- 90 hours played
- Weapon of choice - Light bow Gun

YouTube tells me that I can’t prefer this game to World. YouTube also tells me that comparing them is unfair due to the Switch’s limitations. Limitations be damned. I loved this game. Also since World is the only other game I have played in the series, that’s my point of comparison.

I recently completed base World and whilst I enjoyed it, I found its sluggish combat and immersive elements frustrating. Rise doesn’t suffer that at all because it’s made for handheld consoles. Its gameplay is designed around pick up and play short bursts. This game wastes no time and I appreciated that.

The combat is fast, flashy and always frantic. The wire bug enables fantastic levels of traversal. I was flipping around these arenas bullying the monsters. It felt amazing. The monsters can’t really compete with your mobility and couple that with some Insane damage output and Rise can be a very easy game. But it’s still enjoyable and its gameplay loop is maddeningly addictive.

I much preferred the hunt quests in this game. Gone are the immersive elements of looking for tracks and scratch marks to find the monster. The maps are already scouted by Cahoot, your pet owl so the monsters show up on the map at the start of the quest. The Palamute dog mounts act like horses, making traversal faster and getting to the action quicker. The quality of life changes make picking up bone piles and mining spots much faster, one click of the button picks up everything from the spot. Instead of three separate presses of the button in World. They also added a pause function in this game which I really missed in MH World.

Despite the graphical limitations of the Switch I much preferred this games art style. I felt it had more character. There was no issues with visual clarity and reading what was on screen and I loved the monster designs. Especially the little monster symbols drawn on the quest board.

The monster roster felt more unique as there seemed to be more types of monsters other than Wyverns. Quest wise there’s not much variety. We get Hunt, capture and rampage quests. Hunt and capture are self explanatory but Rampage is something new. It’s a horde mode style of mission and to be honest, these were awful. I only played those required for story progression and then forgot about them entirely. I also wasn’t a fan of the Spiribird system. Collecting Spiribirds every hunt to increase my max health and stamina got boring fast, therefore I never completed a hunt with a full health or stamina gauge. Outside of the missions where a Max Spiribird is supplied right at the start.

Overall I loved my time with Monster Hunter Rise but there’s a decent chunk of the game I just don’t care for. The inclusion of the Rampage missions is the only thing holding this game back from 5 stars.

Top 5 Monster Designs
1. Magnamalo
2. Anjanath
3. Mizutsune
4. Rakna-Kadaki
5. Khezu

Top 5 favourite monster fights
1. Magnamalo
2. Mizutsune
3. Anjanath
4. Rathalos
5. Rajang

Top 5 least favourite monster fights
1. Jyuratodus
2. Barroth
3. Volvidon
4. Basarious
5. Tigrex

Amazing gameplay, I hope to see more of these dynamic additions in Wilds as well. I could really spend hours on this game, but I can't give 5/5 because the monsters choices weren't it. Too many fire element monsters, too little diversity in quests; it was refreshing to see return old monsters like Amatsu and Espinas, and I just wish they would've done more of that instead of adding all those Risen versions, and other "classic" monsters we see in every chapter, like Kushala and Teostra. The rampage is also a type of mission I hope I won't see again.

A good game, although honestly after Monster Hunter World it is very difficult to surpass that peak, and obviously it does not surpass it even remotely. However, it has different mechanics than MHW, but I hate that they removed mechanics that were implemented in MHW that made it a better game. In any case, it is a game that applies new unique mechanics well, they added cordocopters, and a dog that you can ride to get to places faster. However, they should have balanced the game a little more, since as soon as you start they give you level 7 armor, which makes you almost immortal if you know how to play a little.

As for the scenarios, compared to the previous game, they seem somewhat boring and do not seem to be at the design level. I've only played 5 Monster Hunter titles since 2005 and this one feels more like older titles like Monster Hunter Freedom Unite but with advanced graphics 15 years ahead.

However, both games cannot be compared, Rise is different despite being from the same franchise. The environment, for example, is calmer, calm to the point that a monster hits you and you don't feel that they are hard until you reach rank 8 and each game, even if it takes 40 minutes, seems to take 15.

