Monster Hunter Wilds PC Launch Plagued by Issues

Capcom's new release is breaking online records, currently ranking as the 6th most-played game on Steam. Despite its popularity, players are heavily criticizing the game's rating on Valve's platform due to its severe technical issues. Digital Foundry has confirmed these problems, publishing an in-depth analysis of the PC version with disappointing conclusions.

Their investigation reveals multiple performance flaws. Shader pre-compilation takes roughly 9 minutes on a system with a 9800X3D processor, and over 30 minutes on a Ryzen 3600. Even with texture quality set to "High," visual fidelity remains underwhelming. On a PC equipped with an RTX 4060—using "High" settings at 1440p resolution and balanced DLSS—significant frame time spikes are common. The more powerful RTX 4070 with 12 GB of VRAM also struggles, producing surprisingly poor texture quality.

For graphics cards with 8 GB of memory, lowering texture settings to "Medium" is advised to reduce stuttering and frame time spikes. However, visual quality remains disappointing even after this adjustment. Fast camera movement still triggers noticeable spikes, though the issue is less severe with slower pans. Worth noting, frame time instability persists even with low-quality textures enabled.

According to Alex Battaglia of Digital Foundry, the core issue stems from data streaming, which places excessive decompression load on the GPU. This is especially problematic for budget graphics cards, resulting in sharp frame time increases. He does not recommend the game for owners of 8 GB GPUs and remains hesitant about more powerful options like the RTX 4070.

Performance is particularly poor on Intel GPUs. The Arc 770, for instance, manages only 15–20 frames per second, accompanied by missing textures and other visual glitches. While high-end systems can partially alleviate these issues, the game still fails to run consistently smoothly. At present, creating truly optimized settings is nearly impossible without sacrificing a significant degree of visual quality.