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Wild Hearts revealed by Koei Tecmo & EA with February release date

Players will band together to hunt giant mythical beasts with mysterious puzzle boxes aiding them in combat and traversal in 2023.

TJ Denzer

September 28, 2022 8:11 AM

Image via Electronic Arts

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For a short time now, Koei Tecmo and Electronic Arts have teased collaboration on some kind of new hunting game. However, we finally got the official reveal today for Wild Hearts. It’s a Monster Hunter-like game in which players will take up weapons and special gear to hunt down massive mythical beasts. We even got a release date to go with it. The game is set to release in February 2023.

Electronic Arts and Koei Tecmo revealed Wild Hearts as an EA Original in a trailer released on September 28, 2022. The game is set to launch on February 17, 2023. Strangely, systems were not announced at this time.

The game shows us a colorful Japanese-styled landscape full of towering fortresses overgrown by vegetation. In this wild world, large beasts infused with the power of nature itself roam and players will team up to bring them down. Wild Hearts seems to feature some unique equipment and contraptions to aid players in the hunt. It seems one can deploy large puzzle boxes that shift to offer different offensive, defensive, or utilitarian options to players. One formed a tower for players to get the drop on a foe. Another changed into a bomb. Finally, we saw several turn into ballistae with rope to tether down the monsters.

While Koei Tecmo’s Wild Hearts looks very similar to Capcom’s Monster Hunter, it also looks like it carves some interesting new paths in its style. The evolving box mechanic seems like it’s going to play a huge part in battle and strategy. Meanwhile, it will be interesting to see what kind of weapon classes are available to players and how they can be upgraded throughout the game.

February 2023 is quite a long way away and Wild Hearts has left us with a lot of questions. As the company also continues to work on Rise of the Ronin for 2024, stay tuned for more details on all the upcoming Koei Tecmo titles as information becomes available.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.