It takes you 25 hours of the game to know that you are going to repeat the same maps over and over again for the next 1000 hours. It will take you 30 or 40 minutes to complete each mission as you will want to explore and farm as much as possible.

After 40 hours of playing you realize that you wasted your time farming since IT IS NOT NECESSARY because your items become obsolete with a click when you go from Low Rank to High Rank. There is no gradual improvement, simply from one mission to another you have everything obsolete and you will continue using the same Level 7 armor that they gave you at the beginning and you will end up rushing the objective, and killing the monster in 10 or 12 minutes maximum.

After 60 hours you get to the "real" game and you feel that you are starting to have a hard time killing enemies. All this without manufacturing ANYTHING, just improving the main weapon you choose from the 14 classes they give you at the beginning of the game 4 times.

Later in the game, around 100h you start experimenting with amulets and things like that, which is when they really come in handy. But honestly it is not worth spending 80 hours doing the same thing over and over again, since you will only spend 80 hours dodging and left clicking 2150 times until you kill the creature they sent you.

The game is so easy that my friend is at Rank 10 without having read a single dialogue or tutorial in the game.

If you don't like farming games over and over and over and over again. I don't recommend it, for you it will be a 0/10. At first it will surprise you but after 20 hours of playing when you run out of new maps it plummets a lot.

If you like farming games over and over again. Games where you can spend 1500 hours doing the same thing all the time in addition to having friends who like it too and want to hunt monsters together is highly recommended. Something close to a 7/10.

For me, personally, nothing new more than leaving everything behind 200 hours of gaming and micropayments. It bored me so much that I decided to revive my PSP and play Monster Hunter Freedom, which I have put even more hours into than this title.

Took me two years to actually get around to finishing this despite loving MH and vastly preferring the old style they used here to World's vibe.

This game makes me sad.
You can stop reading here. That's the "review."

It brought back everything I liked about MH pre-World, while keeping all the good QoL from World, and adding a few new things for good measure. But the experience just feels so off.

Movement's better, everything is faster, but the maps are worse. They look better and more distinct, but the level design for some areas is incomprehensibly bad, because they overshot the verticality. This hurts me because my favorite thing about 4U was the verticality.

Combat is more fluid, but wirebugs are annoying. They're still better than the Clutch Claw spam of lategame World/Iceborne but spidermanning around lost its appeal very fast for me, other than getting right back to it after being knocked away.

Rampages suck. Rampages SUCK. The devs agree and it will never come back, and for that I am thankful. No more time will be spent talking about it.

Menu management is probably the worst it's been. There's about as much stuff to keep track of as XX, but the menus are spread all over the place. The delay between menus/traversing areas drives me insane. All the hoops I have to jump through to get a simple thing done drive me insane. Even the Gathering Hub isn't safe from having its menus all over the place and being a hassle to just make a proper lobby.

I was so excited that Village Quests are back, and they do absolutely nothing with it. You get one piss easy fight and the credits roll instantly, then they send you to the hub. I thought of every other MH doing this better and went to sleep early out of disappointment. Reportedly Sunbreak does this a lot better, but I'm still mustering the courage to start it after wrapping up Hub Quests.

They brought back the amazing armor/weapon designs every game except World had, and I'm very thankful for that. I just wish they had made it less of a chore to get through the game and actually get those.

I bought this at half off and I still feel like I got scammed.
Maybe Sunbreak will deliver.

Monster Hunter Rise feels like the core ideas and mechanics of the game are there and great but get held back massively by being a port of a switch game. Throughout this review I will be comparing to MHW quite a bit as that was the last MH game I played and is apart of the same gen.

Firstly the story of this game was incredibly bare bones. The flagship monster for this game appears for one cutscene and proceeds to die in roughly 15 minutes in a quest not too long after. Magnamalo as a monster is cool and I enjoyed his fight but the build up is non existent and ends way too soon. In comparison to a monster like Nergigante who you repel twice and has enough build up to make him feel like a threat, Magnamalo falls flat hard and it’s a real shame considering how good of a design he has.

