The words "confused direction" often pop up in my review outlines and they almost never makes the jump from draft to final copy. I dunno, much like "too wordy" or "nonsensical", I feel accusing a game of not knowing what it wants to be is a weirdly infantilizing complaint that often says more about the writer than the game they're talking about. In shorter terms: It's not a wise thing to say because there's a 90% chance it just makes you look like an idiot.

But for the longest time I did feel like MH Rise and its expansion had a very confused direction. Coming on the heels of MH Generations Ultimate (a mega compilation and the final sendoff to Old Monster Hunter) and MH World (the game that expanded the franchise's obscene popularity past the borders of East Asia), it struck me as an odd game because it was too much like World for me to call it a New-Old MH game but it also felt a bit too Portable for me to say that they were backstepping from World.
This only got worse with Sunbreak, which featured a much more relaxed Master/G Rank compared to World's sharper scaling yet also introduced muuuuuuuuuch more moveset complexity via switch scrolls and cooler switch skills which harkened back to the previous game. The end result was an experience that, while I didn't hate, left me so bothered that I kinda just left the game to rot for a while.

There's also the matter of Rise's difficulty to consider. 'Difficulty' in a very skill-based game is always a nebulous topic, as it's extremely hard to gauge properly. People who struggle for one reason or another tend to have bloated ideas of what constitutes 'hard', petulent scrubs tend to assume anything they struggle with is 'bad design', and people who're too good often get so far from their bad days that anything they stomp is 'too easy'. I'm in the latter camp, though I try not to assume everyone else is on my level.
Rise is an easy game. There's just not much else to say. I've played it in co-op with a fantastic variety of people and very few of them struggle without some extrinsic modifier being applied (motor issues, dyspraxia, whatever) and even those people learn to love the silkbinds and pray. The mere act of getting hit becomes a non-issue thanks to wirefalls and the name of the game for each moveset is 'safe' these days. Having a close-knit community helps on this front, as World tends to make the same people who stomp Rise struggle, which is a decent gauge for me personally.

Now, up until very recently, I assumed all of these elements were at odds with one another and rarely questioned it.

However, I've been getting back into writing fiction lately. Honkai Star Rail still has me in a vice grip, sorry, it's why my reviews have been so sparse. When I write fiction and get stalled by a scene, I have what I call the '30 minute rule': I take a break to do something - go for a walk, play a quick mission in a game, make dinner, etc etc - and come back. If my break didn't help me work out the scene, I annihilate it and try again.

Rise has been, for the last couple weeks, my 30 minute game, and in treating it this way I've come to a realization:

The aforementioned elements aren't at odds with one another. Quite the contrary, they're exceptionally harmonious.

I realize now that trying to pigeonhole Rise as either Old MH or World 2 is reductive, and also a total non-starter. Rather, I'd argue Rise is a symbiotic fusion of the two. World allowed itself to run longer and flashier because as a console game the developers were allowed to assume the player would be seated for quite some time. Rise, having launched on the Switch, instead makes the assumption that it'll be played in no longer than 30 minute intervals. It is, in a sense, an attempt to bring the spectacle and involved movesets of World to the format and demographic that initially propped the franchise up. Neither Old nor World, but something unique.

Playing both of them concurrently really peels the bandage off there.

World is a console game first and foremost. The effort involved in tracking, locating and hunting a monster is amplified massively compared to other MH games, especially once Iceborne kicks in. The 'meta' for Iceborne thus became damage centric, because even perfect play leads to relatively longer hunts. This isn't really a bad thing, but I'll dig into that discourse if I ever review World. Which, given Rise has swept most of my friend circles and I can't stop thinking about Stelle kissing March 7th, isn't likely anytime soon.

Rise, as a portable game, is operating under assumption you'll bust it out for 15-20 minutes while on the way to your soul-crushing office job and tailors things accordingly. Unless you're truly dogshit (and hey, everyone can get better), the ballpark for hunts IME is about 7-20 minutes, and it bends over backwards to hand you the tools to facilitate them. It's still 'the Monster Hunter experience', it's just been compressed a little.
There's this saying among older MH players that the series is actually turn based, and I'd concur. Using that metaphor; pre-Rise games are traditional ally-enemy-ally-enemy-ally-enemy turn based like in Dragon Quest. Rise is more like a Turn Order game (think FFX, Trails or Honkai Star Rail, Octopath Traveler or whatever) where characters still take turns but there's an incredible amount of benefit to be gained from ensuring they either can't take turns, or can take successive turns.

Hardcore MiraMiraOTW Followers might remember that, back when I discussed Wild Hearts last year, that review was more akin to someone writing out why they broke up with their ex and why their new wife is so cool.
Truthfully, I never really did discard a lot of those confused feelings about the hunting genre, but they've been replaced by me simply refusing to acknowledge it exists.

