Came for the twins, stayed for the Kingdom of Elgado!

Monster Hunter Rise is often compared to its very popular predecessor MH World and I don't think a comparison between those two games is fair, as it's really just a case of apples and oranges. For the sake of explaining it, I'll give a rundown of the differences between the two entries though.

First of all, this game was designed for the Nintendo Switch in mind. Given the portable nature of this hybrid console, Rise streamlined the gameplay loop a fair bit in order to make it more accessible to a pick-up-and-play gamestyle. This includes faster hunts, monsters being instantly shown on the minimap, increased traversal options with the Palamutes and the ability to pause the game anytime when you're not playing with others - a very nice feature to have (which was missing in World)! As a tradeoff, it doesn't have the expansive ecosystem or the tracking of monster footprints from World, so it's less immersive in that regard. But those gameplay changes aren't necessarily bad, they're just different. I for one appreciate the fast-paced and direct nature of Rise; it's a welcome change after spending hundreds of hours with the slower gameplay of World. Rise's combat specialises in the usage of the wirebugs, they serve as a mechanic to either perform special skills (similar to the ones in Generations) or can be used for easy movement as a grappling hook. Getting used to these little fellas can feel weird at first, but once you know your way around them they're just a ton of fun to use and can totally change the way you approach certain monsters. As an example, the flagship monster Magnamalo inflicts a special debuff that can only be cleansed through wirebug usage, so you need to keep the bar in mind and use the dash whenever you want to cure the ailment. Alongside Magnamalo, most of the other newcomers in Rise are great to fight aswell! Goss Harag is probably my favorite new addition, love his Yeti-inspired design and the fight in general. Looking forward to many great fights in Sunbreak too!

The Village quests ease you fairly well into the game, even though the first set of ranks were quite boring for someone acquainted with the franchise. Still a good introduction for new hunters and even allows you to skip the entire Low Rank of the Hub quests. Speaking of the Gathering Hub, it's rather... desolate these days on the PC port. Atleast there's the Better Matchmaking mod, which removes the Region Lock and helps you find matches a bit faster, but having to rely on a mod for something as basic as worldwide play is quite a bummer. Note that this is not an issue with the original version of the game on Switch and was only added to the PC port for some strange reason, so the game itself can't really be blamed for this. Another cool mod I can recommend is RiseTweaks for removing the framerate cap on cutscenes - another thing that should have been in the PC port from the start! Anyways, finding multiplayer matches over join requests isn't that hard for key quests (good luck finding a partner for event quests on PC though) and you should be able to reach Master Rank in no time. I can't really comment on the Master Rank content yet, as I just started Sunbreak yesterday, but it's pretty amazing so far!

My final thoughts? Rise is another wonderful Monster Hunter game and I had a great time with the base game on PC despite the aforementioned strange issues with the port. Liked it so much that I got the Sunbreak bundle on Switch as well, so make of that what you will. I think you'll get a great experience on any platform, just pick between the eye candy version (PC) or the one with the thriving playerbase (Switch). Can't go wrong here!

Got to HR7, made my endgame armor set, beat the final-not-final boss and done all the available apex rampages, which I guess is as far as you can take the game at the moment.

The “it’s Monster Hunter for people who don’t like Monster Hunter!” comments are fair, but is that necessarily a bad thing? It’s clear this is an accessible take on Monhun for one of the most accessible games consoles of all time. If you wanna wander around the frozen wastes with a hot drink for ten minutes to land a paintball on a Tigrex before it carts you in two swipes of its claw because your finger slipped on the PSP thumbnipple, the old games are still there to punish you. Rise has a firm focus on fun first, and I think that’s just fine. Brilliant, even.

Driving a 200mph dog into a Zinogre’s face in order to start a Devil May Cry Smokin’ Sick Style!!! combo feels antithetical to the methodical precision of Old Monster Hunter, but it also feels fucking phenomenal, so who cares? In every single quest I turn my charge blade into a roaring chainsaw that chews through helpless idiot monster tails and then zipline my way up into the sky to unload an axe full of dynamite into their pathetic little skulls. Then I go to the blacksmith in the beautiful Japanese mountain village and he turns their bones into a pair of jeans for me. It’s pure violence porn on the Nintendo Switch.

