More often than not, you can tell at a glance that Wild Hearts is similar to Capcom's Monster Hunter series of games. Both games are about players working together or individually to find and defeat monsters in a large open field. Players can obtain different accessories by defeating different monsters to craft better weapons and armor.

Omega Force studied the genre closely in Toukiden series before developing this game. These two games also happen to represent Capcom's best sellers in addition to, however, the poster child for the monster hunting genre.

Wild Hearts is not just a simple copy of Omega Force. The many familiar elements contained in the game, as well as the unique game identity created by Karakuri system, allow Wild Hearts to be quickly distinguished from its games of the same series by players.

In the Wild Hearts novels, Karakuri is just an ancient technique conjured up out of thin air by hunters. With this technology in action, it can be used as a fast-paced production system. Whether the player is in combat or not, it quickly opens up your available options and listens to a variety of different functions.

When you start with Basic Karakuri, you start by crafting a wooden box that will bounce you into the air when you climb up to the appropriate height. You can only stack up to three of these crates at a time. This is a technique that will come in handy as you explore space.

But it's another feature that really comes into play when players battle the various monsters in Wild Hearts, like the Kemono. When you're using these crates to jump and transition through blows, or use the height you get from bouncing to avoid area-of-effect attacks that spew pools of lava or poisonous clouds.

Whether it's as a springboard to dodge when the player is attacked, quickly jumping towards Kemono, or as a Springboard that allows the player to pass through gaps in large obstacles and kill monsters right on top of them. Most Karakuri have both functions.

Stacking these Karakuri is quick and easy, so you can quickly put as many pieces of equipment as you need into each battle.

Building wooden boxes and jumping to avoid danger in thrilling battles will become second nature to players. Doing this is as important as knowing how to choose the best weapon for you in each battle.

After that, you can also unlock various Fusion Karakuri, which can be used to form different combinations of Basic Karakuri to create more sophisticated devices.

For example, players can stack nine wooden boxes in three rows to form a solid barrier to block sudden incoming ejections or Kemono's tracks. You can also kill monsters in the air by summoning Gigantic Bouncing Hammers, Powerful Bombs, and Blinding Firework Cannons.

Obtaining a huge monster through a device created out of thin air is undoubtedly a huge advantage for players. However, the existence of various tools did not weaken the tense atmosphere in the game.

Every player needs to use Celestial Thread to build the device. If you run out, you can also get it by other means, such as cutting down trees or finding rocks, and extracting it by killing Kemono. These conditions also require you to think carefully and have a sense of strategic thinking when using Karakuri.

However, it also encourages you to work with others, pooling everyone's resources and building a larger wall to protect your teammates. Anyone can use this fence to carry out airstrikes, or to help others continue their activities when they run out of Celestial Thread.

Co-op play can be used in many ways, whether you're just throwing in a few friends at a party and it's possible to keep going. You also have the chance to revive each other, which makes Wild Hearts'multiplayer more accessible than Monster Hunters.

You can join fellow hunters by searching for active hunting sessions, or create a hunting session of your own, which makes it easier to cross-group with others.

If you're playing the entirety of Wild Hearts alone, the game's difficulty will climb dramatically. The first is Kemono known as Deathstalker. It is difficult for players to harm it.

Only by carefully observing its strengths and weaknesses, finding and killing other monsters, and upgrading and making its own weapons and equipment can it defeat this monster.

Of course, if you want to quickly upgrade to obtain these weapons and equipment, you can also choose to obtain Wild Hearts Gold to quickly upgrade and improve the game experience.

But if you can get the help of other players, it will be completely different, and it may be easy to kill monsters. If you don't like to play games with other people, you will probably be put off by the sudden difficulty.

Therefore, it is difficult to recommend Wild Hearts to players who like to play the game alone. However, this is also one of the charms of cooperative games. It's more cooperative than other monster hunting games.

When you're not building Magical Gizmos to help you hunt, you can also randomly choose one of eight weapons to help you deal damage to monsters.

These weapons range from the Katana to Hefty Maul to the hand cannon, each with its own stats, including different weapon specs that allow you to deal damage to monsters when certain requirements are met.

