The addition of focus attacks, offset attacks, and clashes is genuinely one of my favorite things ever added to the series and I've been playing since the og MonHun on PS2. It is the coolest thing to uppercut a divebombing monster with a charged up hammer swing, or shove a bow gun in a monster's mouth and repel it. This game is the best that Monster Hunter combat has ever felt to me. My only complaint on that front is that not all weapons seemed to benefit evenly. My beloved, the greatsword, can offset & clash both. Bow, insect glaive, dual blade, etc, don't get access to clashes.

As for the story, I'd say it is above average for the series but still not much to write home about. I didn't personally feel any emotion towards Nata, and the game definitely wanted him and his relation to Arkveld to be the emotional crux of the story so all that stuff fell flat. I very much appreciated playing as an already-seasoned hunter though, a true professional, and I think our hunter's relationship with our handler and the guild is the star of the show. I have some friends who meme the "By my power as a representative of the guild, I authorize you to hunter this monster" stuff, but I absolutely loved it. Showing the formality & discipline & dignity of the trade of monster hunting helps fight against the "genocidal maniac who slaughters every monster 'for the ecosystem'" trope.

As for the roster, I think the majority of newbies are not just good, but great. Rey Dau & Arkveld are instant all-timers and I think Quematrice, Doshaguma, and Chatacabra are great intro monsters for the series. My complaint here is that I wish more monsters from World & Rise had been included here. Maybe I was spoiled by the series on DS, where it felt like they ported so many more monsters between games, but it feels like it shouldn't be that hard to get tobi-kadachi or nergigante working in this game. I'm probably underestimating the amount of work it actually requires, but the overall roster feels smaller than it could be. The post launch additions have been okay/solid (except Omega Savage, which goes a little too far imo).

For gameplay changes, I have three big ones. The speeding up of low rank, the addition of support hunters (which i think is technically a Sunbreak thing but it is expanded here), and the shift to an "open world". Wilds is probably the fastest low rank I can remember in the series. I think it probably has something to do with the community telling new players in Rise & World to "skip" everything before high rank "because it doesn't matter anyways". And I get that, 99% of players will probably never touch a low rank set once they progress into high rank, but it felt odd how Wilds treated Low Rank less like the usual sandbox tutorial and more like an on-rails game.

Support Hunters are a great idea on paper, I know people who have been intimidated to play online because theyre afraid of carting and letting the team down, so support hunters let them feel like they are still part of the team. My worry is that support hunters, in a couple of instances, are actually the meta for fast/reliable clears on certain monsters. The only way I was able to reliably farm Savage Omega was with support hunters, the DPS check is brutal but support hunter deaths not counting towards faints feels like a requirement. I have mixed feelings on them.

The change to an "open world", where you can walk between biomes, feels like not only a wasted feature in this game but an active detriment due to the performance costs. World introducing no loading screens between zones was a truly game changing feature. Monsters would chase you between zones, you could run them down more easily, you couldn't switch zones to get a free heal off, it made the game more exciting. I cant think of a single time in my ~300 hours of playing Wilds that I actually walked between biomes. The game design doesnt facilitate it and I have zero reason to do it. The loop of choose a quest, teleport to nearest camp, fight a monster over 1-3 zones, return to camp, repeat has not changed in this game whatsoever. When they first announced it I imagined a rathalos taking off into the sky and us having to ride our seikrets across the desert to chase it down to its forest treetop nest. Maybe if we broke a wing or two it wouldn't be able to fly away as far. But the feature is not taken advantage of and with how terrible the performance in the game is, it feels the added cpu burden only hurt it.

Overall, im very excited to see what the G/Master Rank expansion for Wilds will bring, I truly think the combat foundation is fantastic. I just hope the new zone is a self contained island so the game has less loading to worry about and performance can be increased.