The “it’s the shortest Monster Hunter ever!” comments are fair, but is that necessarily a bad thing? It’s the shortest Monster Hunter ever because you aren’t stopping to catch your breath every time your wee man does more than a minute’s jogging. It’s the shortest Monster Hunter ever because the game doesn’t make you carry a single stupid egg unless you really, really want to. It’s the shortest Monster Hunter ever because you can skip any cutscene you want. It’s the shortest Monster Hunter ever because Capcom somehow turned the Switch into a Ferrari. It’s the shortest Monster Hunter ever because you have a dog that’s a motorbike and you can turn yourself into Spider-Man. Amazing.

I totally get the complaints about the weirdly stilted endings that both the single and multiplayer content have - I saw the credits on the first day this game came out, and was suitably bemused by the “uhh maybe play multiplayer?” advice from my hunting mentor in the final cutscene. It’s a bit of a raw deal - a situation I imagine may have came about as a result of Capcom having to shift their entire workforce to WFH over the last year - but I can forgive that. I don’t need Capcom to give me cutscenes or storylines or spoon content into my mouth. In Monster Hunter Rise, you make your own cool shit happen.

I feel bad about expressing my thoughts on Monster Hunter Rise, because even in the incomplete portion I've played, it's clear that this will disappoint some longtime franchise veterans with how it smoothes away the bumps and frictions that I'm sure are divisive to some people. I'm sure there will be people who look at me saying "the combat is so much more fun" with the same weary resignation that I have for comments about NieR Numbers having "better combat".

And yet, it can't really be denied: after multiple failed attempts to get into it over the years, from 3 Ultimate on the Wii U to World on the PC, this is the moment Monster Hunter finally clicked for me. Each hunt is a fast, smooth experience, slinging through the map to fight fun bosses with unique patterns and movesets alongside my friends, each one styling on the monster in their own unique way. The Spiderman web swinging is a godsend, making movement in these games fun for the first time, whilst preserving the weight of the actual combat. Said combat is as thrilling as the high points of World, the concentrated joy of Boss Battle after Boss Battle with so little resistance in between.

It's great fun, by myself or with friends. Alone, I can appreciate the unique patterns and attacks the monsters have, and the windows in them for me to attack remain deliciously satisfying to slip through in spite of their forgiving width. With friends, Monster Hunter lets me enjoy my friends, their company, and their flair and individuality in a way that few other games allow so quickly and easily.

However, this is all a smokescreen. The real reason, the true, fundamental reason I couldn't get into Monster Hunter World, is that the outfits were awful. Terrible. I wouldn't be caught dead in them. What reason do I have to grind out a monster if wearing its skin is just going to make me look like a clown? Thankfully, Capcom has heard my plight, and the outfits here are worth becoming a monstrous destroyer of nature for, which is really what matters most in Monster Hunter.

The battle is temporary. The fashion is eternal.

I am a 51 yo father, probably one of the oldest people playing this game. I am a single father to my Son, who is 14 now. My son got this game for from his uncle, so we installed it on his computer and he started playing. By the end of the week he had 24 hours on this game. This was horrible for me, as it was already hard for me to find ways to spend time with my son, as he is always out with his friends or just watching YouTube. So i decided to make a Steam account and get this game to see if I could maybe play alongside him. I loaded into the game and started playing but I was stuck on what you where supposed to do. I asked my Son for help and he hosted a game for me to join. I loved it as it was the best time I had spent with my Son since my wife had died. This game has ever since brought me and my son closer again and now we actually spend time together outside the house together as well. This game reminded me that there's fun to be had in everything, and it has brought both me and my son many happy memories.

Thank you Monster Hunter

A decent sidegrade to World. Compromising much of the environmental interactivity and tracking elements, choosing instead to focus more on immediate, arcadey, spectacle driven action, changes I’m not a big fan of, I like the slow deliberacy of the past games, and engaging with the environment like in World, but I understand their necessity due to the downgrade in hardware. I still have some issues with it though. Biggest one being the wirebug. Yeah, it’s fun to swing around like Spider-Man at first, but then you realize it trivializes the game, it trivializes traversal, it trivializes combat, there are only maybe 2-3 things in the entire game that can punish the spamming of a wirebug recovery (with another 2 added in the sunbreak expansion), and it somewhat breaks the balance between weapons, the longsword for example now has more counters than the lance, and the insect glaive is somewhat obsolete because now every weapon can fly and mount with greater ease than it can. I also don’t like how they messed with monster behaviour in this game. They reverted back to the old AI where the monsters take like 3 seconds to turn or growl at you after every move, giving you a huge opening to deal damage. But to compensate, they added this soft homing lock to many of their moves that keeps going late into the animation. It doesn’t really make them harder to avoid, just kind of screws you out of your attempts to predictively position. So it feels like openings in this game are either handed to you or robbed from you, it’s annoying as hell.

