I’ve been playing Monster Hunter Wilds for the last few days, still working my way through Low Rank and the story. I just reached this village last night, and when I heard that recurring 5/8 chime riff I immediately had to stop everything and listen to the song, and then find an upload of the song even though I didn’t even know what the name of the village was at that point.
The game takes place in a, well, wild area that was previously thought to be uninhabited, so to evoke that primevality there’s a bit more of a focus on folkier tuned and untuned percussion (which there’s plenty of in earlier soundtracks too so it’s not a major tonal shift or anything), mixed with some standard Monster Hunter orchestration and some nice synths here and there. I’ve been enjoying it so far, I’m honestly not super versed in the series’s music but it was already probably my favorite soundtrack in the series prior to reaching Sild, but then I reached Sild and had a conniption.
My favorite section is 1:00-1:20 in the daytime version, which lets you really soak in that 5/8 figure for a bit longer before adding a corrupted electronic noise on top and ending with that great synth chord at 1:17, but there’s a lot I also love about both themes: the overall textural fusion, the strings and wind lead writing at 0:46, the section at 1:48 with slightly weird phrasing and an extra beat thrown in near the end, the more ambient sound design starting in the nighttime version at 2:42, and the chords in the melodic section at 3:22. Really fantastic pair of tracks, I think I like the daytime version more but they’re both top tier.
There’s no official title or composer attribution known for these pieces yet, but Capcom has been getting Monster Hunter soundtracks out within 3-6 months after release, so hopefully we’ll know sooner rather than later.
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