Here Are The ‘Monster Hunter Wilds’ Release Times For Launch Day
Monster Hunter Wilds
We are on the verge of the launch of one of the biggest games of 2025, Monster Hunter Wilds, and we have already seen another contender knocked out of the year with Fable now bumped to 2026 as of yesterday.
You may have preloaded the game already at this point, but now actual release is upon us on Friday, February 28, and regions have a lot of different launch times across console and PC. So, we can now look through the grand list of times so you can plan when you’re going to be able to play. Good news for the West Coast in here. So, here’s the image, and the full of Monster Hunter Wilds global release times after that:
LOS ANGELES, USA (Thursday, February 27)
MEXICO CITY, MX (Thursday, February 27)
TORONTO, CA
NEW YORK, USA
SÃO PAULO, BR
LONDON, UK
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PARIS, FR
BERLIN, DE
CAIRO, EG
HELSINKI, FI
RIYADH, SA
DUBAI, UAE
JOHANNESBURG, ZA
SEOUL, KR
TOKYO, JP
SINGAPORE, SG
AUCKLAND, NZ
That’s the full list and of course, some regions are luckier than others depending on the platform and area. By the time you’re reading this, you should be able to pre-load the game for launch here, as we are now within that range for all platforms.
Monster Hunter Wilds reviews are now in, and the game has been received quite well by critics. Wilds had an 89 metascore at launch but with some more reviews in, has ticked up to a 90, and it very well may be a GOTY contender. Everyone is waiting to see if GTA 6 actually comes out this year, but regardless, it could be on the shortlist at the very least. We’ll see how things unfold by fall. Enjoy the launch!
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Monster Hunter fans are in pieces over reviews saying Monster Hunter Wilds is too easy, but after playing almost 50 hours myself I don’t think it’s that serious
Monster Hunter Wilds is definitely easier than we’re used to, but it never bothered me
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With Monster Hunter Wilds review day behind us, an anxious portion of the monster hunting community is spending the days until the game’s launch this Friday worrying that the latest entry in the series will be disappointingly easy.
Amidst high scores overall, several critics reckoned that Wilds may have lost some of what defines Monster Hunter, including a real sense of danger that pushes you to continually improve your gear or dig in your heels during a fight. Our friends at PC Gamer agreed that combat has never felt better, but noted that hunting has been heavily streamlined. In IGN’s excellent review, Tom Marks, who discussed the game’s difficulty elsewhere in comments that have become the centerpoint of other conversations, said he didn’t feel much need to upgrade his gear as he cleared most of the content without dying (that is, carting) at all.
These responses have sparked a range of speculation and concerns across the Monster Hunter community. “If it is true that even endgame Tempered fights are a joke we need to let our feedback be heard loud and clear,” says Evilkaz. I’d agree; speak up if you’re unsatisfied. For the record, I could solo endgame Tempered monsters in under seven minutes with minimal practice. They feel like the baseline for endgame, more repeatable and less tedious.
“Yes, people get better the more they play, but the games are also, in fact, getting easier,” says Eastern-Barnacle-344, 344th of their name. “One of the Youtubers said he killed the spider boss in 5 minutes. Which if that is the case the difficulty is way too low and the game WILL suffer from being too easy,” reasons Zenai10. (For reference, I killed both spider bosses, Lala Barina and Nerscylla, in under 4 minutes.)
I said in our review that endgame solo hunts in Wilds could end in as little as six minutes with suboptimal play, and I’d agree with Tom’s argument that the addition of parry-esque offset attacks, combined with Focus Mode attacks that pop monster wounds for extra damage and regular staggers, makes Wilds feel easier than previous games. Time the wounds right and you can lock monsters down for extended periods which are often long enough to trigger a KO or trip or paralysis depending on your weapon. (After BS like Iceborne Rajang – yes I’m still mad – I actually enjoy this.) This experience will vary between weapons – I’m a lance main, tucked safely behind a steel wall – but there is a clear trend.
