Hovering above the panorama of Fera: The Sundered Tribes, I spot a hulking, icy, behemoth roaming the wetlands under. It doesn’t look that huge from up right here, however I rapidly discover out it’s simply distant.
Slamming down in the direction of the clearing, I land a strong blow on the beast, however it’s solely wounded and it’s harmful to remain on the bottom.
Monsters on this world command the weather and the cold-blooded creature simply began whipping up a roaring blizzard. However as diamond mud whisks via the air, I comply with swimsuit, hooking onto a crumbling spoil close by to grapple again up above our battlefield earlier than somersaulting ahead with my axe raised – a whirling flurry that stops the snowstorm in a single shot.
Everybody needs to hunt monsters, however Monster Hunter isn’t for everybody. It has a really specific cadence as you contemplatively trudge round fairly a restricted map, earlier than your character unhurriedly unsheathes their tools and breathes a solemn sigh as they heave their weapon in the direction of the quickly onrushing creature – normally a flaming anteater or an evil monkey or one thing – that’s bearing down upon you.
Then a whole lot of Monster Hunter-like video games – I’m you Wild Hearts and Dauntless – elevate Capcom’s loop wholesale, with the identical sluggish monitoring part, enormous, hefty weapons and chunky fight.
Fera: The Sundered Tribes nevertheless, takes issues in a unique, fast-paced and free-form path: up into the skies.
Round its open world stuffed with cloud-flanked rock formations, ruin-strewn deserts and dense forests, Fera anchors swing factors you’ll be able to latch onto along with your mystical tetherhook, which then allow you to launch your self into air both to tear off slingshot assaults in opposition to enemies or open out your wingsuit glider.
Gliders all get lumped in with Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom as of late, however in Fera it truly performs extra like Batman: Arkham Knight, the place you’ll be able to pitch your wings down to achieve altitude earlier than slowing right into a measured descent to plot your subsequent dive bomb on unsuspecting prey.
The grapple factors are hooked up to historic buildings scattered all through Fera, and it may be a bit clunky to get a really feel for precisely the place you’ll be able to catch onto – notably should you go into the sport anticipating to begin web-slinging like Spider-Man. However when you get into the swing of it and also you realise it’s extra akin to one thing just like the Wirebug in Monster Hunter Rise than a superpower (which is smart, actually) it makes for an attention-grabbing tackle the style.
The alpha-build I performed at Gamescom 2024 had a very nice sense of scale to its world, with totally different sorts of monsters – every with their very own quirks, assaults and elemental talents – wandering the various biomes.
You’ll have the ability to hunt three variants of monsters within the full model of Fera: grownup, elder and historic – however I solely bought to combat the primary two.
The grownup creature was undoubtedly the simple mode. Possibly I’d been buffed up with highly effective tools, however it went down with just some well-placed piledrivers. The elder although, which occurred to be a flying monster as nicely, was an entire totally different story.
Apparently throughout growth, the crew at Large Injury discovered that fights had been too simple in opposition to floor primarily based foes while you had such an enormous motion benefit along with your tetherhook and glider. This led them to design enormous, AoE-focused movesets for his or her monsters, with the aerial baddies particularly getting assault patterns extra resembling a bullet-hell shoot-’em-up than an action-RPG.
However when you truly defeat a monster, carving their meat into crafting elements is a little more concerned too. Totally different weapons will will let you lop off totally different grisly bits, which you’ll be able to then use to energy Fera’s survival and town-building mechanics, which see you unite and lead a tribe of individuals as you assemble and degree up their houses and facilities.
I solely noticed the very begin of this, however it appeared like one other attention-grabbing twist on each the monster looking and survival genres, combining a extra advanced and satisfying fight system than most survival video games with a extra interactive and interesting city-sim system than you get in most RPGs.
I feel the essential issue for Fera can be how easily it could interweave its totally different elements collectively – just like the crunching gears between discovering a grapple level and chickening out, or whether or not the city-building brings every little thing to a screeching halt – however there’s not lengthy to attend.
Fera: The Sundered Tribes is because of hit Steam Early Entry on September seventeenth.