On a more positive note, I like the monster roster, lots of unique shapes and designs, a good mix of new and returning monsters, Goss Harag and Somnacanth are my favourites of the new faces. It does kind of annoy me though how it treats elder dragons. I feel like there’s one rule when it comes to Monster Hunter’s hierarchy, that Elder Dragons are the undisputed peak of the food chain. Things that challenge them should be few and far between and never outright conquer them. So it annoys me to see this game use monsters like Kushala Daora and Teostra basically as punching bags for anything it wants to insist is powerful, “hahaha watch Magnamalo waggle Teostra around like he does the puny bird wyverns” or “woah cool awesome bro, watch a shinier Rathian ragdoll a Kushala Daora around with zero effort.” Not an issue that effects the game’s polish or anything, just something that annoys me as a longtime fan of the series.

Even though I have my issues with the game, it’s still got that polished monster hunter combat loop and gear grind propping it up, with enough twists to keep it fresh and fun. It’s probably the best Monster Hunter game you can play on the Switch. I got my mileage out of it even if I’d prefer World as the template going forward.

In a vacuum, this game is pretty good: that's what you get for inheriting one of the best combat systems of all time. But as a Monster Hunter game, it's hard not to see this as a big misstep in 2023, especially after Sunbreak. In retrospect, Rise reads like a 5th gen regression from GU, which is insane considering how scattershot and unpolished that game is. Some of it is undoubtedly because of Covid development issues (they literally had to add the last fourth of the game in post-release), but a lot is fundamentally misguided.

Last year I discussed many of my problems in the context of Sunbreak, and those all still apply to base Rise, but with even greater severity in some cases. Some additional points:

The nicest thing I have to say is probably the structure, which streamlines by picking some low-hanging fruit (minimal gathering quests, skip some overlapping village/hub progression). Of course this is also undermined by annoying aspects like Rampage (a worthless dev timesink similar to Zorah Magdaros in World) and obtuse unlock requirements for Switch Skills which hinders experimentation, but on the whole it's probably the best in the series.

What's crazy is that copy-pasting the GU Hunter Arts system would have been significantly better than the existing silkbind system, in the sense that the separate meters at least prevents one imbalanced move from sucking the air away from all the others, as well as encouraging aggression through meter buildup by attacking.

Moreover, GU's quantity over quality approach in styles and arts arguably worked better in producing actually fun playstyles, just by trying so many things that some ended up turning out well. Nothing in Rise is as blatantly busted as Absolute Readiness in GU, but on the other hand none of the parry moves in Rise are nearly as well-balanced as Critical Juncture from GU.

The increase in parry moves in Rise (and 5th gen more broadly) also goes against a huge strength of the series's combat: dynamic defensive play. As I examine in this post, one of the remarkable things about MonHun is how the roll iframes are balanced against the size and speed of the hitboxes such that the timing and direction needed is situation-dependent. Parries and lengthy iframe moves such as LS's foresight slash subvert this by covering a variety of situations with the same input, which in turn lessens the need for good positioning in advance. (Small note of praise: it seems like the base iframes on the roll have been reduced in Rise, which actually makes sense as correcting for the trend of smaller and faster hitboxes.)

Adding wirebug movement is cool in theory, but in practice, it's really difficult to imagine how they could have gotten this right. A huge tenet of Monhun combat is how your offense and defense are heavily intertwined through positioning, and it's easy to see how powerful fast movement is if you play Insect Glaive or Hunting Horn. Changing movement presents a huge risk of either breaking the dynamic or not really doing anything. Rise wirebug movement ended up being the latter, where it's mostly limited to catching up to a monster, occasionally dodging a few attacks like Mizutsune beam, or moving around the map (which is actually super fun!).