In some ways, the pendulum has swung back since the early days of Molten Tigrex: hunters have so many new tools that some monsters can fall behind. It’s only toward the end of the Wilds roster that monsters start to catch up in this arms race of ours. But as other users have pointed out, this discussion comes up in some way with every new Monster Hunter game – partly because your first Monster Hunter is always your hardest due to inexperience, and also because the games are demonstrably getting easier. We’re spending less time fighting against the controls and camera, and when actually fighting the monsters, we have powerful new tools at our disposal.
Monster Hunter Generations added hunter arts with huge chunks of invincibility frames and damage, not to mention the automatic Brave dodge. World introduced Rocksteady and evasion and auto-evasion mantles that can trivialize attacks, while some weapons were so imbalanced that the flagship Elder Dragon would die in one minute. And Rise let us instantly recover from hits using Wirebugs that also fueled yet more i-frame special attacks.
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Wilds continues this with new reactive and damage-dealing tools alongside parallels to previous ones (Seikret rescue is the new Wirebug evade). If you went back in time and showed any of this stuff to a Monster Hunter Freedom Unite player, their eyes would pop out of their skull and they’d be on a “back in my day” rant faster than your grandparents in election season.
Monster Hunter Wilds is absolutely easier than Rise, which was easier than World, which was easier than Generations Ultimate, which was easier than 4 Ultimate. Reviews are right to point that out and I don’t disagree. That said, outside of hunt times and simplicity, I didn’t dwell on difficulty much in my review because it didn’t feel so patronizingly easy that it hurt the satisfaction of hunting for me. Rather, this is my new favorite Monster Hunter.
Weapons connect with such power and monsters attack with such variety that my usual routine of practicing matchups and watching my hunt times go down while savoring the core combat felt like plenty of reason to play this game for hundreds of hours. I’m the type of player who actively wants to see the tracking and preparation side of Monster Hunter minimized because all I want to do is fight monsters, and fighting monsters feels better than ever. Wilds has the best combat in the series, so of course it’s my personal pick.
I obviously can’t speak for everyone. While I love it, after reading more reviews from others I do think some people may find Wilds a bit shallow at launch purely based on what motivates them as a player. This is a pretty easy thing to ‘fix’ with monster HP and damage and stagger resistance, and I’d wager post-launch patches and mega-monsters will help, just as they have previously. But as someone who’s played Monster Hunter for 10 years, always plays games on hard mode, and actively seeks out difficult action RPGs, I am hungry to play a lot more of this game even after beating every quest without much difficulty. That’s after the campaign didn’t cart me a single time until the final boss – and some other reviewers didn’t even cart to that.
Beating Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate from village to Gogmazios entirely solo was a lot harder, yeah, but it was less enjoyable for me, too. Monster Hunter Wilds is not a hard game, but it is incredibly fun, which sums up the situation pretty well.
Monster Hunter Wilds release date and times – here’s when the behemoth action RPG unlocks.
Austin has been a game journalist for 12 years, having freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree. He’s been with GamesRadar+ since 2019. They’ve yet to realize his position is a cover for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he’s kept the ruse going with a lot of news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible.
Monster Hunter Wilds release date and times – here’s when the behemoth action RPG unlocks
Monster Hunter Wilds roadmap and all upcoming content
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Monster Hunter Wilds live launch coverage: Server status, hunting tips, and all the latest release day news
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This is it, hunters: it’s been a long, long wait for Monster Hunter Wilds, with five years somehow passing since we played the great World expansion Iceborne on PC. Sure we had a little hunting detour with 2022’s Rise, but World’s successor is here at long last, and it’s pretty great. It’s also the first-ever Monster Hunter to debut on Steam at the same time it arrives on consoles, which means us PC gamers no longer have to walk around kicking rocks and staring longingly through the windows of our Xbox and PlayStation pals. We’re here too!
Keep checking back for the latest on Steam concurrent records, amazing player feats, potential performance and server issues, and a mix of tips and series trivia from PC Gamer’s veteran hunters.
Not so tough now, huh Banana?
