I can’t say I was anything but skeptical with the reveal of Monster Hunter Outlanders. It visually looked good, certainly, but a Monster Hunter with truly live-service and gacha mechanics? To get even more general: a highly skill-based action game on… a phone? No, thank you. But I have to admit, after playing it myself and speaking with Monster Hunter Outlanders’ development director Bryan Li, Monster Hunter Outlanders is carefully toeing the line between the Monster Hunter and free-to-play live-service game formulas. With about 15 hours into the Closed Beta Test 2, I feel like I’ve only just scratched the surface of Monster Hunter Outlanders… and I’m having a hard time pulling myself away from digging to write these first impressions.
What Is Monster Hunter Outlanders, Really?
Let’s get the big questions and explanations out of the way. Monster Hunter Outlanders is developed by TiMi Studio Group and officially licensed by Capcom. TiMi, for its part, is no stranger to big IP adaptations and mobile-first titles–it developed Call of Duty: Mobile and Pokemon Unite (my most played Switch game in 2025, coincidentally), as well as Arena of Valor, to name a few. Monster Hunter Outlanders appears to be its most ambitious project yet. Mashing Monster Hunter together with a free-to-play mobile model while also making it open-world with meaningful exploration sounds like a tall order, but the set up is promising.
Li said that a requirement to join the Monster Hunter Outlanders development team is to be a Monster Hunter fan, and many of the game designers have hundreds and hundreds of hours in the Monster Hunter series. These developers have focused heavily on the core combat experience to try and preserve the Monster Hunter feel on mobile. They even hired regular Monster Hunter series composer Tadayoshi Makino so it sounds just like you’d expect a Monster Hunter would.
In short, expect the core PVE action-forward Monster Hunter loop–hunt a monster, craft new armor and weapons out of that monster’s parts, hunt a stronger monster, repeat–complete with quintessential Monster Hunter experiences like getting paralyzed by a Vespoid while carving, with many additional customization and growth systems to interact with and currencies to earn common to deep free-to-play RPGs. Add on more emphasis on open-world exploration, crafting, and progression systems that remind me a bit of Wild Hearts and Genshin Impact, and you’ve got Monster Hunter Outlanders.
The most concerning aspect for TiMi was, indeed, properly balancing the feel of Monster Hunter while tailoring it towards the free-to-play mobile market, which they said has been very difficult for them to find a sweet spot and maintain that balance.
“Surprisingly, based on the feedback we collected from the previous CBT1 [Closed Beta Test 1], it seems that the players kind of acknowledge that balance point,” Li explained. “It gives us quite a lot of confidence sticking to our current design.”
About Monetization
One of the biggest hallmarks of a free-to-play mobile game is the gacha monetization mechanics, which Monster Hunter Outlanders implements along with the exorbitantly abundant and dizzying progression systems, which are also present in ways likely very familiar to the free-to-play RPG crowd.
The gacha part of Monster Hunter Outlanders is very new to the Monster Hunter series, though–unique, playable characters in addition to your self-made original character dubbed the “Fated Adventurer.” Besides the Adventurers, Li said other monetization will be about cosmetics and customizations–purely vanity items that have no effect on gameplay, like special weapon skins. I’ve opened a lot of boxes earned in-game that reward regular layered armor and weapon skins, so you can still do some fashion hunting without engaging in the premium currencies. The third type of monetization is about “flexibility” allowing players to “shape their journey in a way that best fits their gameplay style.” No, I’m not totally sure what that means, but it may have to do with being able to purchase items for progression, like leveling up., but I can tell you more about the Adventurers.
These named Adventurers have unique, anime-forward visual looks and distinct gameplay mechanics that set them apart from your usual playable character in a Monster Hunter. For example, just because Midori uses a Long Sword doesn’t mean she uses a Long Sword like your original character would–her flow of combat, special “Skill 3,” and Ultimate attack are all exceptionally unique and demands you to master slightly different skills to unlock her full potential.
“We think it’s… a good opportunity for us to bring something a little bit more refreshing to the franchise, because none of the pure installments actually adopt this kind of mechanism,” Li explained. “And to be honest with you, we, at least based on what the team feels at the moment and on the feedback collected from the previous play tests, it seems that it’s actually quite a preferred and favored choice, not only by us, but by the players.”
I can absolutely agree on this sentiment. It would have been horrid if things like crafting materials, weapons, armor–anything already present in traditional Monster Hunter–was locked behind a gacha system. The monsters are already walking Loot Boxes of sorts, and we don’t need more gatekeeping than that.
Li said that every Adventurer can be earned for free through active gameplay, and they have zero intention to gate any adventures behind any payment wall. “Our goal is to deliver a Monster Hunter experience that you can enjoy anytime, anywhere with your friends, and we want to make sure that this experience can be as free as possible,” Li said.
