'It runs awful. It looks awful': Monster Hunter Wilds performance issues put a dampener on its record-breaking concurrents as it settles into an early Mixed rating on Steam

I'm now over 100 hours into Monster Hunter Wilds, yet between a respectable rig and a CPU upgrade a few hours into playing, I gotta say: The game runs kinda bum. That seems to be the most commonly shared sentiment among the game's negative Steam reviews right now too, with the first few hours of launch seeing it dip below 50% positive into a 'Mixed' rating.

Complaints about crashes, poor optimisation, stutters, and framerate dips are rife across its handful of negative reviews right now. "This game is absolutely amazing—but has the worst optimisation I've ever seen," the top negative review reads. "I understand that new games are becoming more demanding and people are expected to upgrade, but this is absurd. I'm aware this isn't the first instance of new games having poor performance on launch, because the same thing happened with World, but it feels inexcusable at this point."

One reviewer claimed they were sporting a "beefy rig with a 3080 Super and decent CPU" yet was unable to run the game "at an acceptable frame rate." Another wrote: "Absolutely atrocious performance for how the game looks. Runs even worse than the beta," adding that they'd gone from 60 - 70 FPS on high settings down to 50 FPS on medium "with noticeable dips."

"The game does not look nearly good enough to warrant this performance," it continued. "Everything is covered in a grimy texture with assets that look like you straight took them out of a PS3 game. If I can run KCD2 and Cyberpunk on maxed out settings comfortably; then there is no reason this game should be running like this. Embarrassing."

The performance-to-graphics ratio is a pervading criticism, with yet another negative review writing: "This game has record shattering performance issues. It runs awful. It looks awful. It crashes for no reason. It freezes for no reason. It somehow won't even launch on Windows telling me an RTX 4070 is unsupported. The open beta at least managed to boot."

Here are some things reviewers said ran better than Monster Hunter Wilds:

• Kingdom Come Deliverance 2
• Their grandma
• Their air fryer

Dozens of reviews mention not even being able to play because of crashes, along with a handful referring to the game being too easy or complaints around Capcom's ancient use of paid DLC in order for people to have access to the full character creator once your hunter is already made.

Of course, not every review is (justifiably) lamenting the performance issues. "The gameplay is the best in any MH game so far. The story is solid, the characters are cool and funny and the design team [did] such a good job," one Steam reviewer wrote. "Almost every armor set looks like endgame gear!" Another reviewer called Wilds an "easy recommend," saying it was an "awesome step forward for the MH franchise. Lots of rough edges smoothed out, great onboarding for new players, and some really awesome weapon updates." Other callouts to the gameplay are buried between all of the inevitable memes and false-positive reviews, though even some of those then go on to mention that the game is in vital need of optimising.

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It is a real shame just how many issues people are having on the hardware side of things, and I'm right there with 'em. I'm easily dipping into 20-30 FPS when I'm in base camps now, and I hopped into a few SOS Flares that were littered with more frame drops than I'd encountered during the review period.

Thankfully, PC Gamer is stacked with a wonderful, all-knowing hardware team. Nick Evanson has been hard at work over these last few weeks, stress-testing Monster Hunter Wilds to scope out its performance. He's put together the best PC settings for your rig: Whether you're still rocking that budget build from a decade ago or you've recently splurged on some new parts, these tweaks should help get you a few extra frames without compromising too heavily on looks. What little looks there seem to be, anyway.

Nick helpfully points out that Wilds "is far less of a CPU hog than Dragon's Dogma 2 is," but ultimately doesn't change the fact that they both unfortunately run just as poorly as each other.

In addition to all that, I've found diving into a singleplayer lobby has alleviated a lot of the stress on my rig, which is a shame that I have to do it but may well be a worthy alternative for the time being. Plus, you can still fire off SOS Flares and jump into them, as Wilds will plonk you in a temporary multiplayer server before shooting you back off on your own.