Monster Hunter Wilds has broken into the top 10 all-time Steam records an hour after launch
It keeps going up: another 13,000 people have logged on since I published that news story five minutes ago!
Monster Hunter Wilds’ servers seem to be working, though it did take me about a full minute to login. That’s probably inevitable when you go from zero to 854,162 players in less than an hour!
If you’re having trouble launching the game and getting the “Sorry, something went wrong” error pop-up, you probably don’t need to validate your game files. Just try again: It looks like the Denuvo DRM’s server is struggling to validate under the heavy traffic load. Thanks DRM! We can always count on you.
Just half an hour after going live, Wilds already has more than 738,000 people playing and is closing in on Baldur’s Gate 3’s record from 2023.
It’s more than doubled Monster Hunter: World’s all-time record of 334,684, according to SteamDB.
Dang.
Just Chatting doesn’t count, right?
Not bad for a nighttime launch in North America and Europe.
The Steam Points shop for Wilds is now live with 12 items, including:
Player count watch begins now. How high will Wilds climb on the Steam Most Played chart?
Monster Hunter Wilds unlocks on Steam in another 59 minutes. Anyone else trying to squeeze in a full Balatro run before then? Where’s my Friends of Jimbo monster pack, anyway? I need a Meowscular Chef Joker.
In addition to our general Monster Hunter Wilds tips, we’ve got some advice geared towards what you should do from the very start of the game when you begin your adventure. These aren’t specifically “beginner’s tips” for new hunters—they’re for everyone jumping into Wilds!
7 things to do first in Monster Hunter Wilds
This game isn’t even out yet and there are 26 mods on the Nexus page. Perhaps the beta gave modders the files they needed to tinker with? A couple that immediately caught my eye:
Remember when Capcom got Star Wars’ Rey Skywalker to narrate an overview of the Monster Hunter series? That was kinda strange. Not that I’m complaining! I’m just wondering if she plays Long Sword or what. (Somewhere the one guy who hasn’t mentally suppressed the ending of Rise of Skywalker is shouting “Dual Blades!!!”).
Do you think they asked Milla Jovovich first?
This is what we all really care about, isn’t it?
*Eric Andre rattling the gates to the Steam download servers* Let me iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnn!!!!
We’ve all still got a bit of a wait: Monster Hunter Wilds goes live on PC in just 3 hours. We’ve got a MH Wilds release times post dedicated to the full timezone breakdown, but here’s the all-important chart that makes it easy to grok at a glance.
Reminder: If you haven’t downloaded Wilds yet, it does allow preloading. Get on it before those servers get hammered!
Check out our video tour of Monster Hunter’s journey from not-so-beloved PS2 dino-battler to Capcom’s bestselling game of all time with 2018’s World.
Speaking of 2018, when World was releasing on PC we published an even more in-depth look at Monster Hunter’s history: How Monster Hunter rose from niche import to an international sensation. Former Electronic Gaming Monthly magazine editor James Mielke was there in 2003 the first time Capcom ever showed Monster Hunter to press—call him fan #1. Here’s an excerpt from his first-hand account:
“Capcom showed us plenty of other games, but Monster Hunter was all I wanted to know about. I expected plenty of button-mashing and sword swinging, but the dev team had other ideas. The producer who took the podium said that instead of using the usual button schemes to attack, weapon moves would be mapped to the right-analog stick to simulate the heft and feel of a broadsword.
As progressive as this idea was, the execution was weak, and the game was not a hit when it came out in 2004. Whether it was the basic concept or the actual hands-on experience, the first Monster Hunter just didn’t click with the masses, and the next couple of expansions and sequels would stay in Japan. It wasn’t until Monster Hunter Freedom 2 that we’d get another taste…
Unfortunately the advent of ad-hoc multiplayer didn’t do much for me in the US, as none of my friends or co-workers were really putting much time in on their PSPs. But thanks to a tedious half-hour morning commute on San Francisco’s 38 Geary bus line, I had a lot of time on my hands. So a-hunting I would go, solo. Through the years, each expansion and sequel would add slightly better graphics, new villages, different NPCs, tougher ranks, more gear, and—once the series hit 3DS—extensive DLC. None of this changed my monster hunting fortunes, though. I was primarily a solo hunter in the U.S. wishing I was a Japanese kid in Tokyo.