As I alluded to up above, I've gotten good at MH. I've gotten really good at MH. I'm pretty much the only person who never carts when I play in multiplayer and I'm at the point now where the word "damage window" means nothing to me, because if I really want to land an Impact Crater or Perfect Rush, I'm going to. In replaying the game lately I found myself not actually upgrading my gear all that often because until the Afflicted/Risen monsters show up, a few levels of Attack Boost are extraneous when you're pretty much Batman beating up thugs in Arkham.

The downside to this, which I hope to extrapolate on if I ever finish that highly negative MGR review, is that the illusion of the 'hunting genre' has slipped through my fingers. It is a mirage that I got to lounge in for a while before it evaporated. 'Prep' is just refilling my consumables or making a new weapon, and honestly it's something I only do if I ever take too long on a fight. The number of fights I'm not confident in is rapidly dropping, and once I stop being afraid of Chaotic Gore Magala it'll be down to 2 - neither of which are even in Rise.

In its place, I find... A singleplayer replacement for fighting games.

I liked FGs a lot once upon a time, but nowadays I don't enjoy PVP and find the eternally shifting nature of live service FGs unappealing, yet I still yearn for a game where practice, knowledge and repetition produce tangible results in the outcome of fights.
More than anything, MH and its clones have filled that niche. Yes, I can whomp Shagaru Magala silly, but I could do it better. I could do it faster. I could hit 100% of my Impact Craters rather than 99% of them. 10 minutes is good, but it could be lower. 2 Mega Potions used is admirable, but 0 is ideal. So on, so forth.

Also, as a very brief aside, this might have the best new-monster lineup of the entire franchise, and the returning lineup is nuts too. Announcing Seregios and Shagaru Magala alongside the utter beauty that is Malzeno is a flex most developers would kill to be able to pull off. Everything here is gorgeous, and honestly if I wasn't hellbent on keeping a divide between my personal and literary sides, I'd put out an open offer for me to carry you through Magnamalo, Malzeno or any of the Magalas.

I do have two major complaints though, both of which combined have knocked a star off.

The first is that, put bluntly, the distribution of Switch Skills is very much a case of "all weapons are equal, but some are more equal than others". Every weapon gets roughly the same about of skills and silkbinds, but whether they're good or not is a whole other kettle of crabs and Sunbreak letting you have two Switch Skill loadouts basically shone a spotlight on it.
Take Longsword, Sword & Shield or Hammer, for instance. They get a collection of incredibly useful, versatile additionsthat turn excellent weapons into mythical weapons. There aren't any bad choices with them and with Sunbreak they essentially allow you to carry two entirely different weapons into battle.
...But then there's weapons like the Lance and Greatsword, whose additions are middling at best. So much so that a lot of the time it's hard to justify ever switching off of the defaults. Yeah, Greatsword gets a cool new fast-damaging combo set, but it's still a weapon focused around powerful strikes which now takes much longer to hit its True Charged Slash.

Don't get me wrong, these weapons aren't bad because MH is perhaps the one series that's managed weapon balance properly, but the difference in attention is noticeable if you play a wide spread.

The second issue is less egregious, but really annoying to me specifically:

Most of the arrangements for returning monsters aren't great. Rise's initial theming draws from the classical Japanese of MHP3rd's Yukumo, and the soundtrack thus uses more traditional instruments when rearranging. The end result is while the arrangements are impressive, many of the songs with the most impact - Zinogre's, Astalos' and Valstrax's most noticeably - have lost some oomph. I'm frankly glad Glavenus didn't come back, I couldn't stand to hear my favourite non-Elder theme get crushed.
This may seem like nitpicking, but to me music is a huge part of the MH package. At least 40% of the reason why Shara Ishvalda is my favourite G-Rank capstone is because its theme has such an incredible amount of otherworldly energy to it that the monster ends up feeling more demonic than the monsters which explicitly have demonic theming. Likewise with Shagaru Magala and Shantien.

But anyway, let me stop burying the lede for a moment.

This is less of a review and more me preaching the importance of engaging with things on their own merits. The entire crux of why I disliked Risebreak at first was simply me trying to make it seem congrous with two other games, and steadfastly refusing to engage with the game on its own merits. In refusing to just see "MH Rise", I ended up with a stance that, on further inspection, was completely nonsensical.
Sure, sequels by their nature draw comparisons to past games in the franchise, but in iterative franchises I feel the forest often gets lost for the trees, you know? MH Rise is a Monster Hunter title, yes, but if World was allowed to stand on its own two feet, why not extend that mercy to Rise? If GU is allowed to be considered its own game when it's just a compilation toybox, why insist Rise has to be either it or World?
I sure wish Xenoblade fans would learn this lesson about XBC3.

Anyway, totally irrelevant trivia for you: This review took 29 minutes to write.