Monster Hunter Wilds’ Long Sword Has Taken Over My Life

Of the many things that define the Monster Hunter series, one of the most iconic is its large arsenal of weapon types; there are 14 to choose from, each with entirely different movesets iterated and built upon over the last 20 years. There’s the poster child Great Sword, a hulking blade with slow strikes that deal massive damage. Or there’s its polar opposite, the Dual Blades, a pair of fast-hitting daggers that let you slice, dice, and spin like a Titan-slaying top. The Charge Blade is a complex bit of engineering that switches between Sword and Axe modes, requiring its user to manage resources while deftly making use of both configurations. The list goes on and on: the Hunting Horn has you doubling as a bard and a bruiser, the Insect Glaive sports a beetle sidekick and vertical moveset, and that’s not even to mention the variety of ranged weapons, such as the Heavy Bowgun, which is essentially like bringing an M60 to a monster fight. Among these many complicated devices, there’s also the Hammer, where you sort of just bonk guys on the head.

In Monster Hunter Wilds, all of these weapons are interesting, complex, and at least a little weird, so distinct from each other that the one you pick probably says a lot about what kind of action games you like. As for what I chose, my evaluation came back with a single word: Weeb. While each of these armaments has its own allure, it only took a few minutes of swinging around the Long Sword to know that I would spend most of my immediate future doing my best Seven Samurai impression with this fast, graceful, and ridiculously over-the-top weapon.

If the name didn’t give it away, the Long Sword lives up to its title, an oversized katana that’s surprisingly quick despite its bulk. You can perform overhead slashes with the Y button (on an Xbox controller), stabs with the B button, and more damaging slashes with RT, but what makes it unique is its combination of counter-focused swordplay and the Spirit Gauge, which lets you access stronger moves and a powered-up state. The Spirit Gauge takes a bit to wrap your head around (and the game’s lackluster tutorial doesn’t help), but basically it’s made up of two parts: the inner gauge, which fills up as you land regular attacks, and the outer gauge, which is a colored outline around the bar that increases as you land the Spirit Slash attack or successfully perform a counter. Spirit Slashes cannot be done outright and can only be accessed after performing a lengthy combo that spends meter, performing a slow charge animation, or after timing a counter correctly.

As you land Spirit Slashes and counters, the outer gauge goes from colorless to white, to yellow, to red, and when you finally hit red, you enter a powered-up state where you gain additional moves and attacks deal more damage. While you can only stay in red gauge for a limited time, you can elongate the timer by landing Spirit Slashes and counters, which is important because the goal with this weapon is to be in this mode as much as possible; there’s very much a learning curve to managing both the inner and outer gauge while trying to avoid becoming monster food. And even after getting a grip on how everything works, it still takes a lot of practice to get used to your two counters, the Foresight Slash, where you spin backward before dashing in, and the Iai Spirit Slash, where you sheathe your sword and slice through an incoming strike. On top of learning the timing, both of these can’t be performed outright because you need to perform your own attack before activating them.

These restrictions tie into Monster Hunter’s general design ethos that emphasizes animation priority, premeditation, and positioning over responsiveness and speed. Perhaps the most notable example of this, especially in a post-Dark Souls world, is that the universal dodge roll performed by pressing A doesn’t have any invincibility frames, meaning you need to maneuver yourself outside the range of these massive creatures instead of just perfectly timing a roll to nullify their moves. On top of this, when you attack, you’re usually committed to the entire animation, which can be particularly lengthy if you’re using a Hammer or a Greatsword. There’s also always a sense of physical impact and punishment when on the receiving end; if a charging Kut-Ku slams into your Hunter, they will ragdoll into the dirt.

However, it’s because of these restrictions that it feels so satisfying when you circumvent these weaknesses with each weapon’s unique abilities, whether switching between offense and defense with the Charge Blade or giving creatures a concussion with each walloping swing of your Hammer. In the case of the Long Sword, one of the things that makes it so powerful is that your counters are two rare sources of invincibility frames in a game where those are quite rare. As previously mentioned, the Foresight Slash can only be activated after performing a standard attack, while the Iai Spirit Slash requires you to strike, go into the Special Sheathe stance, and then time your slash right immediately before getting crushed. Not only is the counter timing somewhat tricky, but you also need to find the best gap to perform the prerequisite steps before attempting them, which necessitates internalizing monster attack patterns. Thankfully, these complications around counters come with one big upside: it feels absolutely euphoric each time you land one. It’s a rush to wheel backward from an impossibly huge talon, land the counter-attack, and top off your Spirit Gauge so you can unleash a flurry of crackling red lightning and rapid slashes that make it feel like you’re suddenly playing Ninja Gaiden.

It’s this loop of landing counters, powering up your gauge, and then triggering your temporary powered-up mode that makes the Long Sword so deeply gratifying. When strengthened, your primary attack becomes Crimson Slash, a faster and safer version of your standard Y button attack that can more quickly transition into a counter, making it easier to go from offense to defense. And more than just functionality, there’s quite a bit of anime and chanbara film flair involved (hence the very valid weeb accusations); with the iconic Spirit Helm Breaker attack, you vault approximately a million feet into the air before landing with an explosion of red slashes that fill the screen with damage digits. The process of cycling between different movesets as you enter and exit this powered-up state creates a hypnotizing game-within-a-game that will have even experienced Hunters going feral to get back in the field.

But perhaps what’s most impressive about Monster Hunter Wilds is that its other 13 weapons seem to share this degree of depth, each with their own loops built around overcoming the core restrictions of being a dinky little human squaring up against increasingly deadly foes, including the reincarnation of a monster that literally destroyed an entire civilization. While this game has many pain points, including its horrible PC optimization, slow early pacing, and wonky online play, its rewarding weapons like the Long Sword make it worth weathering all the nonsense. Because in each battle, you can feel two decades of tinkering and innovations snapping into place, all so you can cosplay as an overpowered anime character who’s spent all their time studying the blade; no complaints here.

Elijah Gonzalez is the assistant Games and TV Editor for Paste Magazine. In addition to playing and watching the latest on the small screen, he also loves film, creating large lists of media he’ll probably never actually get to, and dreaming of the day he finally gets through all the Like a Dragon games. You can follow him on Bluesky @elijahgonzalez.bsky.social.