The majority of Japanese school kids live in densely populated urban environments. During my trips to Japan it was common to see four or more kids gathered under a tree by their school, outside a ‘conbini’ (convenience store), or even on a train playing Monster Hunter together. While I was running around solo on my PSP, rank 3, slowly grinding out quests, these 12 year-olds were probably taking down an HR9 Rajang like it was nothing…
Eventually I moved to Japan for about five years—not to play Monster Hunter, but to work for game developer Q Entertainment, though I can’t deny it was a pretty sweet perk. I suddenly and miraculously had no shortage of access to skilled Monster Hunter players. One thing you can rely on with Japanese gamers is that when something’s hot, everyone is playing it.”
PC Gamer hardware writer Nick Evanson put Monster Hunter Wilds through an intense battery of tests on four different hardware configurations to pin down just how demanding the game is on both CPUs and graphics cards. How does Wilds compare to last year’s Dragon’s Dogma 2, an open world RPG that also ran on Capcom’s proprietary RE Engine? In his Dragon’s Dogma 2 performance analysis Nick wrote that the game will “take everything your PC has and still want more,” and not too much has changed in the past year.
There is a spot of good news, though: Wilds “is far less of a CPU hog than Dragon’s Dogma 2,” Nick wrote in his Monster Hunter Wilds best settings guide.
Here’s a quick overview:
“I can say right now that frame generation isn’t a must, as one can get a reasonable enough level of performance without using it. However, upscaling certainly is… There is an enormous array of graphics settings one can tweak but Monster Hunter Wilds doesn’t run super fast, even on high-end PC hardware, and many of the settings barely make any difference to the frame rate.
…given how much resolution affects the game’s performance, I strongly suggest using upscaling at all times, unless you happen to have a Ryzen 7 9800X3D paired with an RTX 4090 or 5090. With upscaling and where possible, frame generation, Monster Hunter Wilds does run pretty well but the fact that these graphics features are required for decent performance won’t be pleasing to many a PC gamer.”
For a budget PC, running hardware comparable to an RTX 3060 Ti and a Ryzen 7 5700X3D, we recommend the settings outlined here for smoother performance around 90 frames per second (with Frame Generation enabled). Note that on some of our systems Frame Generation has caused issues with crashing, however, so if you run into the same problem you may have to disable it until a patch arrives.
Capcom’s designed more than 250 monsters(!!) for the series over 20 years, with many of its creatures returning game after game with updated designs or new moves. That legacy means longtime fans may well have a favorite monster that they’ve been fighting for literal decades.
I didn’t get into Monster Hunter until the series arrived on PC with World, so my list of favorites skews newer. Here are the beasties with my favorite designs, or that are my favorite to fight:
In 2004, Capcom established the core of the Monster Hunter arsenal which remains to this day:
Those weapons have unsurprisingly evolved quite a bit over the years, and seven more weapons have made their way into the series and stayed there ever since. Only a few others have been exclusive to particular sequels or spin-offs.
Now what about new weapons? The youngest monster-skinners are the Insect Glaive and Charge Blade, which were introduced in Monster Hunter 4 in 2013. Will we ever see a 15th join the roster? According to Capcom, it’s a topic of heavy internal discussion, but they’ve given themselves a hard act to follow.
Without looking it up, which of Monster Hunter Wilds’ 14 weapons do you think debuted in the original PlayStation 2 game released in 2004?
I’ll give you a hint: There were seven weapons in the original, and two of them were ranged.
Answers in the next post!
Wilds makes some interesting (and overall good!) changes to cooking: It’s quicker and more convenient than ever, letting you whip up a meal while you’re out in the world looking for your next prey. The new ingredient system also makes you think a bit more about what items you’re using to get specific buffs, and when.
