tsuno leaving, I feel like the chances of that happening of like Tsuno is the same way I still all may cry.

They have the same name? I don't know. Kojima, yeah, Kojima is a great example, right? Kojima starting his own company was forever in the news. Yeah, and also like the fact that it worked. You'll be able. There's probably something to that because that's not the same in the West. I'll tell you that right now.

I might have to look into that. Anyway, I need to play more Monster Hunter. I'm getting impatient. I can't believe I took the time to make a video. How dare you guys make me do this? I hope you guys enjoyed it. You better. Thanks for watching.

Man. Follow the channel, subscribe the channel, share the channel, like video, comment. ball twitch see you guys next time stay cool stay right to stay safe please blue protocol is capcom

family family I don't think it was I think Capcom might have published it but like that was it I mean I don't think it was really made really by Capcom but yeah no I totally agree I think Monster Hunter is definitely putting a lot of these other games especially like Western games

putting them on notice man it is and I'm very very very glad to see it like as I said I've played a lot of Monster Hunter. I have really, really, really enjoyed the game.