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slade-neko · 3 years

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Monster Hunter Rise ~ My Thoughts

Oh, man, Monster Hunter Rise, where to begin?! I guess I’ll start with the game itself in a nutshell is a BLAST! It’s not without a few issues I have with it personally, but I’ve been having a lot of fun playing it nonetheless. I want to take the time to mention I am a second generation hunter myself. Started playing Monster Hunter in 2008 with Freedom 2 on PSP at the tender age of 13. So its safe to say I’ve got a lot to say about this game! If you want to read the full thing then here it is.

This review is MOSTLY spoiler-free! There isn’t a lot you can spoil in this game... I mention some endgame stuff and there is a screenshot that contains the final boss’s armor but not focused on it. Just a friendly warning if you are a die-hard spoiler avoider.

The Weapon Types

I’ll start with the fact that the weapon types in MH Rise are all really fun to play and have very well polished movesets. I haven’t extensively played with all the weapon types, but I’d like to say a few things about the ones I have been using. Long Sword feels the best it has ever been in the entire series in my opinion, ironically this game starts you off with a Long Sword equipped too.

I went ham with Long Sword throughout the main story, but now have swapped over to maining Light Bowgun. I was a big Heavy Bowgun main in MH World, but shield spreadshot builds don't feel the same for me as they did in World, but the Light Bowgun in this game shreds. Narga Piercing LBG for distance shooting and then Magnamalo Spread LBG for getting up close and personal. Evade Extender 3 makes zipping around the battlefield a breeze and next to impossible to get hit making it a very fun and rewarding playstyle.

My brother on the other hand has been hitting hard with Long Sword and the new Hunting Horn. He misses the original note playing at times, but the damage on HH is insane and healing constantly with the Rampage Horn is a big plus too for a game with no health regen factors. He’s been building sets for nearly every weapon type, but LS and HH are his two mains. Both weapon types were introduced in 2nd Gen, where we started, so maining those two for him is a bit symbolic. Also the fact that LS has been heralded as the most used weapon-type and HH the least used as of recent games is a neat contrast to use both.

The Characters, Setting, and Story

I know Monster Hunter isn’t exactly known for it’s characters or story, heck most games hardly had a story until World came out. Typically Monster Hunter games follow the simple formula of big bad flagship monster causing problems with local village and ecosystem, hunt it, happy ending?, turns out bigger badder scarier secret boss monster was actually causing the problems, hunt it, true happy ending. Nothing wrong with that, I can roll with whatever story they make, majority of players are here for the gameplay. That said, I still enjoy and appreciate what story the devs put together no matter how it turns out. I liked what Rise offered, nothing too grand like World, more of a simple story following the old games formula.

Surprisingly I haven’t seen many people talk about the characters in this game and the little fact that this is the first time in the ENTIRE SERIES (outside of MH Stories) characters have REAL names! Hinoa, Minoto, Fugen, Yomogi, Iori, Hamon, Rondine, Hojo, Utsushi, like honest to goodness actual NAMES, not “Blacksmith,” “Village Elder,” or “Fish Mongress.” The characters are fun though, nice and memorable, not really annoying. Also following World’s fully voice-acted characters is a nice touch. I sometimes miss the days of old when characters had simple grunts and you read everything, but I doubt that will ever come back now, just something lost to the classic MH games.

Then there’s the super Asian-inspired ninja-like theme to the entire game. You’ll either love it, hate it, or maybe you don’t care about how the village is at all. I like the whole ninja aesthetic while it does work for this game in particular, but I will admit its a little bit weird in the entirety of Monster Hunter as a series.

The Hunts, Gameplay, and Everything Else

Ah yes, the gameplay, the heart of the Monster Hunter games... while yes I do think this game is a lot of fun overall, I do have a few complaints with it... I’m going to break this down into mini-sections because there is a lot to cover here.

Quest Preparations Maybe I’m just old school, but I feel like they took away a lot of the prep work for going on hunts. No cold/ hot drinks, access full inventory on quests, refill items, no longer eat for attack/ def buffs, monsters always visible on maps, no random spawning on High Rank quests, little things like that. In the old games you had to prepare for each hunt, it was part of the game. You go after a big monster, you make sure you got everything you need to win BEFORE you depart on the quest. It feels like they are double-downing more so on just the fighting itself.

