Monster Hunter Rise

Monster Hunter Rise is objectively the easiest Monster Hunter game in the series. So much so that by the time I reached HR 65, I hadn't fainted a single time. In fact, it's my biggest problem and it's mostly due to the utility of wirebugs. Monsters simply haven't been given enough counters or damage to deal with the new wirefall mechanic. Instead of being properly punished for making a mistake, I can immediately propel myself out of range and heal; or right into the monster to take advantage of an opening (that should have only been there if I dodged an attack). Sure, the new skills are fun and movement has never been so fast and fluid. But I'm not satisfied when there's so little to overcome. Additionally, instead of giving us an endgame gimmick like randomized quests and tempered monsters, there is practically nothing to do. I believe the intent here was to make sure you buy the expansion, this game simply cannot stand on its own like World, Generations, and 4 could. And don't get me started on rampages, they are impossible to fail, repetitive, and bland. The hub was butchered again too, as there's little incentive for camaraderie; just respond to an SOS or hunt solo.

What was it with Nintendo Switch exclusives released post-2020 lacking a lot of content at launch? Was there like a global pandemic or something that caused a lot of developers to lose precious game dev time?

As far as Monster Hunter games go this one is I think the most fun to simply move around in. It has some issues that hopefully the sunbreak expansion will resolve. This is my favorite Monster Hunter but these games are all fairly dense and complex in a way that makes comparisons hard.

Just like with World, this game features some welcome QoL changes that make it very different from the older games (just stuff like drinking potions while running, whetstoning while mobile, etc.).

What I don't like is the new photo-realistic graphics that Capcom seems to be doing in all of their games lately. The quality is nice, but there's just no soul there.

Still absolutely worth playing; the game is seriously addictive, and if you like seeing how quickly you can kill big-ass monsters, you're gonna log some weeks into this game.

NOTE: This review was written about a week after release. There have been multiple patches since then that include new armor, weapons, and monsters, and I think my playtime came out to 120 hours. There's also an expansion on the way. I don't want to go into it in detail, but the new content is very good. Cheers.


I've spent the past week powergaming through Monster Hunter Rise. I didn't pay much attention to anything other than the trailers to keep it a surprise – shit, it's Monster Hunter. I'm going to buy it anyway. And enjoy it. Most likely. My experience with Monster Hunter started with the third game, released on the Wii in 2010. I specifically remember being very excited for it, explaining to an indifferent high school friend how big it was in Japan, “like the next Pokemon” were my exact words I believe. Monster Hunter 3 was a pitiful excuse for a mainline MH title (for reference the 3DS revision released three years later had twice the content), but it was probably the best starting point since the series could only go up from there.


Rise is the sixth mainline MH game, coming after 2018's World (and its expansion Iceborne). I logged a lot of time into World, something like 160 hours I think, and I enjoyed it a lot. I think the QoL fixes were mostly for the better, and the novelty of playing MH with a seamless map that wasn't sectioned off by zones left a strong impression on me. There were still some glaring flaws though. There was an overbearing plot that was completely unnecessary and got in the way of gameplay, the maps were impressive but an unreadable headache to navigate, and the relative lack of monsters was obvious when they started introducing palette-swapped “subspecies” (which aren't necessarily bad considering they have tweaked movesets), and later reskins and rereskins Tempered/Arch-Tempered monsters. It's still a cool game I revisit every now and then, but it suffered from the bloat of a AAA release. While World was a huge leap in scope meant to appeal to a broader (i.e. Western) audience, Rise is more of a refinement of what did and didn't work in World. The changes they've made are largely positive, and Rise feels like a leaner, faster-paced version of World.


The core gameplay loop, of course, remains intact. Scavenge around the map, kill monsters, harvest their remains for new armor and weapons, grind for new gear if necessary, then tackle stronger monsters. MH is sometimes dismissed as a single player MMO for this kind of gameplay but I think that's a bit disingenuous. I'll concede it shares the same structure as MMOs, but its gameplay is just so much more dynamic. The combat is fast-paced, switching weapons can make a huge difference in your approach to battles, and the sense of scale to each encounter is way larger. It's the core of Monster Hunter's identity and has even inspired its own subsubgenre of hunting games (the Vita was the master in this field once MH jumped ship from PSP to 3DS, essentially a death sentence for Sony's handheld). The QoL tweaks from World return and a few more are added. Namely you don't need hot/cold drinks to prevent taking constant chip damage in extreme environments, and gathering/mining resources only requires a single input (except for carving large monsters, which is odd). Rise also has new moves specific to each weapon and certain attacks you can switch out (I think Generations did something similar but I skipped out on that one).



