With Wild Hearts, Koei Tecmo and Electronic Arts poach into Monster Hunter realms

Well, you can have so much bad luck, although you can actually play the preview version of a big action title for a whole three days: the computer goes on strike and usually forces you to restart completely immediately, sometimes only after ten or fifteen minutes. At least that’s what happened to me when I went to watch Wild Hearts, which EA and Koei Tecmo made available in an early version last week. Of course I watched Wild Hearts anyway. I will therefore limit myself to quite general impressions of the playing feel as a soloist.

“As a soloist” since you could hunt up to three in this Monster Hunter competitor. And there is not the slightest doubt that this is the case. Especially since it doesn’t come out of nowhere, because developer Omega Force, mainly known for Samurai Warriors and Dynasty Warriors, is also responsible for Toukiden, which, however, never hit the mark like Wild Hearts is supposed to do. EA and Koei Tecmo designed this as a big action title that should look great and feel like a modern action game.

And they didn’t promise too much. Judging by the area accessible in the demo, the locations look awesome in places! Dilapidated huts and even a small village are overgrown by thick trees. Lush meadows and colorful forests, including a forest covered by red flowers and a cave covered with glowing crystals, make up the environment. They are “dead” scenery that you can only look at, but with which you cannot interact. With a few exceptions, you are not even allowed to enter the houses. But that doesn’t detract from the good impression at all.

There will be four areas in total; all modeled after a season and accessed via a central town called Minato, which I haven’t set foot in yet. I find it a bit unfortunate that Wild Hearts is apparently not a living world either, in which natural processes determine when and where which monsters, sorry: Kemono, are found. Instead, you select a hunting object via the menu and a corresponding mission is generated. If you want, you could then look for random comrades-in-arms who are roughly on the same level.

If you are traveling alone, you can also use small gates to join open, ongoing games. The game scales the challenge according to the current number of players, but some people might be grateful for such help. After all, the Kemono tower over the hunters by a few meters, which is why you tend to feel inferior despite the dodge step and an amazingly long range of the weapons.

So it’s good that a technology called Karakuri is used to manifest small buildings that give the hunters advantages. These include cubes for reaching greater heights, rope hooks for covering great distances, and this gigantic hammer that you may have seen in a video. All of this works wonderfully quickly, even in combat, and it’s a lot of fun to experiment with it. Of course, I didn’t have too many Karakuri blueprints at my disposal, but creating a springboard in the middle of a run that you can use to jump out of the way of an oncoming Kemono is something.

A friend gave me the idea: Doesn’t the fast building remind you of Fortnite? A certain resemblance can hardly be denied in the mixture of ballers and pawns. In fact, it feels very different here – much more intuitive than in the epic shooter. Because instead of abusing a crafting system as a relatively complicated cover building, the use of karakuri is more like the frequent, but not spam-like triggering of spells.

It also helps that the karakuri aren’t in the way as obstacles, but are included in the movements of the hunters. For example, you automatically climb onto the cubes, from which you can then jump off as normal. In other words, what might sound awkward is actually extremely easy to play. And once on a Kemono, you can hold on to it with the shoulder button, since climbing works like in Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Yes, all this was really fun when trying it out for a short time!

I was disappointed in one small thing, though: the finishers, which kill and eviscerate defeated Kemono at the same time. After all, there should be a separate animation for each weapon type – but all you see is some short move that is not staged particularly stylishly on its own. And then you don’t even see the blade disappear into the big kemono or any other interaction between the weapon and especially the big creatures. Did I miss something there or is that all?

But apropos: You handle eight types of weapons in the finished adventure, whereby I tried out the bow and arrow in addition to the initial katana. I had fun with that too, although I certainly haven’t discovered all the subtleties yet. In any case, you have the choice between different arrows, which you fire in short salvos or long for powerful hits. And you can set up the bow briefly to trigger some kind of special attack. In a similar way, all weapon types should allow individual attacks and also work differently in connection with the Karakuri.

Last but not least, a so-called Tsukumo is at your side. These are about football-sized automatic helpers who intervene mainly in the fights. Depending on the setting, they then attack, act defensively, provide a little healing or support hunters in other ways.

So all in all, the action feels a tad better than Monster Hunter for my taste, while the karakuri builds give a fresh impetus to the hunt against big kemono. Whether the playful depth and long-term motivation can keep up with the original is of course far from foreseeable. At least technically, Wild Hearts has a lot on the box, which can be seen in the imaginative and sometimes very creative Kemono as well as in the sometimes impressive backdrops. Let’s see… Basically, EA and Koei Tecmo (what an unusual combo don’t you think?!) could have a hot iron in the fire here.