Nothing feels like Monster Hunter. You can fight giant lizards in any number of games, but Monster Hunter makes it look believable. When I take on a hunt to go toe-to-toe with a Deviljho, it doesn't just feel like I'm whittling away at an arbitrary number of health points. Instead, Capcom's combat, visual, and sound designers sell the fantasy of a hunter who's made a lifestyle of trading blows with tyrannosaurs. I'm not just dealing damage; when I find the right opening, I'm landing blows that look and feel like they hit hard enough for an elder dragon to feel it.
The Monster Hunter Wilds beta, however, felt like its recipe for visual impact was a little underseasoned.
When I slug an Anjanath in the jaw with a hammer upswing, part of what makes the attack feel so weighty is hitstop. Hitstop is a visual technique common in action games and especially fighting games, where the animation will pause for a few frames when an attack lands. By briefly halting the action, it gives our impressionable lizard brains a moment to really appreciate the blow that just landed.
In Monster Hunter, hitstop is particularly effective. Those few still frames provide a really satisfying sense that your hunter's attacks are potent enough that even a house-sized theropod would flinch. You can imagine how baffled I was, then, when I jumped into the Wilds beta last weekend and—after working out a settings setup to make its spotty performance bearable—found that Capcom had removed hitstop from the majority of weapon attacks.
In recent years, I've spent most of my hunts using hammers and switch axes. They're on the slower side of the MonHun weapon spectrum, dealing fewer but meatier hits. In the beta, even their attacks—aside from the heaviest possible blows, like the new offset attacks and focus strikes—lacked the hitstop I know and love, making shots that I'm usually excited to land feel suddenly inconsequential.
A video posted on X by YouTuber Blue Stigma compares hitstop frames—or lack thereof, in the case of the Wilds beta—triggered by switch axe attacks across the last few Monster Hunter games, showcasing how drastically hitstop can affect the perceived impact of an attack:
If you felt like the combat in the MHWilds beta felt "off," it's not just you! As this short comparison video shows, Capcom seems to have reduced hitstop on most (if not all) weapon types in Wilds, leading to some weapons ???????????????????????????? worse than they did in prior games. pic.twitter.com/PRIbkdEFTPNovember 3, 2024
I can see a kind of logic to it; applying hitstop specifically to new mechanics makes them feel flashier and more exciting compared to familiar combo strings. By removing it from most other attacks, however, the Wilds beta has left them feeling disappointingly weightless. The switch axe, in particular, suffers from the change. Switch axe gameplay incentivizes setting yourself for ideal windows where you can transform the weapon into its swordmode to dish out hefty burst damage. Without hitstop, those moments don't feel as climactic.
On the Monster Hunter subreddit, beta players quickly noticed the change. As one hunter described it, "if you didn't have sound/damage numbers you literally cannot tell if your attacks are hitting the monster."
Luckily, because hitstop is in there already, I'd expect reseeding it across the various weapon attacks would be an easier adjustment for Capcom to make than, say, sweeping performance optimizations. If you're a Wilds beta player who wants to make your own request for hitstop's triumphant return, the Wilds beta feedback form is the place to do it.