The “Rise” in the title refers to the greater sense of verticality in the map design, something which has been gradually introduced to the series since Monster Hunter 4. In 4 the depth was commendable but limited by the constraints of the 3DS, and as mentioned before World was a fucking nightmare. Rise remedies the issue with the new “wirebug” mechanic. It's essentially a grappling hook that allows you to climb walls or quickly zip your way across short distances. I was skeptical of this at first because walking on walls feels unnecessarily awkward – once you attach to the wall you have to press the run button to move around, and if you do this incorrectly it causes your character to dramatically jump off. It takes a bit getting used to, and as far as I know there isn't a setting that allows you to auto-run. Later on I started to appreciate the wirebug a lot more. Its main function allows you to access higher ground without needing to climb vines or run around to find an entry point. World had something like this but it was only used in designated areas, and I remember it being a little finicky. The degree of freedom wirebugs give you is a really nice fix to traversal. The maps themselves are fine. Certainly a step up from World in terms of design, but the themes are pretty standard (ruins, swamp, lava, snow and desert.) I think another map, something really unique, would have neatly rounded out the selection. To Rise's credit, getting to a new map doesn't become a huge chore like the plot made it in World, and everything is pretty much available within six hours.


I think speed was also a factor Capcom had in mind while developing Rise. They introduce canine companions called Palamutes, which help you out in battle on top of being ridden around as mounts. As such horizontal movement is greatly sped up (you could ride some monsters in the Iceborne expansion of World but they weren't dedicated companions). Additionally, instead of needing a skill to reveal a monster's position on the map (and using a paintball to keep them targeted), their position is always shown. No more time wasted wandering around like a jackass trying to find a monster that flew or burrowed itself to a different area. There were still times I got lost, but that was really my own fault. You need a certain amount of awareness when traveling the map to get a good feel for it on later hunts, especially when there are underground areas and plateaus and such. These improvements mean battles average out between 15-22 minutes, which is just enough time to feel long without getting tedious.



The roster of monsters totals out to 35, which feels a bit paltry. I don't know if this is because I've been playing MH for ten years now, but the first ten or so monsters seem to get increasingly trivial with each entry. I went several hours in without getting so much as knocked out. It felt more like a chore to get to the meat of the game. There are three interchangeable bird-wyverns (basically dinosaurs) at the beginning that felt particularly lazy. I would prefer a trial by fire approach rather than a gradual (very gradual) difficulty curve, but I guess that's considered archaic game design now or whatever. I will say the new monsters introduced are pretty cool. My favorite in particular is the Bishaten, a monkey-bird hybrid that attacks you with giant fruit (which you can pick back up and use to restore health or throw back). The Pukei-Pukei also makes a glorious return, so at least we have that.


The plot is severely cut compared to World's, and my god is that a welcome change. Hunting monsters and using their guts as armor doesn't need to be a grand narrative. It takes about 12 hours to finish Rise's single player campaign until you're let loose to fight high-rank monsters in multiplayer. None of the single player quests can be played with other people, meaning you can't coast your way through it with friends who have endgame gear. The following three-fourths of the game take place in Guild quests, which continue the single player story with harder monsters that can be fought with up to three other people. It took me about 47 hours to see the game's ending, but from my understanding there's a patch coming out later this month that adds more endgame content. I'm a little disappointed by the length, and in this case I think a few subspecies (ideally brand new monsters but hey, whatever) could have extended things without making it feel dragged out. I guess you can minmax your characters stats to be as absurdly OP as possible, but that's never really appealed to me in MH. I'll probably clear more of the endgame missions for completion's sake, but it would be nice to have something tangible to work toward. Maybe the update will alleviate this. I suppose most people don't regularly pull off five-hour gaming sessions in the first place, but what is MH if not a legal opiate?


