Monster Hunter Wilds is adding tons of new gameplay content in its Ascendance expansion, continuing a trend within the series in past big DLC drops. Both the Sunbreak expansion for Monster Hunter Rise and the Iceborne expansion for Monster Hunter World gave players far more to do when fighting monsters, broadening the unique combat styles of those titles. Ascendance is bringing a change that impacts every weapon in the game, but players are slightly concerned that it may be something more powerful than it needs to be.
Some gameplay additions in Monster Hunter Wilds Ascendance are likely meant to fight the new monsters coming to the game, as well as familiar foes getting stronger for the upcoming Master Rank. The new Skybound Eyrie location is likely to have a variety of monsters players can hunt, creating an environment also designed for new combat mechanics. Despite these preparations, there’s a chance these changes are emphasized almost too much, repeating a pattern that became a big issue in Monster Hunter World.
Ascendance introduces a feature called Boosted Actions for each of Monster Hunter Wilds‘ 12 weapons, allowing players to enter a state where their attacks are enhanced. Depending on the weapon, this could mean you get new combo extensions, resource management techniques, or simply higher damage on standard attacks. Although players don’t yet know the full scope of Boosted Actions, as the only information that’s been shared so far are brief previews with particular weapons, we can infer the general benefits from this system.
The Boosted Action previews shows that to activate the Boosted state, players have to press three attack buttons together at once. Similar to other attacks in the game that require specific inputs, this seems to create an jet exhaust of sorts on your weapon, indicated by an orange meter on your screen. The meter will slowly decrease over time after you activate the Boosted state, only giving you a short window where your weapon actions can be enhanced.
This limitation is likely to prevent players becoming overpowered in a perpetual Boosted mode, but there could be tricks to making the feature last longer. One example we’ve seen is that a weapon like the Charge Blade immediately charges their unique phials when entering the Boosted state, implying that there are active and passive bonuses provided by the mode. Other weapons like the Greatsword and Hammer seem to gain new mobility options, while the Light Bowgun gains a new rapid fire stance exclusive to it.
Although all the Boosted Action features seem interesting in Monster Hunter Wilds, the sheer variety of the mechanic’s capabilities draws a comparison to a similarly emphasized tool from Monster Hunter World. The Clutch Claw was the new combat addition to that game’s Iceborne expansion, allowing players to “tenderize” monster by grappling onto them during hunts. This involved locking onto a target’s weak points to make certain parts of a monster easier to attack, an already important goal during World‘s standard gameplay.
The Clutch Claw quickly became something you needed to use on every hunt in order to reach optimal damage on monsters, especially closer to the endgame Ranks. However, this feature was incredibly overbearing due to how important it was, disrupting smooth weapon combos with something completely separate from other actions. You had to hit a monster a few times, stop, then aim using unreliable controls toward a moving target, then activate the Clutch Claw to get onto a monster’s weak spot(s).
At the same time, some weapons didn’t “tenderize” targets with one use of Clutch Claw, while others did. This imbalance created a strange risk for certain weapons, which only increased if players tried to grapple enraged monsters that throw them around for trying to clutch onto them. With Capcom emphasizing Clutch Claw being used constantly, monster health pools were also dramatically increased as a result, meaning that it was a mechanic you almost weren’t ever allowed to avoid.
Despite Monster Hunter Wilds‘ wide array of favorable updates, if Boosted Actions end up like the Clutch Claw, players will likely drop the game fast. Veterans who remember World‘s blunder fear that Boosted Actions will either homogenize weapon gameplay or create a mechanic players are forced to use to win hunts at higher Ranks. Already, some of the Boosted Action preview trailers show that during the mode, some weapons gain access to Offset attack features, a strong counter technique usually tied to specific weapon moves.
If every weapon in the game has an Offset through their Boosted Action, the counter mechanic is sure to be less special than when it required intimate weapon knowledge to use. The existence of Boosted Actions might increase monster health pools too, but with the ongoing complaints in Monster Hunter Wilds about difficulty, this isn’t as big of a risk as it was in Iceborne. At the very least, since Boosted Actions are meant to be added to normal weapon gameplay, it is guaranteed to be less disruptive than Clutch Claw was.
Hopefully, the implementation of Boosted Actions learns the right lessons from the Clutch Claw, not sacrificing combat flow and weapon mastery for some cool new moves. If Boosted Actions are stronger than anything else a weapon can do, over reliance on being Boosted will make the feature feel stale over time. For an expansion as exciting as Monster Hunter Wilds Ascendance, making its biggest gameplay change feel boring is the worst possible outcome.
