Wild Hearts preview

Wild Hearts preview: Wild Hearts caught my attention when it was first announced, but it was a name that I forgot among many games. With the videos published in the past months, it suddenly reminded itself again and thanks to the early access opportunity offered by EA, I have been playing the PC version of the game for a while.

Shortly before the game’s release, there is something I want to remind you before we start our preview, which includes my first impressions of the game. Note that this isn’t a review and is just a first impression of the game, so it won’t contain much information about performance or later gameplay. Let’s get started now.

Wild Hearts preview

Hunting Is Serious Business

Wild Hearts actually comes with a concept that we are not so familiar with, monster hunting. When I say we are not foreigners, I mean the players, of course, or if you live in Australia, your experience can be real. Anyway, back to our topic, Wild Hearts is our new EA Originals game in the concept of monster hunting, which has been known for years with games such as Monster Hunter, God Eater and Toukiden, and has become more popular in the west with Monster Hunter World and its successor Rise in recent years.

Our main character is a hunter who comes from a different region and hunts creatures called Kemono. Our character, who thinks that there is no need for him as a hunter in the lands where the war is rising, finds himself near the village of Minato and our adventure begins. The game has an ongoing story and we meet a lot of different characters throughout this story. Moreover, these characters are portrayed by names we know from the world of movies and the internet. Together with the characters brought to life by Yuki Matsuzaki, Crystal Kay, Yurié Collins, we embark on an adventure that will determine the fate of Minato village.

Both Hunter and Carpenter

It’s nice to give importance to the story in a game we play to hunt monsters, but our priority is clear, we are hunting! For this, it is necessary to know the weapons and equipment that the game offers us. There are 8 different types of weapons in the game, a lot of different Karakuri devices that we can use in various missions, and a lot of different types of armor. Let’s start with the weapons first.

Wild Hearts includes 8 different weapons, each with their own unique gameplay styles. We start the game with a katana at the beginning, but soon we can access other weapons. Weapon variants come in the form of Bow, Karakuri Katana, Bladed Wagasa (Umbrella), Cannon, Claw Blade, Nodachi, Hammer and Karakuri Staff.

If you have played any game from the Monster Hunter series, you can quickly get used to most of the weapons, the general usage patterns are almost the same. But don’t dive headlong into the battle just because you know how, the abilities of the weapons here differ according to the MH games, they get upset quickly on the field. I didn’t have a chance to try all the weapons too much, but Bladed Wagasa, Claw Balde and Karakuri Staff are quite fun weapons to use as the unique weapons of the game. It’s fun to feel like an “Attack on Titan” character with Claw Blade or to have a Bloodborne-like style based on “parry” with Wagasa. I don’t want to go into too much detail here because it wouldn’t be nice to talk about weapons in the whole article, there are Karakuri equipment that make the game’s fights unique.

Karakuri equipment is the part that distinguishes Wild Hearts from other hunting games. Thanks to the equipment that we can use both in war and out of war, transportation and hunting become much easier. We have three different types of Karakuri equipment as Basic, Fusion and Dragon Karakuri. While Basic and Fusion are useful equipment during battle, Dragon is useful in camping and transportation parts.

Thanks to Basic Karakuri, you can put a box on the ground and climb on top of it and jump on the enemy’s head with a hammer, or you can set up a spring system on the ground and escape the attack at the last moment. Or there are different types like adding elemental damage to attacks, making a small glider and levitating yourself.

Fusion Karakuri, on the other hand, refers to more advanced and useful equipment that comes out of the combination of Basic equipment. We can prepare different equipment that will be useful in war, such as combining boxes into a wall or building a large catapult. Our Dragon Katakuri camp contains a lot of different equipment such as preparing food, making new equipment, setting up fast transportation vehicles with ivy between places. There are also vehicles for fast transportation, all of which are made available to us as we progress through the game.

We need to collect materials for Basic and Fusion Karakuri, and we can get them from places such as trees and rocks. Dragon Karakuri equipment, on the other hand, can be installed depending on the capacity we obtain by clearing the power zones in the area. The more you explore the map and clear the areas (not by killing monsters), the more advantage you have.

Nature and Monsters

I am very satisfied with the variety of monsters we hunt in the game, so far. I fought monsters of different types and characteristics, and when their health drops below a certain level, I encountered new forms where they make stronger attacks and look more impressive. I am very happy with what I saw. I enjoyed the fights, although some monsters came with little boosters or abilities that would be particularly frustrating. I think I can talk about them in more detail while writing the review of the game.

I’m visually indecisive, sometimes the game shows great scenes, sometimes it looks really bad. In terms of performance, I did not have too many problems with the PC, I am waiting for the graphics card updates and the first day patch for what I have experienced. Because most of the problems I encounter are at a level that can be fixed with updates.

Wild Hearts stands out as the first major game released under EA Originals. It’s the first time EA Originals has released small-scale indie games, and it seems serious about it. The production of Wild Hearts was undertaken by the Koei Tecmo – Omega Force team, they were the team that also produced the Toukiden series before, so they didn’t say to the novice people, “Let’s make a game like this”. So did it happen? I haven’t finished the game yet, I will present my final decision with review but for now I’m happy with what I played.

Karakuri equipment is fun to use, weapons are fun, armors and upgrades are interesting. Wild Hearts sounds very promising as EA Originals’ first major release. Let’s note that we will be releasing the review of the game this week.