Unbiased Monster Hunter producer predicts one weapon will climb the popularity rankings in Ascendance, has no agenda: ‘Hammer should definitely go up a place or two’

Over the last two weeks, Capcom dropped a parade of weapon breakdown videos showcasing the new Boost Bracer mechanics coming in the Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascendance expansion. Serving as a sort of on-demand sicko mode, the Boost Bracer lets hunters juice their combat actions with additional speed and impact, and adds some deliciously over-the-top attacks to the existing weapon movesets.

PC Gamer spoke to some of the lead Monster Hunter developers at TGS to pick their brains about how the Boost Bracer evolves the flow of Monster Hunter combat—and which weapon they expected to gain the most fans with its new moves. Asked what weapon they’d stake 10,000 yen on climbing the popularity rankings in Ascendance, one of the developers had an immediate answer.

“Hammer,” series producer Ryozo Tsujimoto said without hesitation. “I think the hammer should definitely go up a place or two.”

As a hammer main myself, my natural inclination is to cosign Tsujimoto’s objective appraisal of the weapon’s self-evident efficacy, utility, and inherent nobility. But I’m obligated as a journalist to acknowledge that there might be some slight favoritism in play.

Tsujimoto, who’s worked as Monster Hunter series producer since the release of Monster Hunter Freedom 2 in 2007, has a decades-long record as an avowed hammer diehard. At the 2023 Justdan Game Festival in Taiwan, he revealed his Monster Hunter Rise guild card, which confirmed that he’d used the hammer in each and every one of his 895 completed hunts.

He literally doubled down on his hammer devotion in prerelease interviews for Monster Hunter Wilds: Asked by PlayStation Asia how he’d utilize mid-hunt weapon swapping—a new feature in Wilds—he said “both of my weapons will be hammers.”

To Tsujimoto’s credit, and at the risk of revealing even more of my personal biases, I’ll note that the hammer’s Boost Bracer toolkit does look pretty sick. In its Ascendance hammer breakdown video, Capcom showed off the return of Rise’s Impact Crater switch skill as the new attack that’ll let hammer hunters enter boost mode. And once they’ve engaged sicko status, they’ll have access to a mid-charge boost dash for repositioning and closing distance, as well as a brutal new one-armed slam that can follow up the hammer’s heaviest charged attacks.

If you suspect this coverage has a compromising pro-hammer slant—and at this point I suppose I can’t blame you—Ascendance director Takuro Hiraoka offered a second opinion: While the long sword has always enjoyed its place at the top of the MonHun weapon popularity rankings, he said gunlance will likely win over some converts.

“There’s definitely an appeal—a special kind of romance—to gunlance this time that’ll maybe see it go up the rankings as well,” Hiraoka said.

If you haven’t seen the Ascendance gunlance breakdown, I should clarify that the appeal in question involves using the gunlance’s explosive shells to perform airborne plunging attacks and overheated stake thrusts. If that isn’t a special kind of romance, I don’t know what is.

Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascendance launches in 2027. You can wishlist it on Steam now.