Quick Game Facts
- PLATFORM: PC, Xbox, PS5PlayStation 5. Kenson's favorite console of all current options.
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[Disclaimer: Link is an Amazon Affiliate link] - # OF PLAYERS: 1 – 3
- GENRE: Action, Monster Hunting
- DEVELOPER: Omega Force
- PUBLISHER: EA
- REVIEWED ON: PC
- ESRB RATING: T
- MISC INFO: Not worth in current state on PC.
Update May 2024: Wild Hearts has been officially abandoned. No more updates are planned. Save your money and play Monster Hunter!
Overview of Wild Hearts
EA’s version of Monster Hunter is about to release (on the 17th of February 2023)! Does it match up to the long-time series, Monster Hunter from Capcom? In short: No. It does not. It needs some major work done, primarily on the Optimization front. My system with a 5800x overclocked to 4.2-4.3, a 3070 Ti, and 64 GB of RAM was STRUGGLING to play it smoothly while live.
For Console players, this review may not necessarily apply to you, this is a review of the PC edition of Wild Hearts.
Performance Issues Galore At The Beginning
The game does look good, to be completely honest, but its performance has some severe issues. I was playing on a high-end system, and it was still running slowly and felt laggy on-stream but about halfway through my playthrough, the game started slowly getting laggier.
You would think that a system like mine would be able to run this game, if Monster Hunter World runs well enough, right? Well … you would be unfortunately wrong! I will do some testing on it off-stream to see if it runs any better, but I am not very hopeful. Let us hope that EA can get their act together, and optimize this game a lot more.
Wild Heart’s Visuals Look Nice, But Looks Are Not All!
As a continuation of what I was talking about before, a high-end system should be able to run any game you throw at it, without issue. 60+ FPS smooth gameplay. That is not the case with Wild Hearts. If you want to play a Monster Hunter-like game, I recommend the actual Monster Hunter series.
It has been around for over a decade now (the first game was in 2002/2003) and it runs so much smoother. Barely any noticeable frame drops ever on my rig. Both Monster Hunter World and Rise run much, much more smoothly on my rig, and I can maintain 90+ FPS while playing Rise.
Things I Feel Wild Hearts Needs To Work On
The biggest issue they need to fix as their number one priority is improving the game’s performance, especially if they want people to be able to stream it on a single-PC setup like mine. The game is stuttery and does not run smoothly at all. Performance is a big issue that a lot of studios seem to struggle with. They should have lower-end systems to fully test on, and not just high-end systems.
They can not honestly expect everyone to have PCs from mid-range to high-end. They need to think about people on a budget that can’t afford top-of-the-line graphics cards. Especially with the insane prices that NVIDIA is charging for the current generation. Please. EA. Optimize this game, and it could become a fun game to play with friends.
Do I Recommend Wild Hearts?
In its current state, I do not recommend purchasing or playing Wild Hearts. If you have EA Play, though, you can try a 10-hour free trial to see how it runs on your current system. I’m sure Xbox & Playstation may run smoother since they are optimized for that. But with so many different PC components out there, I do not recommend playing it on PC at the moment.
Conclusion
This game does have potential, but it also clearly has some major issues they need to work on. Optimization is the biggest issue this game has on PC, but I can’t speak for Consoles, since I don’t own a PlayStation (I do now!), and rarely turn on the Xbox. Especially at the 70, or 90-dollar price point. If it was cheaper while it was in “early access,” something like 20 or 30, then I may say “go for it” on PC.
Until the game’s performance has some major fixes, I would recommend saving your money for a different game that you want to enjoy. You will be happier with making that decision.
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