Published:
The Teostra rears up before me, all flames and fury, explosive dust spitting out around my hunter. It’s scary, but I’ve fought hundreds of this iconic elder dragon in my career, and I know exactly what I should do: hunker down with my Lance’s Power Guard and soak up the devastation before unleashing my own counterattack. Then I realize, ‘What’s life without a little risk/reward?’ This is Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascendance, after all. I ignite my Boost Bracer and fling my lance bodily over my head to come crashing down in a vicious Boosted Offset Crushing Blow, sending the beast reeling. It feels good to be back.
The Boost Bracer is Capcom’s big gambit for Ascendance, the Monster Hunter Wilds DLC that will carry us into Master Rank difficulty with a new, full-length campaign and, presumably, the final implementation of the RPG’s long-form endgame. It’s a device that charges up both over time and as you fight, with up to three stocks that can be stored at the bottom of the screen. Depending on your chosen weapon type, you use this to either ramp up your existing attacks and blocks, or unlock all-new moves. It’s immediately reminiscent of Wirebug moves in Monster Hunter Rise; a comparison I make with satisfied glee.
You can push into Boost Mode in several ways. Each weapon has a specific ‘Boost Driver’ that’s used by pressing a three-button combo (my demo is on PS5, so the layout is triangle, circle, and R1). This typically functions as a gap closer or other form of initiation – as noted, the Lance’s option is actually an Offset attack, the counter system introduced in MH Wilds that lets you interrupt certain enemy moves if timed correctly. Alternatively, some of your combos will let you activate boost midway through them, such as before the climactic hit of the Lance’s poke combo, or while charging up a Greatsword chop.
Once Boost Mode is active, it lasts until the meter along the bottom burns out, and how that affects you plays differently for each weapon. While my demo’s two-mission limit gave me relatively little chance to experiment, I’d group these into two broad categories for all the weapons I tried: those that feel like ‘enhanced movesets’ and those that feel like ‘expanded movesets.’
The Lance is very much the former. Once boosted, I’m essentially playing with a Superlance. My basic attacks pump out damage faster and harder, while my guard is (even) more robust than usual, able to shrug just about anything off. The running charge attack closes in quicker and with a beefier leaping thrust. This might sound a little ‘underwhelming’ compared to weapons that get a more unique suite of additions, but it actually feels so good to transform into this Super Saiyan powerhouse that I didn’t mind at all.
When the Teostra moves regions, I switch out to another favorite of mine, the Hammer, and this is very much in camp two. Boost Mode here turns me into a human cannonball, flinging me into the air with the Boost Driver’s spinning uppercut and then cartwheeling back to the ground in a direction of my choosing. In powered-up form, I can quick-hop while charging or simply dive forward with a massive overhead attack that closes the gap to bonk enemies in even the smallest windows of opportunity. It feels just as unfair as the Lance, but in a very different way.
“Wait,” I hear you cry, “Master Rank Monster Hunter is all about the challenge. Why would I want to be overpowered?” It’s a fair concern after the relatively friendly endgame of base Wilds, although Capcom certainly proved it had plenty of difficult encounters up its sleeve with the new monsters and other updates that rolled out over time. As strong as we might be, that only gets you so far – and it enables the developer to make our opponents even scarier. Monster Hunter Rise’s Sunbreak expansion was a perfect example of this.
The other hunt I took part in came before our dear toaster, and it was against an Alpha Araketa in the new Ascendance location, the Skybound Eyrie. This set of floating islands is certainly pretty, although it only further emphasizes each zone feeling like a standalone combat arena rather than a contiguous world. The Araketa is a complete newcomer, and as an M2-tier mission is presumably fairly early into the expansion, which makes its high-octane moveset particularly notable as an indicator of what’s to come.
Propelled by bursts of air, the Araketa can unleash sudden, jarring dash attacks and even has the capability to swing high into the air and come crashing down. It’s not quite the rocket-powered assaults of Sunbreak’s Crimson Glow Valstrax, but that it even invokes such a feeling suggests we could be in for an expansion filled with some very speedy foes. I have a sneaking suspicion all of those powerful Boost Mode attacks won’t just be there for fun – they’ll be nearly essential for survival.
I test out two more weapons against the Alpha Araketa and its pair of lesser companion birds. The Sword and Shield is team ‘enhanced,’ with a Boost Driver that leaps you forward and can be chained into a grounded slash or a leap into the sky. Once you’re boosted, you have access to even more ways to chain your various moves together, letting you quickly slide between skyborne assaults, Perfect Rush combos, and an additional, twirling twist on the already devastating Charged Chop.
The Longsword is team ‘upgraded,’ of course: Capcom couldn’t help but turn its ludicrous arsenal of counters and high-speed flurries up to 11. You can bust out even more dashes and slashes while in Boost Mode, with the most flamboyant of the combos finishing up in the weapon’s signature Iai Stance to set you up for anything that comes your way. Longsword has become a favorite among many (myself included) for good reason, and if you enjoyed its base-game form you’ll only be grinning more here.
In tune with that high pace of combat, it seems wounding is taking a slight backseat. Wounds that you can exploit with Focus Strikes are certainly still present, but they felt less prevalent than in base Wilds (although I will note that it’s hard to spot their red glow among Teostra’s crimson fur and flickering flames). The Araketa had very resilient limbs, and its most accessible target was a spot on its face that seemed to only become available during specific moments, like Rey Dau’s post-railgun recovery or Gypceros’s flash charge-up.
Fighting Teostra felt familiar, but he certainly had a few distinctive tricks up his sleeve. He could linger on two legs to throw off your timings, had some nasty dust spreads that could quickly catch you in explosion city if you weren’t careful, and even snuck a surprise second half onto his most deadly move that left me rolling back into base camp, laughing. I’m just hoping the Ascendance roster doesn’t lean too heavily on faces we’ve seen in recent games at the expense of new ones, or at least more obscure returners.
Outside of that, my time with Ascendance is tantalizingly brief, only serving to leave me wanting more. I had a great time with both the base game of Wilds and its post-launch updates, but what I got to see has so far sold me on the Boost Bracer as more of a meaningful expansion to combat rather than a gimmick that could get frustrating. Playing on PS5 Pro means I can’t add much comment on performance, but what I played felt good, so hopefully that’s indicative of further work on top of Capcom’s prior improvements.
Monster Hunter Wilds Ascendance is set to launch in 2027. In true Boost Bracer fashion, spending just a couple of hours with the DLC has already reignited the fire in my soul, and I expect I’ll be dipping back into the base game in the coming weeks to scratch that itch. There are still many questions to be answered, from the remainder of the expansion’s roster to how well-paced its endgame experience will be, but I’m absolutely ready to find out.
