The arrival of the second free title update for Monster Hunter Wilds on the 30th brought a swarm of hopeful players back to the charts. Yet, in a rather ironic twist, the tide of negative reviews has only swelled.

The update introduces new targets: the Sea Wyvern Lagiacrus and the Thousand Blade Wyvern Seregios, with tempered versions of both joining the fray. Alongside this, the 'Dragon Transformation Ritual' seasonal event kicks off, featuring new outfits, refreshed presentation, and the barrel-rolling minigame. Later on, players can hunt the limited-time Arch-tempered Wood Tuna.

On the PC front, the developer has finally tackled some of the performance woes. VRAM consumption has been reined in, and a display bug in the graphics settings menu—which incorrectly reported usage—has been ironed out. Furthermore, the update adds support for NVIDIA DLSS 4 and AMD FSR 4, complete with multi-frame generation.

Rewind to late May, during the Street Fighter 6 collaboration, and you would have found the community plagued by persistent crashes that forced players to the desktop. Coupled with complaints about a lack of meaningful content, the player count dwindled to a mere 10,000. However, the allure of fresh content has breathed new life into the game, pushing Concurrent Players past the 130,000 mark.

The trouble is that despite the influx of players, the criticism has reached a fever pitch, sending user sentiment into the abyss. Recent reviews are rife with reports that frame drops have worsened, forcing players to dial back graphics settings even further, while the dreaded crashes continue to persist—suggesting that with every update, the optimisation only seems to slide further downhill.

To make matters worse, many are arguing that the core content—two monsters, a handful of gear, a festival, and an Arch-tempered variant arriving at the end of the month—hardly provides enough meat to keep players satisfied until September. This downward spiral in sentiment has hit rock bottom, with the latest 30-day user reviews sitting at 'Overwhelmingly Negative' (16,365 entries, 12% positive).

Meanwhile, on the Steam global top sellers list, the peak remains at #1 for over seven days despite the ongoing Steam sale. Furthermore, Sons of the Forest has managed to hold its own near the top of the charts, riding the wave of the summer sale even after a 6% increase in its discount rate.