You read that right. I didn’t buy Monster Hunter Wilds…

Nor even planning in the future.

Here’s a disclaimer in advance:

I love the Monster Hunter games going as far as Generations Ultimate on the Switch, to Rise and its expansion Sunbreak, to playing World on PC, through the Steam Deck.

I love the monsters, the regions, the villages, even the foods (fluffy bunny dango~), and so much more.

And I wish I could say the same, even if I saw the initial teaser announcement back in TGA 2023.

But it went downhill not because of the reasons you believe.

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You see, I mentioned earlier I have a Steam Deck, which has been my way to play PC games at home and on the go.

Well, back in October, CAPCOM announced an Open Beta Test for Monster Hunter WIlds, where we get a glimpse into the first hour of the story, its distinctive elements, the weapons, everything they allowed us to take a peek.

And me and along of my hunter friends around the world, are excited to test out and prepare ourselves for our new hunting adventure.

Now, technically if you are a PlayStation 5 user, you would be the first, so I technically got spoiled a bit (for the story at least), but it was a no big deal since it’s technically a test and anything can change in the final.

Now, fast forward to the day PC and Xbox can jump in, alongside the PS5 hunters~

I preloaded the build, I launched, and the first thing I noticed…

The shaders took a sweet long ride.

Around 30 minutes of the ride, which is… kinda longer than normal, especially for the Steam Deck.

But I thought, they’ll improve it in the final release…

And then it loaded the game…

…and the first thing I see is a black screen, with graphics not fully loaded at all!

That made me totally confused and making it feel bizarre.

So I scramble through the settings, and the only workaround I found is STRICTLY ONLY to turn off Frame Generation and set Upscaling to Off (no AMD, not even Intel option, and neither does NVIDIA - they’re open to use by the way, except using either one will black screen you).

So anyway, I got that sorted, and I played it…

I went through the avatar creation (which I love), the palico creation, picked my name…

And then the story begins…

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Source: My Twitch channel I may use sometime soon.

BEFORE YOU PROCCED, I RECOMMEND YOU WATCH THE THING ABOVE BEFORE I TELL YOU WHAT HAPPENED, BECAUSE THE TEXT BELOW WILL SUMMARIZE WHAT HAPPENED DURING THAT VIDEO.

Okay, you good?

Okay.

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And they fucked up the framerate and the graphics.

I mean what on earth are they doing to this build?

Yes, I know I said, it’s just a beta, but I didn’t expect this unfinished, unoptimised bullcrap to be on my screen.

Yes, I lowered everything to the lowest and still fucked up.

Worse, the Steam Deck is literally in fiery flames touching the winds blown from the fan.

And to make matters worse, it so hot, my Deck force rebooted couple of times throughout the story segment, meaning I have to sit down with it for hours and hours hoping I finish the portion.

And good news somehow… I made it.

The bad news though, it truly left me a sour taste, wondering if my Deck can even go through on the final version.

With that, I didn’t went through multiplayer a lot, knowing my Steam Deck would rather take a dump rather than finishing through hell and back.

So then I thought, okay, hopefully they’ll fix it, they’ll optimize the build, and should be good to go, right?

OH SH-

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Open Beta Test 2.

Yes, they have a second one weeks before the final release.

Other than they add another monster, it’s mostly an encore presentation, with changes from the first version of the OBT.

Now, what do you think happened when I gave it a second chan-

They still fucked it up… and they somehow made it even unplayable than the last one.

And now, I already lost hope. I waited for this, only to be gone like the wind…

But then, there is one more option left.

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The Benchmark Test.

Around the same time the OBT 2 went live, they released a Benchmark tool specifically for Steam/PC users to make sure they are ready for Wilds.

And seeing how the OBT failed me, this is basically the ‘last resort’ if I’m really gonna go for it.

Anddddddd……………

You know what, I’m not gonna tell you, I’m just gonna show it to you.

(I did use it, however I can’t be able to record it because it likely affect the score, but close enough for this)

But, it still doesn’t mean I changed my mind, because after the two OBTs I had experience, I’m still not sure.

Not to mention, one thing that was baked into the release version was a certain DRM that has been every gamer’s worst nightmare: Denuvo.

And if that was even worse, GeForce Now (NVIDIA’s cloud service), when they have Wilds up on the library, not only I have to pay up $60, but depending on the session hours and all, I need to pay EVERY. SINGLE. MONTH (or more prepaid) if I wanted to play it.

And why you may ask?

Because the free tier, which based on a basic rig with RTX 1060 with 4 vCPUs, cannot run Wilds.

And apparently the same thing happened with the most recent Indiana Jones game (Indiana Jones and the Great Circle).

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And with that, all have crumbled and that thwarted all of my plans to play the game.

And to be honest, I’m glad I decided not to.

Because either way, I still have lots of games to play, so I’m alright.

But I’m more than happy to watch my friends be carted and faint by so many new and returning monsters, after all, I enjoyed it a lot than being carted myself.

I kid, but in all seriousness, maybe someday… if I have a better hardware, maybe I might.

For now, let’s just play World.