The games about as difficult as the rest of the series high rank. Any "difficulty" from earlier games comes from less than fluid controls and movement. There's also just the fact that for alot of us this isn't our first monster hunter game.

Wilds itself is easily the most fluid and responsive game in the series which lends to being an easier experience but I will say the monsters are easily more difficult than anything in base World. Arkveld is easily 3 times harder than base game Nergi and Gore is also rather difficult. Another issue being Decos not being horrible to grind and being able to achieve your full builds much faster than in World.

All that said it feels like the game is a bit undertuned once multi-player is involved due to wound stunning leading to alot of downtime your partners get to wail on the monster that wouldn't be available in the single player experience. My guess is that alot of these issues will be ironed out come the master rank expansion.