PC Version of Monster Hunter Wilds in Technical Crisis

Capcom's latest release has surged to the 6th spot among Steam's most-played games, yet it faces heavy criticism from the community due to its troubled technical performance. Digital Foundry's in-depth analysis of the PC version has shed light on the game's numerous shortcomings, leading to widespread disappointment.

The analysis reveals that shader pre-compilation can take up to 9 minutes on a high-end system equipped with a 9800X3D processor, and over 30 minutes on a Ryzen 3600. Even when set to "High" graphics settings, the texture quality remains disappointingly low. On a PC with an RTX 4060 running at 1440p resolution with balanced DLSS settings, the game experiences significant frame time spikes. Similarly, the more powerful RTX 4070 with 12 GB of memory fails to deliver satisfactory texture quality.

For systems with GPUs equipped with 8 GB of memory, Digital Foundry recommends lowering the texture quality to "Medium" to reduce stuttering and frame time spikes. However, this compromise does not significantly improve visual quality. Quick camera movements still cause noticeable spikes, though these are somewhat mitigated with slower movements. Even with reduced texture quality, the frame time issues persist.

Alex Battaglia from Digital Foundry attributes these problems to inefficient data streaming, which places an excessive burden on the GPU during decompression. This issue is particularly detrimental for users with budget graphics cards, leading to severe frame time spikes. Battaglia advises against purchasing the game for those with 8 GB GPUs and expresses reservations about its performance even on more powerful setups like the RTX 4070.

The game's performance is especially dismal on Intel GPUs, with the Arc 770 managing only 15-20 frames per second and displaying missing textures and other visual artifacts. Although high-performance systems can mitigate some of these issues to a degree, smooth gameplay remains elusive. Currently, finding optimized settings that do not severely compromise visual quality is a challenging, if not impossible, task.