Wild Hearts is Koei-Tecmo’s new attempt to get in on that sweet monster hunting action and, while it’s not perfect, there’s lots to like. PCG’s Wes Fenlon mostly enjoyed his time with the game, but a dearth of monsters and terrible issues with performance saw the game limp off with a 63% score.

I’ve been playing Wild Hearts and, yep, this thing runs badly and suffers from constant frame drops and stuttering. It’s a sentiment shared by the wider community, with the game’s Steam reviews currently sitting at mostly negative and summed up by this devastating one-liner from Katsummie: “The price is higher than the FPS you will be able to pull in this game.”

The development team, Omega Force, has now acknowledged that the PC version is not in a good state, and claims it has identified the problem and a fix is due imminently:

“Omega Force are working continuously to improve performance and optimise the game for a wide variety of hardware specs across future updates. We have a patch coming next week that addresses a CPU bottleneck problem the team discovered; this should improve performance across mid-high end CPU’s. The team are also actively working on DLSS and FSR support which will arrive in a future patch.”

The statement adds that “this is a vitally important topic for us” which does tempt me to point out that it’s quite vital for everyone who’s paid sixty English pounds for a game that is at times borderline unplayable. Omega Force asks any players experiencing issues to submit a report, but it all rather feels like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted: You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression and, honestly, all Wild Hearts has done is make me think about reinstalling Monster Hunter: Rise.