Few games have changed the trajectory of their respective series quite like Monster Hunter World, one of the biggest smash hits Capcom has ever created. World was a vibrant, expansive, and ambitious leap that paid off in spades. It makes sense, then, that eight years later the series would still be chasing that high. Even with the time that's passed, I find myself amazed that Monster Hunter Outlanders, essentially, manages to cram the experience of World into a mobile game. This mobile spinoff certainly isn't attempting to reinvent the wheel, but after six hours with the game, it's proving to be a surprisingly competent package, although I have some bubbling hesitations about the grind and encroaching gacha systems.
Anytime there's a mobile spinoff of a major series, the first question that comes to mind is how that game will be compromised, or truncated, from that full console or PC experience. And so often, those mobile games are simplifications of a larger idea, like Fire Emblem Heroes or Diablo Immortal. What I've found fascinating about Monster Hunter Outlanders so far is that it doesn't really simplify the overall gameplay loop and structure. Rather, it's sort of a reconfigured Monster Hunter that strings out progression to support the typical framework of a mobile game, one filled with nearly a half-dozen different currencies to keep track of at any given time. But it also very much feels like Outlanders wants players to engage with it like a full-fledged Monster Hunter, and even includes all the story exposition you'd expect to go along with it.
Like most Monster Hunter games, Outlanders begins with a big cinematic opening where a group of adventurers from the Adventurer's Guild are striking out to an uncharted part of the world – in this case, an island called Aesoland. This island is filled with Radiant species of monsters, beasts whose abilities have been enhanced by a mineral called Radiantite. This is, ostensibly, also the game's reasoning for creating new designs of classic series monsters and tweaking their abilities to match this game specifically, like the Pukei-Pukei focusing more on head or tail attacks, which are easier to target with Outlander's more streamlined lock-on system.
But I cannot stress enough how much Outlanders banks on the same formula as World; it's almost as if the same game was transposed onto different locations and story elements. Even the first area of the game, like World, is a heavily forested area with a lot of verticality for climbing or setting ambushes; intentionally designed to show you the ropes. If you've played any Monster Hunter game, you know that core gameplay loop of what to expect – you take missions or hunts, track down monsters in an instanced map, beat them, harvest materials, and then use said materials to craft more powerful equipment.
Complementing this, you have a moderately-sized open world that you can roam around and explore to take down smaller monsters, find crafting materials, and more. Outlanders also brings back many of the elements that have become mainstays since World: scoutfly trails to guide you to objectives, buildable objects on the map like towers and ziplines, and monsters that interact and fight each other like natural predators. All these elements click together just as well as they did in World, creating a compelling loop that feels like you're constantly doing something meaningful to that overall progress. Outlanders is also impressive in terms of presentation with environments that genuinely look stunning; playing on an iPhone 14 Plus, I had a consistent framerate with very few dips.
However, the differences start to surface as you dig deeper into the minutiae of how the game actually plays and what options are available in combat scenarios. Certain aspects of the combat have been streamlined to fit the mobile experience and accommodate a touchscreen control scheme instead of a controller (although there is controller support if you want it). Movement and actions aren't as intricate, although the game sports two different control methods: Adventure Mode and Classic Mode. The former is intended for new players and streamlines things down to three buttons, Attack, React, and Burst. From there, the game contextually handles a lot of what you're doing, like the React button allowing you to dodge when a monster attacks, or block if the time is right. Classic Mode, on the other hand, gives you full manual control, including traditional button-stringed combos.
What I've found so far, though, is that Classic Mode proves to be unfit for just touch controls, as it's too cumbersome to use all of these different options without a controller. Adventure Mode does, generally, feel good to use, but takes some of the vibrant friction out of the experience by streamlining so much. That means the ideal way to play this, if you can, is on Classic Mode with a controller – which then ultimately raises the question of why you wouldn't just play a console Monster Hunter. There are answers to that question, of course, like if you don't own anything else to play a Monster Hunter game on.
The other two major elements where Outlanders shifts that classic experience is with your ability to build a party of adventurers and how progression works. To try and fit the typical idea of a gacha game, Outlanders creates a group of distinct characters that take part in the story who you can then recruit and use as NPC companions. Recruiting means partaking in those traditional gacha pulls using currency called Rutacoins.
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