Three predetermined SR (regular rarity) Adventurers have joined me for free as part of the story as of Chapter 2, which is important, considering you put together your own four-person party for the story with the Adventurers you’ve unlocked. (You can also play completely solo if you’d like.) I’ve also earned quite a few Standard and Featured Contracts that let me “pull” for a random Adventurer (or Buddy–a support Felyne, Rutaco, or Trillan–which is the large majority of what you’ll get.) With the Contracts I collected, I got 200 rolls between three different “Recruitment” types and I have enough alternate currency to convert to dozens more. Honestly, more generous than some, but not as generous as others. There are also different events you can participate in to unlock the highest-rarity SSR Adventurers for free occasionally.
However, the Featured Recruitment Adventurer, Midori, is limited, which means she won’t make it to the “Standard” recruitment pool after her time in the Featured Recruitment is up. Though she may come back around in the future, the FOMO could be enough to push players to buy more chances at getting her… I mean, she is really cool, and apparently very strong. Since the “real money” store isn’t open in the US during the CBT2, I can’t tell you how much this might actually cost. But Monster Hunter Outlanders needs to make money somehow for it to keep existing, and personally this doesn’t look like an egregious play-to-win model, especially as someone who willingly spends a little money on free-to-play games for every twenty or so hours I get out of them. If you want to ignore the monetization systems, you very well may be able to.
From what I’ve played, I really don’t think I’ll need these Adventurers to complete any of the game’s content anyway. I keep coming back to my original “Fated Adventurer,” who has a more classic Monster Hunter style of play, and is more flexible. Your custom character benefits from any element and can use any weapon, while the named Adventurers are stuck with their signature weapon and element type. When you also consider each character needs to both be leveled up with semi-limited resources and be equipped with their own armor, weapon, and more to reach their full potential, the flexible Fated Adventurer becomes a bit more appealing, despite the rare Adventurers being flashier.
Li said, “Non-spending players will be able to fully experience, participate in, and master 100% of the game’s core content,” and I can definitely see that, especially for the single-player story content, which I haven’t struggled with just yet despite not meeting the suggested power level for a while. For difficult challenge events, personal skill will likely bridge the gap a specific SSR Adventurer might create. To be clear though, I obviously haven’t reached “end-game” content, so I can’t say for sure if this will be true for the lifecycle of Outlanders. And, if you’re looking to compete for the top spot on one of the many, many leaderboards, all of this becomes an entirely different conversation, and you may feel much more pressured to get the best-of-the-best.
Combat Feels… Good
Trying out each new Adventurer I do get is super fun, though. They provide another layer of gameplay variety that will keep a game fresh for even longer than Monster Hunter’s very different 14 weapons already do. I really like the Lance–the newly available weapon in this Closed Beta Test 2–but I liked Adventurer Ouyang Varen’s style of Lance even better, which is even more counter and parry focused than usual (but gives up the Lance’s classic dash in exchange.)
If you couldn’t tell by the way I’m describing the differences in combat between weapons and characters, Monster Hunter Outlander’s combat mechanics are nuanced and combo-focused enough for these seemingly small changes to matter. I found a lot of my skills forged in core Monster Hunter games transferred to Outlanders, from weapon mechanic memory to monster movement reading, and it was much more satisfying than I expected.
Outlanders isn’t, however, a one-to-one to the combat in core Monster Hunter. The controls are a bit simplified, and things have been adapted to better suit mobile play, like the monster glowing red before an attack to telegraph it better on a small screen. You can turn this off (and adjust a lot more) in the settings, but my deteriorating eyesight welcomed it for the very perfect-evade and counter-demanding version of combat in Outlanders as a Bow, Long Sword, and Lance user. I still need to read the monster well enough before that moment to make sure I’m not in the middle of a combo when that telegraph pops up, anyway. Additional mechanics have been implemented as well, for example to showcase the Adventurers with unique “Ultimate” attacks that also have passive effects on your team.
I was worried that a co-op, combat-heavy game reliant on fast reactions would work poorly on mobile, but most of the time, it ran well enough to not affect gameplay on my iPhone 17 Pro on the Ultra graphics setting. Not as well as it would on a PC or console, certainly, but serviceable. The most trouble it had was while I fought Kushala Daora (who’s still an ass to fight, by the way), because of the constant tornadoes, wind currents, lightning, and rain it had to render along with four characters of remote players, our buddies, and the monster itself. Yeah, my phone struggled during this at times. And though my phone didn’t usually get very hot while playing, my friend’s iPhone 15 absolutely did.
The Loop and Experience
Of course, there’s more to Monster Hunter Outlanders than gacha mechanics and combat. It begins much like any Monster Hunter would. You first customize your hunter, who’s on their way with a crew to a new land to investigate some anomaly. Only, in Outlanders, the crew and accompanying folks are much… flashier. It’s a lot of main character energy for one ship.