Rise introduces Rampages, a sort of tower defense/raid mode that requires you to set up traps and weaponry around your base to ward off approaching monsters. You have three or four (depending on the difficulty) gates to defend, and once the last one is breached it's game over. The difficulty scaling of Rampages feels kind of odd – it's either all or nothing. The first time I did a Rampage mission I had monsters attacking my final gate for what felt like half the mission and I still won. Then later missions introduce Apex Beasts, which are bosses that will automatically wreck your first three gates (assuming they're still up) and go straight to the fourth. These can be incredibly difficult but also really satisfying. I've always had a soft spot for the gimmick fights in Monster Hunter even though in retrospect they're mostly tedious and poorly-implemented, but I love the feeling of teaming up with three buddies to fight off a monster the size of a skyscraper from a tower or ship or whatever. Rampage makes those fights a separate section of gameplay entirely and gives it way more variety.


One gameplay change I didn't care for was the mounting of monsters, or lack thereof. Starting with MH4 if you sprinted off cliffs or ledges you could do a downward attack that had a chance of mounting a monster, and you would repeatedly stab it while until it fell over, all while trying to avoid getting knocked off. That's gone in Rise and replaced with controlling monsters, but in designated parts of the fight. If two monsters roam into the same area they'll fight each other, and when one topples over you can use your wirebug to then ride the toppled monster and control it, usually to crash into a wall or attack another monster. The novelty wears off fairly quickly and it's very clunky to control. Mounting monsters in previous games gave a nice sense of scale to the battles and made them feel more dynamic, but in Rise it's just not as interesting.


There was a lot of worry over the Switch being Rise's native platform, particularly in framerate and online functionality. Clearly it never runs at 60 FPS, but there wasn't any point where it felt sluggish to me, other than maybe a few cutscenes. The graphics aren't spectacular but they get the job done, and really it's something of a miracle the RE Engine could even function on the Switch. Online play was also really smooth, and I never had any noticeable lag (other than a few visual things like other players teleporting short distances), even when matched up with Japanese players. I'd like to mention there's a quirky mechanic where you can “like” players at the end of a hunt to indicate they did a good job, and getting more likes give you small bonus items or something. It automatically lets you like someone after a fight by holding the D-pad direction corresponding to their name, so naturally everyone (myself included) just gives them out like candy. Perhaps there was some sort of influence from Death Stranding there? I don't know, but it's an entirely superfluous yet cute feature.


Monster Hunter Rise lacks the same novelty of scope World had due to the series essentially skipping an entire console generation (the director of 3 specifically chose the Wii to keep costs down), but that's not the game's fault. Pretty much all of the new changes (with the exception of the mounting) are for the better. The various refinements, both large and small, make Rise more than the sum of its parts; I just wish there were more to sink my teeth into. The question for most fans will be whether or not it's worth it to get Rise on the Switch when it's coming out on PC a year later. I bought a PS4 specifically to play World early (well, Bloodborne was a factor too) so I may not be as fiscally responsible as most. It did, however, take like a year for World to become a decent port, so there's a gamble in that unless you're really patient. Regardless, you'll almost certainly like Rise if you're a returning MH fan, and it's also an accessible starting point for beginners.

Despite its success, Rise is unpopular with many series fans who feel like it's a step back from World but also not a return to "classic" MonHun. There's no denying that Rise had a troubled development cycle because of the pandemic, and was released in a somewhat barebones state for series standards. This has been partially fixed by free updates, but more worrying is the somewhat lopsided gameplay, which makes it too easy to overwhelm monsters with all your new hunting tricks. The whole experience feels a little fast-food for Monster Hunter, and not because it follows in the "more accessible" steps of World. It lacks an engrossing endgame to sink your teeth into, and there's a surprising lack of build variety. But with that said, Rise has great style, revamps elements of gameplay in delightful ways (riding palamutes and zipping around with wirebugs is very fun), and still offers the familiar thrill of a handheld Monster Hunter, which is more than enough for me to be happy with. I think this is the foundation for a great new era of the series.