Tracking Monsters Monsters aren’t even tracked anymore, they’re always visible on your map. No having to run around and look for them like classic MH games... Though to be fair maybe that’s better off in the old games with the paintball tracking system and individual loaded areas than in a game with a fully open-world setting because I got headaches tracking monsters in MH World’s open-world especially the Ancient Forest.

The Monsters The new monsters in this game a welcome addition. I don’t really have any problems with their designs or fights. Have to say Goss Horag has a very fun fight, but my favorite new monster is probably Rakna-Kadaki. A pelican spider is a dang neat idea for a monster and there aren’t a lot of Temnocerans. Would love to see the return of the Carapaceons though! This is literally the perfect game for Shen-Gaoren to come back with the new rampage system! Bring back my giant enemy crab, Capcom please!

Monster Behavior/ Minion Monsters/ Herbivores Added this subsection to talk specifically about the monsters’ behaviors in this game along with the minion monsters cause while not very important overall there are still some things to be said.

Same thing in MH World, but the monsters act more like animals now. While yes, that is more realistic and is mostly a good thing, but it honestly gives me second thoughts about hunting them. In World most boss monsters wouldn’t attack you unless you attacked them first. That made me feel terrible walking up to a calm Teostra just chilling in the dunes and then I start smacking the heck outta it with a weapon... Old games the monsters saw you, the “something’s gonna getcha music starts playing” and then it charges you and your in the fight! Now its like you’re the monster killing a bunch of animals (exaggerating a bit, but still!)

What’s not exaggerated is the minions in this game. The old games had minions that were incredibly annoying and I wanted to kill them. This game however has the sweet little bullfangos, jagras, and other minions just lazing around sleeping. My brother and I were in need of Rhenoplos scalps for some gear, set out on a quest to slay some, find them peacefully sleeping by some rocks and I ask my brother, “Okay, so you gonna bash its skull in with your hammer and pop its eyes out or am I gonna fill it full of lead with my bowgun?” Needlessly violent example, I know, but it still makes the point that it feels more like animal cruelty when they aren’t bothering anyone. I’d rather the minions just start charging me and piss me off as a player, so I wouldn’t feel bad defending myself to take them out.

Lastly, there’s the herbivores. Not a lot to say on the matter, but I feel like they could’ve given a few more herbivore types. Like no Aptonoth in this game? I thought they were kinda a staple of the series for herbivores. I also feel like the maps could feel a bit more lively with more herbivores placed around. Maybe Mosswines in the Shrine Ruins, especially when scaling the central mountain shrine with the mushroom colonies everywhere. Great spots for mushroom piggies!

The Maps/ Locales I love them! Well for the most part. They are good and I don’t dislike any in particular. My only problems is that they sometimes feel too big, too open, and too empty. I know they have a lot of stuff in them, gathering points, spiribirds, relics, and many other things, but there is an odd sense of emptiness there. Like I mentioned earlier, I think perhaps adding in more scattered monsters might’ve helped that a bit. Only other thing to mention is that the new locales rely too heavily on the Palamutes to get around effectively. I personally like bringing my kitties with me on multiplayer quests, so I am at the mercy of wirebug zipping to get around and often left behind.

Oh, last thing I will mention on maps is while its not in the base game, I pray they add back the Tower as a map. Preferably the 2nd Gen version where you start at base camp and scale the tower. A game that’s all about rising and verticality, the Tower is literally the PERFECT map to have in this game!

Spiribirds Love em or hate them, there’s the Spiribirds. Cool concept, but I don’t think it works very well in my opinion. I don’t care about roaming the map to collect my bird buffs, I just want to eat for Attack Up large like old games and be done. I definitely try to grab them when I can, but I can’t be bothered to chase down all the birds each and every hunt just to get my full Attack up buff.

Wirebugs On with the title of the game being Rise giving meaning to the new wirebugs feature. Wirebugs are fun to use, zip around the map, super attacks, and what-not, but I can’t help but feel its a little out of place in a Monster Hunter game. Feels like I’m Spider-Man or something. I know I praised this when I played the demo and I’m not dissing it now, I still enjoy using them, but I am also admitting that they do feel very outlandish for a Monster Hunter game. Still better than the slinger/ clutch claw though! Let’s never talk about those accursed items again.

Silkbinds The Silkbind attacks though are fully great! I love having access to super attacks like Hunting Arts and things like that for my weapons, so I sincerely hope they keep some kind of super attack format in future games.

