Absolutely fantastic expansion. The smaller scale lends itself really well to the story and the new combat system compensates for the smaller cast by allowing each member to have 2 blades each.

The battle system itself is really fun to use, being mostly similar to the main title but with some differences both better and, not worse, but not as good imo. The blade combos being more flexible makes them easier to understand on a base level but the secrecy behind which combos grant bonus damage is a bit disappointing.

Anyway besides that almost every complaint I had about XC2 is gone from this, and while I prefer the cast/story overall of the main game as a standalone expansion this is great in both those regards. The only reason I'm giving this 4.5 instead of 5 is due to the baffling decision to force the Community Level being increased to Level 4 to progress the story.

In order to progress this: you need to complete side quests... -_- Most of these weren't that bad to be fair, leveling from 1 to 2 at the first block was perfectly fine, just 2 hours of mostly combat or exploration, no problem. But having to then go and recruit 32 more supporters (twice as many as the first time) was just bruh. It took twice as long, and the more quests you do the fewer options there are, until by the end you're almost forced to do one of the far-too-many "hey go collect a shit load of this thing for me" quests which I really do not enjoy. Shifting that down to Level 3 in order to force players to do more combat/exploration through side quests (and just spend more time with the party in general) would've been perfectly acceptable, but requiring Level 4 is just bizarre and sours an otherwise near perfect expansion.

Overall, this is probably a little better than XC2 in terms of structure and being far less frustrating as a whole. If you played that then this is 100% worth your time :)

As the Ultimate upgrade to Rise there's no real surprises here, but there's something to be said for such consistent franchise quality - Monster Hunter is the most rock-solid brand name in gaming at this point, and an expansion pack to one of the best entries in the series is more than welcome; I'd be more than happy if Capcom just kept using Rise as a bedrock for an MMO-lite every year or two until the Switch finally combusts under the heat their developers have been bringing to the platform. With its sheer depth of customisable content and player expression, this is basically FFXIV for people who don't pee into bottles under their computer desk.

Criticisms can be made of Sunbreak, but they're all short-term annoyances in an expansion that could comfortably push a hundred hours. Like the original, there's an overabundance of pop-ups explaining Lucent Cromp Wenbembo Gems and DX Bugwire Casking+ that you'll never remember (until you finally need them weeks later), but it's a just an awkward signifier of how much gameplay-focused content has been crammed in to an ever-evolving ecosystem that always feels perfect until the next great idea comes along and takes thing to snow-capped heights you never imagined yourself climbing. As a Scot it also kinda pains me to trade out Fake Japan for Fake England as a hunting hub, but Capcom have done a great job of steamlining the beautiful "living menu" system Monhun thrives on even further, making the TTK even shorter than it was already; the new environment and its characters are full of more life than ever, and the follower quests are a fantastic "about damn time" inclusion to the experience that helps form an NPC-bond that goes deeper than the usual "you have a cute idle animation" acknolwedgements.

As a Freedom Unite fan, the updated Jungle brought a pixellated 480x272 tear to my eye (bring back plessy too pls...), but the Citadel is the true star of this show. A masterclass in map design that maximises every advantage of the Rise toolset, it's gotta be one of my favourite Monhun maps of all time - an Akumajo Dracula-type beat that feels like the Magala's true resting place. While I love all the imports from MH4U, there's fewer new monsters than I'd have liked - but the Monster Mash trio are so incredibly well-crafted that it's hard to be annoyed that the roster has been padded out with Really Annoyed Nargacuga and Pissed-Off Pukei-Pukei - when the combat's this good, who doesn't love a bit of repetition anyways?

Like with the original game, it's hard to give a definitive opinion on something that outright acknowledges that it isn't finished - but I have loved every moment on the Rise train so far. I just like having fun with my friends, okay? 😊

I was loving this game until I decided to buckle down and actually finish the main quest, big mistake, the best way to enjoy this game is to ignore it as much as you can.

The exploration and sidequesting in this game is the best in the franchise and only gets better as the game goes on and you acquire the mechs and the flight module. I'd like to say the combat is the best as well but the balancing feels half-assed due to the sheer amount of options you have with all the systems. It's a big downgrade from the original xenoblade which distributed what the characters could do very nicely and nothing really felt overpowered or underpowered. On the flipside of that the battles flow faster here and the added mechanics like soul voices and overdrive make it a lot of fun and differentiate it from its predecessor. I also felt like the enemy placement wasn't given much thought, it's almost random at times. Skell combat is poorly implemented and basically useless if you build your characters right. The online aspects of this game also feel extremely shoehorned and ends up just being a way to get free stuff for doing nothing.

Now remember that main quest I mentioned? It's the most poorly structured I've seen in a game, it's nearly NES era JRPG tier. Nothing happens until the final chapter where you get about an hour of infodumping before and after the final bosses and even in between phases. To add insult to injury it ends on a cliffhanger, the one part of the story I actually thought was cool, the ending, is sequel bait without delivering even half of what this felt like it was building up to with its awesome concept. This game was juggling so many plot points at once, doing absolutely nothing with them, and then dropping all of them by the end.

Last but not least I wanted to talk about the characters: