Wild Hearts Is Now Playable For Those With Game Pass Ultimate Or EA Play

Wild Hearts doesn't technically release until February 17, but those with EA Play or Game Pass Ultimate can take the game's opening hours for a spin right now thanks to an early access trial.

The trial lasts for 10 hours, or up until players reach the city gates of Minato. For those eager to dive in, EA Play is $5 for a one-month subscription or $30 for a year. Game Pass Ultimate members get the benefits of EA Play backed into their subscription, which costs $15 a month but includes access to a library of titles across consoles and PC, including numerous games included as part of EA Play.

Wild Hearts looks to be developer Koei Tecmo and publisher EA's take on Capcom's wildly popular Monster Hunter series. Players can team up (the game is crossplay across consoles and PC) and take down massive magical beasts known as Kemono with a variety of fantasy weaponry. All the while players will employ the use of Karakuri, ancient technology that allows players to build tools to aid in the battle.

Impressions from the game's early trial seem to be positive on the gameplay front, but a look at the Wild Hearts subreddit shows a long list of performance-related complaints. An official response from Koei Tecmo's Omega Force team states it is working to improve performance and optimization, specifically on PC. A patch is slated to arrive next week that should address a CPU bottleneck problem the team says it discovered, which should improve performance across mid-high end CPUs.

In GameSpot's hands-on Wild Hearts preview, we called the inspirations behind Wild Hearts obvious, but that "it's unique high-speed crafting system creates a novel way to ground and defeat gigantic beasts."