Rest of the story follows a pretty similar problem. The rampage never really felt developed on and the appearance and problems Ibushi causes is glossed over and done with very quickly. Narwas even worse for it as you don’t even get to see the resonance as it happens off screen. It all just feels very empty and not enough moment to moment story sections to make me care for the main threats of the game. Once again however design wise the serpents are stunning and their fights are alright but that’s all they’ve got going.

Due to the story being lacklustre the characters suffer also. Despite them being named this time around they don’t get the time to do much or have anything going for them. Even though I thought the characters in world were just okay, they still had the opportunity to interact more because of how the story is structured. Rise doesn’t really give the characters or monsters this chance making the game boil down to just doing hunts with no real link between them excluding the urgent quests. Even then those urgent quests feel quite disconnected and are just like normal hunts.

Like with MHW however, the story for these games is not the primary reason I play these games. I love the lore of the monsters and the world that the games take place in but the actual story I’m fine with being just okay like MHWs. Typically I do like having some kind of strong structure or continuity connecting the quests like MHW but where this game shines the most is in its gameplay.

Rise’s gameplay is incredibly fun. I think the switch skills and move set swapping system was such a good addition to the game and allows for attuning your weapon to whatever you prefer or need. All of these skills don’t get outclassed by their counterpart as each have a specific use that can only be accomplished by using these skills. The Palamutes (mounts) are amazing additions and I’m glad they are going to add something similar to Wilds. Having a mount you can use to freely and quickly traverse the map is great and was needed a lot in MHW.

However this game feels a lot less weighty and impactful with its gameplay as the sound effects and visual effects like screen shake and hit stop aren’t as heavy makes it feel like I’m hitting the monster with a twig at times. The impact is still there for stuff like the hammer and greatsword but unlike MHW where every action felt like there was huge weight behind it, Rise sacrifices that for speedier gameplay which some might prefer.

Visuals are never something I complain about especially since the switch has limited capability but they are obviously lower detail. For the most part this lower detail didn’t bother me as its art style was still incredibly strong and some of the new monsters looked fantastic.

The area design is what I really think this game gets set back by from it being a switch game. Once again in comparison to MHW, there is severely less interaction with the monsters, you and the environment. The areas feel a lot more basic and don’t have these small things that can make hunts unique just off the environment alone. The best example I have is Diablos in MHW and Rise. In MHW I was in the middle of fighting two other monster above this section of desert that solely exists for Diablos to emerge from and engulf the other monsters into it whereas in Rise Diabolos is just another monster in the desert and the environment has nothing unique to interact with.

This was such a huge thing for me in MHW as it was everywhere: the flood taking Rathalos down a cliff, Boulders that can be dropped on monsters, the volcanic eruptions in Elders Recess, The ice crags falling and limiting movement, tons of more examples that made the hunts unpredictable at times and this doesn’t even include certain monsters who will purposely intervene in your fight. None of this was present in Rise and it was a massive shame.

Music as always is brilliant and I really don’t need to comment much on it since this review is long enough. Fits the style of the game and sounds fantastic.

Overall the game is great to put on and get a few hunts in. With small maps and much more favourable options for the hunter it’s easy to hunt a few things and be done within the hour, something that was probably intentional with it being a switch game. MHR doesn’t come without its limitations but I’m still interested to see what Sunbreak has as these games love to save their best for the DLC.

7/10

mayhaps visually a bit of a step down from monster hunter world, i think rise still has a lot of charm, and it plays as good as mhw, with stuff i sometimes even like more. i do think the actual story content is pretty light but monster hunter's usually more about the actual hunting anyway, so it's all fine.

if you liked monster hunter world, there's a pretty good chance you'll vibe w this one too, much faster gameplay loop though, without the need to go out and search for the target monster(s) after the first time you do it. it does expedite farming quite a bit which is nice enough.

my one real complaint is kinda just not vibing too much w the way spiritbirds work, capping off max hp until you find enough of them, which i find to be a little annoying sometimes tbh