Focus Mode | Why Opinions Split and Why I See It as a Transitional Phase (MH Wilds)

The Monster Hunter series changed in a lot of ways in Wilds, but I think the biggest change is “Focus Mode.” Since it brought such a big change, I think the likes and dislikes are big too, and even more so because neither side’s arguments are too far-fetched. In this post, I’ll first lay out the pros and cons as I understand them, and at the end, I’ll write about why I see it as a “transitional phase.”

Here are the main arguments from the side that dislikes it. In Monster Hunter, how much you could turn varied from motion to motion, and so did the travel distance. But once Focus Mode came in, you no longer even need to know which motion can rotate your body by how much. When you put the Focus Mode aim on the monster, some motions now cover more distance, so motions with weak damage but a long travel distance lost their reason to exist. That’s the argument. Also, the time it took to master a weapon has gotten a lot shorter, and since weapon mastery was one piece of content too, there’s an argument that the content has shrunk a lot.

On the other hand, for the side that praises it, the point is that it dramatically lowered the barrier to entry. Monster Hunter’s controls were uncomfortable enough that even people who liked the series said they were on the uncomfortable side, and as the dislike side said, you had to play a lot of hunts just to turn freely. In that situation, the assessment is that with Focus Mode, people can focus on the combat itself instead of getting stressed by clunky controls.

Actually, I think Focus Mode is still in a transitional phase. The reason is that there’s no need to go through Focus Mode just to check wounds. If the visual effects of Frenzy or status ailments in the normal state were so flashy that you had to check wounds separately in Focus Mode, that’d be one thing, but that’s not the case now. There’d be no problem with wounds just being visible during normal times, and if Focus Strike were given a separate command, I’m left with doubts about whether Focus Mode really has to exist as a separate mode.

Also, the direction of gains and losses differs from weapon to weapon. With the Long Sword, if you don’t turn on Focus Mode, you can do the Foresight Slash in every direction, but if you turn it on, it only goes backward relative to your aim. However, the Sword and Shield is the opposite. To backstep outside Focus Mode, you need a preceding action like guarding or attacking, but in Focus Mode, you can backstep right away. Looking at this, my guess is that the direction of Focus Mode hasn’t been settled in any particular direction within the dev team yet. To sum up, it’s as follows. The fact that Focus Mode lowered the barrier to entry is a meaningful change, but with wound checking and even Focus Strike tied to Focus Mode, and the direction of gains and losses differing by weapon, I think how it looks now is closer to a transitional phase.

I think the next game will also have Focus Mode, or more precisely, a feature that lets you change the direction of your attacks however you like. As of October 24, 2026, the Steam achievements show that the share who cleared Arkveld’s main quest, “What Lies Ahead,” is 61.6%. This result is the product of several things working together, not just Focus Mode but also difficulty and convenience improvements (picking up monster tracks), but personally, I think Focus Mode’s share in it isn’t small. Also, in an interview related to Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascendance, Director Hiraoka said that players who drop off without clearing the game don’t come back, so he won’t create a situation where someone who bought the game can’t clear it to the end. Because he said that, I’m guessing this feature will be in the next game too.

I think it’s an unavoidable fate for games with a long history. If you design a game around users who’ve kept playing since the earlier games in the series, it’s hard for newcomers, and if you make it around newcomers, it’s easy for users who’ve played since the earlier games. Especially for the action genre, like the Monster Hunter series, balancing it will be even harder. Still, as the saying goes, failure is the mother of success, and I think that continuing to try out various systems will be positive for the series’ lifespan in the long run. Even if it can’t be perfect, I’m looking forward to these transitional experiments becoming a stepping stone for the Monster Hunter series to secure both wider popularity and depth at the same time in the distant future.