Imagine this: you’re on a lovely walk in the woods when suddenly a wild boar the size of your local supermarket rushes towards you. In a normal world you would simply pray to whatever god you believe in before you are crushed, but in Wild Hearts you are more than well equipped to deal with these beasts, as not only can your weapons cut through them, but you can conjure giant walls to block their attacks and huge clubs to bash them in the head with.
This is the essence of Wild Hearts, Koei Tecmo and EA’s answer to the Monster Hunter series. In Wild Hearts, you take on the role of a hunter and have the task of protecting the city of Minato and all of Azuma from kemono – large animals infected by the forces of nature.
This is an ad:
The similarities between Wild Hearts and Monster Hunter are clear, mainly in the fact that Azuma is full of large monsters, and your job is essentially to hunt them down, either alone or with a couple of friends. However, Wild Hearts does its best to avoid being dismissed as a simple Monster Hunter clone, offering several different mechanics to differentiate itself from that series and other games where you have to kill huge creatures. Karakuri, for example, are the building tools you get at the start of the adventure and can be used in a variety of ways.
In battle they can offer moments of respite by giving you the ability to dodge enemies or a small box to stand on, and out in the world they can give you access to camps that act as fast travel points, flying vines that can let you whiz over to a kemono you hunt and forge which gives you the chance to exchange and upgrade your gear. So there are a myriad of options both in and out of the hunt with karakuri, and there are even combos you can do with the basic buildings like the aforementioned barricades and Pounders, which can be used to great advantage against the right kemono.
The Karakuri mechanic is really a big gameplay innovation, and a great example of one of the best things about Wild Hearts, namely its depth. Koei Tecmo’s Omega Force division has really invested heavily in Wild Hearts, hopefully making it the first step in what could be a successful series. Wild Heart’s main asset is a smart way to easily understand how deep your options actually are, because once you’re ready to upgrade your weapon, you’ll see a huge tree stretching out in front of you, full of different customization and build options. These upgrades are more than just an excuse for you to grind out kemono and farm their items, because depending on which path you choose, you’ll get a completely different weapon, even compared to someone using the same base weapon as you. From fiery battle axes to poison katanas, there are plenty of options for you to take down kemono with, and when you tie that in with the options you get with karakuri, the combat in Wild Hearts has a huge variety that should be incredibly rewarding for anyone who loves to experiment with builds. Although it can seem a little overwhelming at first, everything starts to flow together brilliantly after the first few hours of play.
This is an ad:
The main attraction of a game like Wild Hearts, however, is its monsters, and while there isn’t a huge amount of kemono in the game, that’s because the creatures that roam Azuma’s land have been given all the more attention. Each one is unique in both their design and their moves, which you must learn if you want to defeat them. They vary in size, speed and strength and some even have their own regional variants like the Icetusk, but all feel incredibly deadly and require the right equipment and a fair amount of skill to defeat.
This becomes especially apparent later when you encounter the “mighty” versions of each kimono. While fighting Kemono gives you a good feel for the threat these creatures pose to Azuma and Minato by how difficult they are to take down, the solo hunts in particular can be exhausting as you have to chase your target across the entire map four or five times before they are finally lowered. However, each of these segments where you’re basically just running towards the next battle arena takes you out of the intensity that a chase might otherwise provide, although it does allow for the opportunity to enjoy Wild Heart’s excellent soundtrack.
Later in the game, when you perfect your build to do serious damage, this becomes less of a problem, and if you have two friends to play with all the time, this might not even be a problem at all. Sometimes it feels like Wild Hearts is more geared towards multiplayer than single player. Taking on kemono solo isn’t impossible, but to say that Tsukumo – the little wooden robot assistant you get early in the adventure – is as useful as another human player would be lying. The massive damage kemono can do means that an entire team will have a much greater one as a trio can better split the aggression.
While many who pick up Wild Hearts don’t necessarily want its story, the game does have a main story, and it’s not bad at all. There are many interesting elements to Azuma’s world, which you’ll find either as you explore the ruins of a once-populated castle or learn more about the political workings of lands far from Minato. But while the main story is passable and offers some great cinematic moments, for the most part it’s not much more than good and the characters are pretty much two-dimensional. This doesn’t make them unlikable, but even by the end of Wild Hearts I didn’t care for them.
Wild Hearts is a solid first step for Koei Tecmo’s foray into the world of monster hunting, and while this won’t necessarily convert those not already interested in the genre, it offers good entertainment for those looking to pick up an alternative to Monster Hunter. It’s a shame right now that it’s plagued with performance issues, bugs and graphical issues, especially for PC, but hopefully these will be fixed soon so that Wild Hearts can be enjoyed as the game it was meant to be.
