Monster Hunter Wilds will give you one free character edit, which is great for Fashion Hunters, but frustrating for everyone who's sick of paywalled customization

In spirit, Monster Hunter Wilds is the sequel to monster-wrecking adventure Monster Hunter World with promises of the freaky creatures and abundant nature that made the 2018 game so great. In practice, Monster Hunter Wilds seemingly adopts even some of World's bad habits, like its paywalled character creator that gives players only one free edit.

"One 'Hunter's Grooming Ticket' and one '[Palico]'s Grooming Ticket' will be available free of charge from each store from the date of release for editing the series' familiar gestures and characters that have already been created," developer Capcom shares on Twitter, according to a DeepL translation.

Monster Hunter World notoriously offers players the same limited ability to alter their protagonist's and kitty companion Palico's appearances. After initially finalizing these characters' sweet looks, players have only one free Character Edit Voucher to meaningfully modify them – after using the Voucher up, players need to purchase additional $2.99 Vouchers if they want to continue overhauling their character customizations.

It's not a very popular system, as fans' responses to Capcom's Monster Hunter Wilds news proves.

"Still wish it was just free to edit in general," popular Monster Hunter fan account Kogath says on Twitter.

"I think it's always kind of dumb to monetize the ability to change your character in a video game," agrees another popular Twitter reply. "I much prefer the route of having certain bonus choices be monetized, but free to swap."

Other fashion-conscious Hunters are already worrying about paywalled haircuts, or wondering why Wilds doesn't just copy Wild Hearts' totally liberating, and literally free character customization. Slaying monsters shouldn't preclude you from slaying, you know?

I spent 5 hours with a new build of Monster Hunter Wilds and it solved basically every problem I had after playing the beta – now this really feels like Monster Hunter World 2.