The difficulty of the game has been discussed many times, but even putting aside systemic concerns such as restock and damage values, what's baffling to me is how so many returning monsters (ex. Rajang, Nargacuga, Tigrex) are effectively slowed down versions of their GU counterparts, in a game which has the least player commitment and highest average weapon mobility. It's even more blatantly obvious in retrospect, after most of these monsters got extensive AI reworks in Sunbreak.

Brief dishonorable mention to the Hunting Horn: for a weapon which has always had great gameplay but lackluster damage output, Capcom decided that the appropriate course of action was to totally redo the moveset from a long range poking weapon with weird attack angles and buffs to a spammy close range washing machine that my friend described as "something out of God Eater."

This is something that I mentioned already in the Sunbreak review, but funnily enough has become one of my top sticking points with 5th gen MonHun: the gamefeel. I'm no animation expert, so I can't give a detailed dissection, but the less snappy animations somehow give the game this strange syrupy quality. I genuinely don't understand how something like Surge Slash GS in Sunbreak, which is the best weapon idea MonHun has had in years, feels so awkward to use despite really not being that different from an old MonHun weapon mechanically.

For what it's worth, I find it difficult to imagine them iterating on this set of mechanics in the future. But I'm sure MH6 will have many, many problems of its own making...

where I marked this as completed: after beating thunder serpent narwa. I'm past chameleos at the point of writing this review, and I'll absolutely be continuing on from here

+the big focus here from my perspective is improving the speed of quests, and by all means the developers succeeded here. your new palamute companions significantly increase travel speed, and between-round tasks like sharpening and eating can be performed while riding them. I like this change quite a bit, it keeps everything moving along at a brisk pace when in an actual hunt
+maps are now designed with a dual philosophy in mind: streamlining hunts while also encouraging exploration. the maps here are much like the segmented maps from older titles (with sandy plains and flooded forest being lifted straight out of 3rd gen), with the intermediary sections where barriers used to be now being fully traversable. while you'll stick to the normal pathways on a hunt, when exploring or gathering the maps reveal a density to their design that isn't anywhere near as overwhelming as mhw
+I'm really glad they brought back the feudal japanese designs from portable 3rd here... in fact, this game is a bit of a reimagining of portable 3rd in a way. the returning monster selection is dominated by monsters featured in that game, and like I mentioned maps from that game reappear here as well. it's a nice set of designs to return to, esp since that game is over a decade old by this point
+the other returning monster selection is mainly those who appeared in mhw and mhwi, some of which have become significantly more interesting or dangerous (tobi-kadachi for example). other monsters like basarios, khezu, and mizutsune are perfect additions, esp mizutsune who afaik was a new addition to yukumo village in generations.... its so fun to fight here
+finally the new monsters are excellent fights, each and every one. it seems like this team likes fights that use lots of interesting projectile patterns or other unusual attacks, like magnamalo's exploding mist and spinning piledriver. without question these are some of the most dynamic and interesting fights I've played in the series thus far
+being able to use the village quests to progress in hunter rank is a sorely needed change, esp with the return of separate village and hub quests. the license tests are a smart way to allow solo hunters to skip low rank, and that final license test with magnamalo, zinogre, and rathalos was extremely satisfying to conquer
+multiplayer overall has become very easy with this game thanks to join requests and public/private lobbies. being able to start a quest with join requests enabled is certainly less clunky then immediately plopping down an SOS request once the quest starts
+the farm stuff is still pretty sparse like it was in mhw, but they brought back palico expeditions which is a neat little addition. it's nice to pick up random parts for monsters this way without having to grind
+I much prefer the dango canteen and the spiribirds here to the canteen in mhw. I'd much rather get a flat +50 health/stam increase rather than selecting ingredients, and being able to explore a bit to up stats further is a nice way to encourage not running from point A to point B. you also retain your stat buffs after carting, which is much appreciated
+performance on switch is astounding to say the least. the last new title I played on switch was age of calamity, which had noticable framerate issues, and xenoblade chronicles DE wasn't exactly a technical showpiece either. this game runs at a smooth framerate with gorgeous graphics that, while definitely not "next gen", are still a worthy showcase for the switch's ability
+I haven't dived into any weapons beyond LS and GL here but the switchable abilities are quite nice here. the wirebug abilites are well-designed and I feel pushed to learn their strengths, and there are other "switch skills" unlocked in high rank as well

