Title Update 1 Review (MH Wilds)

Following my earlier evaluation of the game at its official release, this time I’ll evaluate Title Update 1. Of the Title Update 1 content, I’ll cover the main parts: the addition of Mizutsune, the addition of High Rank Zoh Shia, and the addition of arena quests and challenge quests.

First up is the addition of Mizutsune. Normally, whenever a video about a monster addition came out, the reaction was explosive. But in Mizutsune’s case, the PV showed flames coming out of its eyes, so excitement about a Deviant was added on top, and I think the reaction was even bigger.

After the official update, it turned out the base species simply uses Deviant patterns, and it caused an uproar again. Monster Hunter tries to reflect its lore in the game as much as possible. Some parts didn’t match the lore of the existing Deviant, Soulseer Mizutsune. I remember people who said it doesn’t matter and people who said the large monster ecology lore has to be kept going back and forth.

Personally, on the patterns, the tail slam shows a unique warning motion of sitting with its butt planted flat on the ground. It seems it gave a little over 2 seconds, from that butt-sitting motion to the unique sound made when it rotates its body in the air, so it’s fine once you get used to it. I think the bite is hard to deal with when it’s combined with Mizutsune’s signature limp, swaying base body movement. Gore Magala’s bite has a fairly short preceding motion too. It sometimes does a side step as a preceding pattern before biting, and I felt Mizutsune’s bite was quite unreasonable. Once it moves up to 9-star, the bite damage gets quite strong too. When I get hit, I end up thinking, “Is this the damage a quick, minor move should do?”

Zoh Shia only showed up in Low Rank and wasn’t in High Rank. Then it was added to High Rank through the title update. It’s an unusual case. Honestly, I think this went too far. Either take it out of Low Rank entirely, or if you’re going to put it in, put it in High Rank too. If it really had to be in only one of the two, it should’ve been High Rank only. Letting people hunt it once in Low Rank and be done deserved the harsh reviews. There wasn’t any monster-material armor or weapons either. In the title update video, they kept showing off, as if bragging, that Zoh Shia armor and weapons were being added, and all I thought was, “Shouldn’t this have been there from the start?”

As for the evaluation of Title Update 1 as a whole, it’s a dislike from me. However, in my case, I’m making this evaluation because I don’t like any of the large monsters, because of the feeling of hitting a wall unique to large monsters. As far as I know, quite a lot of people like Zoh Shia too. I like Zoh Shia’s weapon and armor looks too. I remember that back then, before layered weapons were introduced, quite a few people used Zoh Shia weapons rather than Artian weapons, saying looks count as performance too.

Finally, talking about arena quests and challenge quests, the Clerk set you can craft through arena quests was so pretty that it became a hot topic. It’s still popular even now, with everything up to Title Update 4 finished, and I really think the design was well made.

As for the challenge quests, I think the Doshaguma quest left a big scar on Wilds. They said they could catch cheaters, and that if you placed in the top 10,000, they’d give you a special pendant. I remember that the developer gave up on catching cheaters and said they’d give it to everyone who just got A Rank, not the top 10,000.

In my opinion, the biggest problem was that they announced it around the end of the challenge period, and that was a big source of trouble. Photos from the Japanese community went around in Korea too back then. “I came home, ate only cup ramen, and spent hours working out a strategy. Even on the subway to and from work, all I thought about was how to cut the time.” I still remember posts like these. Usually when a game has a problem, light users criticize and heavy users defend the game.

In this case, I think it was the worst response from the developer’s standpoint, one that made people feel more betrayed the more they liked the game.

This time, I evaluated Monster Hunter Wilds at the point of Title Update 1. Thinking back on what happened and organizing it, I feel bittersweet. Next time, I’ll write a post about the point of Title Update 2.

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