For example, when you use a samurai sword to attack a monster, a meter will appear, and only when it is filled can the Unbound mode be triggered to quickly damage the enemy.

At the same time, Karakuri Staff can also change into five different forms, including a staff, polearm, shuriken, double blades, and the building-sized juggernaut blade. And Bladed Wagasa is an umbrella that can be used for air strikes.

No matter which weapon you use, the character action in Wild Hearts will always thrill you. The weight of each weapon swing, the quick counterattack and escape from danger, all make the player feel like they are there.

Killing monsters certainly feels exciting, but the accompanying orchestral music adds a spooky vibe that also helps keep players in awe of each battle.

Plus, there's a lock-on system that's handy for targeting enemy bodies, but the system has a bit of a lag and often lets monsters flee because obstacles block the line of sight, which is more annoying than anything.

Wild Hearts is set in the fictional region of Azuma, an idea that comes from thinking about feudal times. Each location has its own unique style. Some of the beauty was worth seeing, but most were let down by low resolution and blur early on. Even though Wild Hearts looks great, performance-wise, it's pretty average.

Unfortunately, if PC settings do not meet or exceed the system recommendations, the player's game screen will often freeze during the entire game.

This situation is difficult to ease even by lowering the graphics settings, because it has almost the same picture performance at the highest and lowest settings.

Omega Force said that these problems have begun to improve and fix, so they hope these problems will become a thing of the past as soon as possible.

The core of Wild Hearts game doesn't stray too far from the theme of Monster Hunter series, but it's still surprising that the central mechanics around which the entire game revolves are still original.

Karakuri system enhances every part of Wild Hearts, including combat, co-op, airstrikes, and more. Some technical shortcomings hinder his development, but Wild Hearts is still a popular game and continues to enrich the genre.

While not perfect, the co-op mod is the best way to re-experience this tremendous RPG.

On what had to be our 10th attempt at Elden Ring's first major boss, Godrick the Grafted, the big guy froze. A friend and I were using the Seamless Co-op mod (opens in new tab) and Godrick, despite having a literal fire-breathing dragon-head for an arm, decided to surrender. My fellow Tarnished got roasted a second earlier so it was just me and Godrick the Frozen. Cautiously I swung at him, ready for his brain to turn back on. It never did. I slashed away the last half of his health bar and sent him back into the ether. LEGEND FELLED. The mod may have broken him, but we were also several attempts in and just wanted to move on. A win is a win.

The Seamless Co-op mod solves all of the problems with Elden Ring's awful multiplayer summoning system, but it also introduces a slew of new ones once you're playing with it. Sometimes they're funny: my friend got to see my character ride an invisible horse a lot of the time. Sometimes they're useful: when one of you dies, the enemies don't reset, so you can cheese harder dungeons. And sometimes they're legitimately game-breaking: your ability to lock-on vanishes in the Radahn fight, which essentially prevents anyone who plays a spellcaster from doing damage at all.

The mod sits right in the middle of being unplayable and glorious. As Ted Litchfield wrote in his early impressions (opens in new tab) of it, it's simply the best way to play Elden Ring with a friend. Nothing could be worse than the normal method where you have to set a multiplayer password, drop a summon sign, wait for your friend to find it, and then be summoned in long enough to defeat the area's main boss. In the Seamless Co-op mod, you set a password, have your friend open their world, and then you can join them for as long as you want. You could play the entire game without ever getting kicked out.

On top of that, the Seamless Co-op mod lets you both ride Torrent (normal co-op prevents any horsing around) and, as part of a recent patch, you both can summon spirit ash allies anywhere you want. In some ways, playing with the mod is like playing in New Game+. There are some challenges here and there, but you have enough tools to barrel through however you want. Because my friend was new, I let her lead the way through catacombs and castles. She experienced all the little tricks FromSoftware plays on you with ambushes and puzzle-like combat scenarios. And, if things got hairy, I could assist using what I've learned from my own playthroughs.