But as Morgan wrote about this week, having to cook his own meals left a Meowscular Chef-shaped hole in his heart:
“The magic of the Meowscular Chef was the ritual: He was the last stop before starting a quest, dutifully feeding his hunters like a parent waiting by the front door with a lunchbox. The solo cooking of Wilds is practical, convenient, and serves Wilds’ new sandbox approach to hunting. But it’s not warm, fun, or social.”
Capcom has clearly noticed people debating whether Wilds is too easy, because today’s announcement that the first title update is coming in early April included this tidbit:
“A New Level of Challenge! Prepare your gear, and resolve, hunters! TU1 will bring with it a monster of formidable strength at a level above Tempered! Another challenging monster will also await you!”
As we noted on our Monster Hunter Wilds roadmap, Capcom had already promised to deliver the new monster Mitzutsune in the first free update. Could the wording above mean there’s another new monster on the way, too, or should we just expect a powered-up version of one of the existing Wilds fights? Sounds like it’ll be a punishing beast, whatever it is.
Would you look at that: Nvidia released a new Game Ready driver today, and called out Monster Hunter Wilds launching with “DLSS Frame Generation, DLSS Super Resolution, and ray-traced reflections.” Unfortunately we don’t get any details on whether this driver release includes any optimizations or fixes specific to Wilds, but you’re probably better off installing it than not.
If you wait until after launch to update drivers you’ll end up sitting through shader recompilation all over again, and those are precious minutes you could spend hunting instead.
Capcom’s latest makes some big changes from its predecessors—and most of them pay off, as reviewer Lincoln Carpenter dives into in loads of detail in his 85% Monster Hunter Wilds review. With a decade of experience with the series under his belt, Lincoln came into Wilds ready to feel out how it’s evolved from past games. Here’s the topline takeaway:
“If there’s a word for Wilds, it’s streamlined. Sword fighting with tyrannosaurs and stitching their bits into belts is no longer chopped up between quest-sized chunks. Following a more straightforward, cinematic story, Wilds gives way to a seamless wilderness of rotating seasons and roaming beasts, where any hunting prep can be done in the moment and on the fly. It can feel like a wonder, but it’s not a wonder without a cost. In providing as much monster hunting as possible, Wilds has given up some of Monster Hunter’s charm.
But god, it feels good to fight those lizards. Throughout my almost 70 hours with Wilds, I could feel the 20 years of iteration behind its combat design. Hunting, as a rule, is a well fed occupation, but the latest round of tinkering with Monster Hunter’s 14 weapon types is a feast for every style of wyvern-slayer. Next to the flashy new attacks, fundamental bow and bowgun revisions, and Focus Strike finishers, there’s a subtler artistry in design here that’s easy to overlook. Small, considered tweaks—like new windows for adjusting your footing at the tail end of attack animations—make Wilds the smoothest Monster Hunter fighting has ever felt without sacrificing its meaty texture.”
The rest of our review breaks down where Wilds’ streamlining helps and hinders it, the impressive strides Capcom’s made in its storytelling, and what we make of the new environmental systems. Lincoln couldn’t tear himself away from Monster Hunter over the last couple weeks—except when the game forced him to take a break by crashing, an issue he encountered disappointingly often (seemingly due to DLSS Multi Frame Generation). Fortunately for other members of the team crashes were much less common, and disabling Frame Gen seemed to clear up his issue.
*taps mic* Is this thing on?
As I write this we’re exactly nine hours away from Monster Hunter Wilds’ release time on PC. A few lucky console players in futuristic timezones like “New Zealand”—questionably a real place—are already playing while the rest of us stare at Steam waiting for that beautiful green Play button to light up.
As consolation, I offer up a picture of some Palicos. And meat.
PSA: If Monster Hunter Wilds is crashing, try turning off frame generation
Monster Hunter Wilds already has more than 30 mods, with 2,600 downloads between them
Monster Hunter Wilds has broken into the top 10 all-time Steam records an hour after launch, passing Baldur’s Gate 3, Hogwarts Legacy and Elden Ring
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