Mounting The mounting system in this game is weird, but pretty cool! Its a great way to let you control a monster for a change and beat the snot out of other monsters as a monster. I saw someone describe it is as “going full on Ratatouille with the monsters” and honestly there isn’t a better way to explain it than that.

Palicoes/ Palamutes The Buddy System in this game is great! Palicoes still feel about the same as they did in World, maybe a little less powerful now since you can have two of them at once, still love them though and prefer to bring a Palico with me on my quests.

Then there is the new doggies, the Palamutes! Super cute and cuddly, but also quite powerful! I love the doggos, but I wish the maps weren’t designed around them. I like to bring my cat with me on multiplayer quests, so I don’t get a dog to ride and the maps are HUGE, very wide-opened, lots of running... Wirebugs help, but still not quite as fast as the puppies.

Oh and two little pet peeve of mine is you can’t see other players buddy names and you can’t change buddy comments! I want people to be able to see my buddies’ names and I need my Garfield cat’s comment to say “I hate Mondays.” and my Sonic dog to say “Gotta go fast!” and my Courage the Cowardly Dog dog to have “The things I do for love.” Unless there is a hidden menu somewhere where you can edit these, but alas I have yet to find it...

Voiced Hunters Hunters have always been the silent protagonists of the games with attack grunts, hurt sounds, and little to nothing more. Now they are full voiced for gestures and full hunting dialogue. I really like this, its funny to hear them shout things and stuff and having some familiar voice actors in the game is really cool to have them voice my characters. My brother rocking the Xander Mobus voice-type on his hunter is freakin’ cool and hilarious at the same time. I am tempted to make a Zentisu hunter, name him Zenitsu, give him the Zentisu voice-type, and go full Thunderclap maining a Thunder-type Long Sword just for the heck of it. Oh and also there’s the fact that CRISTINA VEE IS OFFICIALLY IN A MONSTER HUNTER GAME NOW AS A FEMALE VOICE OPTION! Still feels weird comparing it to previous games, but I’m okay with it because the fun factor in it outweighs the weird for me personally. Besides if you for some reason decided you hate fun you can just mute them in the options.

Layered Armor (or lack-of) I love Layered Armor... and there is only two sets in this game. The Deluxe Edition’s “Kamurai” samurai looking layered armor and the Magnamalo amiibo “Sinister” layered set with a few head only layered pieces as DLC in the eShop. I was honestly expecting all armor to be layered and unlockable in the base game after the huge demand for layered armor in MH World and Transmog being a thing in the side team’s last game, MHXX/ MHGU.

I think a mixed system of both Transmog and Layered Armor would be ideal. Transmog system for in-game armors and then additional bonus themed armor sets made as Layered Armors like the Kamurai set. That way players can be rewarded for crafting all the armors with use of a Transmog system even giving an incentive to make multiple sets twice to Transmog differently. While the devs could still make money off cool unique Layered sets as DLC in the eShop. Literally fixes both issues right there. Feel free to use that idea, Capcom, and you’re welcome.

Multiplayer/ Lobbies/ Scaling Four people lobbies are back! Not necessarily a good thing. I mean hey its not bad either, but I honestly preferred the larger lobbies like World had. Having more people doesn’t make it less social. All they need is to force people to do multiplayer quests in the Gathering Hub. I prefer large lobbies and have people do whatever they want and meet up in the Hub for socials. Mainly what I dislike about 4 player lobbies is everyone will be expected to help each other on their quests within the lobby. I just want to chill and do my own thing, but see and interact with other players in the village between quests. Oh, but the ability to join quests late is seriously great! Dropping into a lobby and seeing people already on a quest and being able to jump in with them is a godsend!

Difficulty scaling is a very weird thing. It’s basically a double-edged sword. Its good to have because you can beat everything on your own, but that also defeats the purpose of multiplayer. In the past games, Hub quests were scaled higher for multiplayer, so getting more people to help only made it easier. Now, why bother with players when you could just do it yourself scaled to an easier single-player difficulty? I can usually get faster times when I solo things now. Multiplayer is there just for the social aspect to goof around with friends or if you just wanna do chill hunting with people. It’s no longer a requirement or an aid for beating the game. Like I said, its a weird thing, not bad, but not good either? I dunno, I just compare a lot of things to the classic MH games. In the past getting a second player to help makes it twice as easy compared to beating a Hub quest by yourself, while getting four players makes it where you’re effectively doing 4x more damage. Now its like you get 4-players and the monster gets 4x the health too. That might not be the exact scaling, but you get my point.