New rules

The best moments with the Seamless Co-op mod are when things go very wrong. When the challenge is at its highest, the mod changes how you approach the game. Normal enemies are extremely susceptible to getting staggered when two of you are beating them up. We found this out rather quickly in the early parts of the game, so to keep things interesting we took on the toughest enemies. The patrolling Tree Sentinel in the opening area is a little more manageable when you have two people taking swipes at him on horseback, but he can still pulverize you in a single hit. For that fight, I equipped the talisman that kept his attention on me while I tanked him on the ground. My friend played the role of DPS and wore him down while he was distracted. It took us a few tries, but once she landed that final blow it felt like beating a raid boss in an MMO: going in with a plan and adapting on the fly based on the enemy's behavior.

We also decided to skip most of the optional catacombs and dungeons until we absolutely needed an upgrade or item they offered. This method kept us rune-starved enough to make some of the fights a genuine obstacle. For Castle Morne, we had to take turns pressing forward as one of us got killed, utilizing the fact that enemies don't respawn unless someone rests at a grace. The player that ate it can run back with a small penalty to their stamina regeneration. There were times where I intentionally bolted into a group of enemies and dispatched the most powerful one. I'd likely die in the process and leave my friend with the job of staying alive as I made my run back.

Under these new self-imposed rules, you're forced to come up with strategies that differ from the singleplayer game. By myself, I crept through dungeons and learned where enemies would appear. I'd wait until they were separated from the pack almost like a stealth game, or I'd pull them back to a safe spot. Wrong moves would be the end and I'd have to try again. In co-op, the goal is to cycle between each other long enough to make it to the next grace. To my surprise, Elden Ring works well as a gauntlet if you have someone who finds it equally thrilling to think on the fly.

Road trip

While not necessarily unique to the co-op mod, re-experiencing Elden Ring's open world with a friend who hasn't seen any of it before is a delight. It's like watching someone play your favorite game for the first time, but you get to be right there with them.

I completely forgot until the door locked behind us that Gatekeeper Gostoc traps you in a dark room with a brutal knight at the beginning of Stormveil Castle. Nothing is more scary for my friend than when something like that happens and we're both panicking. The same thing happened when she led the way toward a group of enemies in the middle of a swamp in Limgrave and the gigantic dragon flew down and barbecued her and everyone else. I've always said that Elden Ring's open world is basically made to emulate the popular Dark Souls memes (opens in new tab) where some person or animal gains a health bar and dramatic choir music starts. With persistent co-op, you can stumble into all sorts of problems, which is really what Elden Ring is all about.

The Lands Between also remain absolutely stunning to look at. I thought some of that would be lost while playing with a friend, but there have been several times where we've both crested a hill or came out of a cave and stood there looking out over the landscape. With two people, you have the time to appreciate the day/night cycle and how it can create the sort of imagery you'd usually see in staged screenshots. I desperately wanted a photo mode when all I could see on my screen was our silhouettes as we galloped across the grassy hills of Limgrave, or when we stood in the middle of the Radahn's battlefield, soaked in the crimson rain.

The Seamless Co-op mod's biggest weaknesses are in the most scripted sequences, which end up being the main Shardbearer boss fights, like Radahn and Rennala. You can't respawn at a Stake of Marika near them, so on top of AI and mechanics not working, you have to do the full run back. I imagine as we get deeper into the game there will be fights that might verge on being legitimately maddening. But we're halfway through and the worst we've had to deal with was the lock-on issue and one of us not correctly receiving runes as a reward for downing a boss—thankfully minor bosses are easy enough to farm souls from to alleviate that.

Otherwise, the mod is like playing on a new difficulty mode. It's still Elden Ring, but with pockets of new challenge that in-turn create new surprises. The mod's creator continues to update it as FromSoftware rolls out new patches. It's possible that at some point most of the bugs we encountered will be fixed. When that happens, I'll have zero caveats when recommending people to give the game a shot with a co-op partner. I wouldn't go so far as to say Elden Ring is purely better with friends, but it's easily the best way to re-experience it if you know someone that is willing to join you on the journey.

You can download Seamless Co-op from Nexus Mods (opens in new tab).