After some character introductions and combat tutorials, you find yourself in a village, and continue with…a lot more tutorials as you progress, just about every step of the way. Look, if you thought Monster Hunter was difficult to grasp, Outlanders has a whole other level of systems to wrap your head around. As someone with more than 2,000 hours in the Monster Hunter series and decent experience with gacha live-service games–including one with pretty similar progression systems–it still presented as convoluted at the start. I’m still far from fully understanding everything under the hood since I haven’t even unlocked everything yet, but it did start to click soon enough, and when it did, I couldn’t put it down.
I found myself falling down the Monster Hunter rabbit hole that is so appealing to me–trying new weapons and making new sets all to face a new threat. Monster Hunter Outlanders makes this endeavour much more streamlined compared to core Monster Hunter, which is welcome on mobile. From anywhere, you can open the Forge menu, tap a material you need for a piece of equipment, and the game will tell you how to get it. It will even take you directly to the menu to start a Free Hunt for the monster whose materials you need, or to the Melding menu if it’s obtainable by exchanging other materials for it. But if you’d rather hunt monsters in the world, you can do that, too. The only thing that held me up was the lack of equipment loadouts–a modern quality of life feature that is really needed if you intend to use the Fated Adventurer and more than one weapon type. It honestly made me change my plans because I didn’t want to have to switch equipment back and forth.
Even during this (mostly) streamlined loop, I got happily distracted on the way, both in the open world and in the menus of activities.
There’s more to the map in Monster Hunter Outlanders than just serving primarily as a backdrop for a monster–there are watchtowers to discover, mini-games to play, chests to find, NPCs to help, endemic life to capture, and even exploration-specific skill trees to develop. You’ll be crafting camps to create fast-travel points, and mobility equipment like Ballista to help you get around faster and easier. Though not my main reason to play a game like this, it’s easy and fun enough to engage in in-between quests.
One time, I got a notification that the “Dance Night Party” event was about to begin, so I paused what I was doing to check it out. I had previously made a guild, and, well, I couldn’t join another in time to participate, so I rolled into my guild solo not expecting much. I was still able to play the Fever Dance-Off and Taster’s Trial mini-games despite being alone, and earned a Dance Fever buff that lasted for 50 minutes, a temporary Midnight Dance Master title, and some items as a reward. It was fun–and would certainly be even more fun if I did it with friends!
Finally, I have to admit, Monster Hunter Outlanders is the first action game I’ve really played on my phone ever, and even so, I picked up the controls quickly. That isn’t to say I like playing with the touch-screen controller–but that’s absolutely from my inexperience and hands that cramp up at the mere mention of the PSP. There were more than a few times that I wanted to keep playing Monster Hunter Outlanders, but I was so uncomfortable I had to put it down. For anyone intimidated by the more nuanced combat controls of Monster Hunter, there’s a simplified control format called “Adventure” that still feels interesting enough to play with only three buttons to worry about, but it felt kind of like cheating to me!
For those used to playing action games on their phone, this likely won’t be an issue for you, but for the rest of us, Li ensured that controller support is absolutely coming. In fact, it’s the most requested feature from the community. I thought maybe this meant Monster Hunter Outlanders might make it to consoles–or at least PC–but Li said, “at the moment what I can tell you is that Monster Hunter Outlanders is a mobile game only.”
This is disappointing for me because while I can see this being very fun with a guild, convincing enough friends to play consistently on mobile isn’t going to happen (two of my friends couldn’t play because their phone was incompatible, for example.) Even though the open world isn’t explorable in multiplayer, the large variety of guild challenges, co-op hunts, and arena challenges seem really fun. I had a good time with my longest hunting partner of nearly 20(!) years on a few hunts, but we still need to figure out all the multiplayer systems to get the most out of it. It’s possibly just as convoluted as multiplayer is in core Monster Hunter games.
I’m looking forward to challenges that require thoughtful team-comp, and to learn the different Adventurer roles outside of classic Assault–Disruptor and Support. I actually enjoyed the sort of forced class-roles in Monster Hunter World’s Behemoth hunt (I rocked a Wide-Range Wiggler build) and it’s cool to see those kind of actualized in Monster Hunter Outlanders. I can’t say how well it works just yet, but the idea is promising.
I’ve had a lot of fun with Monster Hunter Outlanders, and flowed pretty naturally between all the “styles” of play it has to offer–story, exploration, events, and co-op. If you like Monster Hunter or free-to-play action-RPGs, Monster Hunter Outlanders is worth a shot. But, if you categorically hate either genre, the lure of the other might not be enough for you. Monster Hunter Outlanders will take some effort to learn–a lot of things are hidden in really weird spots in menus, and though there are a lot of “how to’s,” there isn’t always a good explanation of the why. But, I find the things I need to put effort into to be the most rewarding, which is absolutely the case with Monster Hunter in general.
Playing with a community of hunters who’ve learned the ropes might be the best way to take a step into Monster Hunter Outlanders, and I can’t imagine an experience being more Monster Hunter than that.
Casey DeFreitas is on IGN’s Guides team and has put thousands of hours into the Monster Hunter series. Talk about it with her on BlueSky @shinycaseyd.bsky.social.
