A design lesson from Monster Hunter Wilds

I've been watching my partner play Monster Hunter Wilds. And the UI/UX makes me dizzy. The fact that there's a 7 min video explaining the UI tells me that I'm not crazy. It's wildly confusing, and hard to navigate.

But even with a terrible UI experience she's still sunk 50+ hours into the game. And she's not alone. The game recently crossed 10 million copies sold and it's received great reviews since its launch.

So how does Monster Hunter get away with such horrible UI/UX?

It delivers on its core experience - you're a badass monster hunter - in spite of its design.

On the flip side, there are plenty of sites and apps that objectively look great, but have poor UX that gets in the way of the main purpose.

AI in code editors is the first example that comes to mind. There are some great looking editors with integrated AI like Cursor, Windsurf, or VSCode with Copilot.

But the reason I use a code editor is to write code.

If AI auto complete suggestions keep popping up, they disrupt my flow and get in the way of that core experience.

As someone learning design, it's interesting picturing the target audience of the design. And what promise they're trying to deliver. Maybe I'm not the right audience for integrated AI code editors.

It's also refreshing to know that UIs like Monster Hunter exist. I don't have to get a design perfect as long as I let the core experience shine.