"Monster Hunter Wilds PC Technical Issues: A Disaster"

Capcom's latest release has been making waves on Steam, securing the 6th spot among the platform's most-played games. However, the game is facing significant backlash due to its technical shortcomings, as highlighted by user reviews and a thorough analysis by Digital Foundry.

Digital Foundry's detailed examination of the PC version reveals a host of issues plaguing the game. One of the most glaring problems is the shader pre-compilation process, which takes an astonishing 9 minutes on a high-end system equipped with a 9800X3D processor, and over 30 minutes on a Ryzen 3600. Texture quality also falls short, appearing subpar even when set to "High" graphics settings. On a PC with an RTX 4060, configured to "High" settings at 1440p resolution with balanced DLSS, the game experiences significant frame time spikes. Even with the more powerful RTX 4070 boasting 12 GB of memory, textures remain disappointingly poor.

For those with GPUs featuring 8 GB of memory, Digital Foundry recommends dropping the texture quality to "Medium" to reduce stuttering and frame time spikes. Yet, this compromise still leaves visual quality lacking. Quick camera movements exacerbate these issues, though slower movements help mitigate the problem to some extent. Unfortunately, even at lower texture settings, the frame time issues persist.

Alex Battaglia of Digital Foundry points to data streaming as the core issue, which places an undue burden on the GPU during decompression. This is especially problematic for budget graphics cards, leading to sharp frame time spikes. Battaglia advises against purchasing the game for those with 8 GB GPUs and expresses reservations even for users with more powerful setups like the RTX 4070.

The game's performance is particularly dismal on Intel GPUs. The Arc 770, for instance, struggles to deliver only 15–20 frames per second, marred by missing textures and other visual anomalies. While high-performance systems can partially alleviate these issues, the game still fails to run smoothly across the board. At present, finding optimized settings is nearly impossible, as any adjustments result in a substantial degradation of visual quality.