As a diehard Monster Hunter fan, I want to give Wild Hearts more of a chance. It’s a gorgeous-looking action game in which you can fight gargantuan behemoths with some ridiculously powerful and, at times, unorthodox weapons. The monsters’ savage attacks require you to use the game’s unique Karakuri system to defend yourself. It’s got a lot of potential, and I wish I liked it so much more, but unfortunately, constant performance issues make those fights feel like trudging through a boggy swamp when they should be snappy and action-packed.

This is a massive shame because, in premise, what I’ve played so far feels as fresh as my first time playing Monster Hunter World. You take on the role of a nameless hunter who arrives in the Azuma region only to fall in battle against an icy wolf, one of the many Wild Hearts monsters, or ‘Kemono’. As your hunter lays dying, a masked man seems to put something inside of them, enabling them to use long-forgotten Karakuri – ancient technology that hunters from years gone by utilised to control the beasts.

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