One last thing I want to touch on which a lot of people have already mentioned is the fact multiplayer can get pretty chaotic. Especially when you have 4 players with 4 palamutes all smacking away at a monster. Hit effects are EVERYWHERE! Creates quite the mess and can be hard to tell what’s happening.

Quest Difficulty/ Harder Monsters I don’t care too much about how hard the game is and I know this is a touchy subject, but I do like challenging monsters, without relying on gimmicky crap to fight them. MH World was filled with gimmicky fights like Behemoth, Leshen, even Alatreon and Fatalis to some degree. I still have Extreme Behemoth PTSD. I just want good clean fights, no damage checks, unavoidable one-hit kill moves, crap like that is not cool. I want to cart because I screwed up and made a wrong move and got punished by some wicked strong attack from a big bad boss monster. Not a stupid damage check telling me, “Oh, you not do enough damage, you die now.” To be fair, old Monster Hunter games had some gimmicky fights too though. MH4U with Apex Monsters and Wystones, MHGU with HP tank Hyper Monsters, heck even Freedom 2 was unintentionally gimmicky with outrageous hitboxes haha. Oh, that game was brutal! Deviants in MHGU were amazing though! Some really tough fights there, but incredibly rewarding to beat, that’s what I love!

The Endgame/ Secret Bosses (or lack-of) There is no Endgame, we are stuck in the Infinity War for now (or Affinity War as my brother calls it since the meta is all about those crits!) Okay, so that’s a bit harsh, all jokes aside there is an endgame, but its not exactly what I was expecting and leaves me wanting more. One of my favorite aspects of Monster Hunter games is the endgames and the secrets they hold, which this game had very few! They revealed nearly EVERY monster before this game launched. I get it, they want to sell their game, but leave some secrets please. Only monster that was secret was just the final boss. I love getting to the end of the game and unlocking new quests to fight the big scary endgame bosses. I guess World kinda suffered from that too a little bit. Mostly hanging on to old games like Freedom Unite unlocking Fatalis, MH3U getting Abyssal Lagiacrus, and Molten Tigrex in MH4U was very cool! Could just be the state of games these days like Smash Ultimate where they reveal everything before the game is out since data miners will just leak them anyways... kinda makes me sad.

Updates and Future Content

I know this game has planned updates that will add a lot of content, but I can’t help but feel those “updates” were part of the game that’s been withheld to make the updates feel like so much more. Its like they ripped out the ending of the game and are passing it of as a big huge update to be released after launch.

The real kick to this is the fact there is no Hunter Rank in the current game... I’ve done approximately 300 quests so far in my game, its going to hurt me very badly when I see the HR update come out and I don’t get any HR for the hunts I’ve done so far. I know some people could care less about HR and just see it as a number, but for me that number is a nice thing to see. I love seeing it go up as I do more quests and play more of the game. Going hard at launch has been a lot of fun, but less rewarding knowing I am quite possibly not getting any HR points for all my gameplay.

Only reason I can see they would not want to allow a buildup of HR before this update is because this update will add a bunch of new endgame monsters most likely unlocked through getting high Hunter Rank. I pray for my boy Akantor to finally shine again, I know the side team loves him, so let’s please get him into Rise! AND Please don’t show them off in videos, Capcom! Just stealth drop a bunch of Elder Dragons and Endgame bosses into the game!

Final Thoughts

I’m probably just stuck in the old days some, I guess this is just how the games will be going forward, but a bit of that makes me sad. Feels like the game series I loved so much is losing some character and personality of what made is special and unique. This review might’ve got a bit ranty, but I like to critique a game series I am very passionate about. World was very similar to this. From everything I’ve said, by no means do I hate this game. I still love MH Rise and the entire series and I’ll keep playing it having a lot of fun along the way. Best way I can describe Monster Hunter Rise is it’s the Side Team’s Monster Hunter World. Its fresh, new, and very experimental!

All in all this game is still great and I stand by what I said at the beginning of this entire post, its a blast to play! I hope everyone can enjoy it and remember, Happy Hunting!

#Monster Hunter Rise #Monster Hunter #MHRise

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