-because hunts have been sped up, I feel like there's some classic mh bits that I see extremely rarely now, such as monsters sleeping or limping away. part of this is because your palico lets you know when you can capture a bit before any indicator actually pops up, but there's still been hunts where I didn't capture and the death seemed to come out of nowhere
-rampage quests are solid overall (I prefer them to the older artillery fights) but they are not balanced for single player in the slightest... I solo'd a fair bit of high rank but I did not even bother trying for the mandatory rampages
-the control in this game is very clunky at points, as if the game is dropping inputs. I obv don't know the exact cause but it's almost like the input buffer is not active during certain times. this is esp annoying for me as a GL player, as if I begin holding the guard button too early after using an item or getting hit, I'll have to unpress and rehold to get it to actually take. I notice this a lot with dismounting the palamutes as well, and oh my god does it happen a lot with the radial menu.
-minor thing but as far as I can tell the game doesn't indicate when a monster is a gold, silver, or mini crown anymore. it lets you know if you've encountered a largest or smallest monster, but there's no way to see after a hunt if it was a particular crown unless you check your hunter's notes afterwards
-traversal is pretty janky at times with the wirebugs. wallrunning is stiff (sort of to be expected), and I would much rather the game let the character drop once the stamina runs out rather than automatically jumping. not an issue during the hunts tho, just when exploring
-the apex monsters are neat but you have to play rather far into the game to actually unlock their solo quests, especially for ratholos/diablos/zinogre which don't unlock until after valstrax, which itself isn't unlocked until HR 100

couldn't resist picking this up after playing world and oh my god have I been unable to stop playing it. this to me is a properly modernized monster hunter, with the hunts themselves streamlined significantly and extra care taken to include new and interesting combat mechanics. there's an argument to be made that the series has been made somewhat soulless with these changes to the formula, but personally I think they've more than made up for it with the sheer variety of interesting combos, builds, monsters, and mechanics here. there's also been a steady stream of content (thankfully I started after a nice amount of content had already been added) so I'm sure I'll stay with this game quite some time, if only to mow through hunts with friends.

As someone who hadn't played a Monster Hunter game in almost ten years, Monster Hunter Rise came as a bit of a surprise when I started playing it. There is a far reduced sense of friction here; gone are the days of making sure you're prepared for the environment you're entering and its extreme heat or cold, wandering around trying to find your prey, having to be careful to paintball them so you can keep tracking them down when they flee mid-battle.

I can't really think of this direction for the series as better or worse, it's more just different? The biggest things lost with this change in direction are that you form less of a connection with the game's environments (which are wonderful, and a delight to exist in) when you can just zip right to the monster the moment you start the mission, and you're also just far less encouraged to think through your preparation for battle when the game's actual focus is on getting you into the action as fast as possible. This latter point is something that isn't helped by Rise being not-particularly-challenging generally and so not punishing this lack of preparation; I played the vast majority of the game using the exact same item loadout, eating the exact same dango meal, and never feeling like I needed to change these habits in any way.

Whilst there's clearly something lost here, there's also a lot gained as Rise is able to lean harder into the action and excitement. Once you've entered the monster's locale you're never more than a minute or two from battle as you swing through the air, run up walls and drift on your dog around corners to get to where your target is as soon as possible. You can ride the monsters, smashing them against each other for different item drops, and when monsters run away it's so easy to catch up with them that it mainly just acts as a momentary reprieve to sharpen your weapon. I do think Rise can at times blur together a little bit - being able to charge towards a monster right away, the fight never really letting up, every mission starting the same way with you catching a monster or two early on with your wirebug attacks to slam them into one another - but the more action-focused approach makes for an exciting time, and I had a lot of fun moving up the ranks fighting alongside my girlfriend.

Outside of these changes, it's still very much Monster Hunter. There are still many, many systems, starting the game is a horrorshow of tutorial pop-up messages you'll immediately forget, and it's hard for me to figure out how much training my pets or sending out meowcenaries to go add to the ever growing pile of random-monster-pieces really ended up mattering in the end, but the moments in the village still mostly make for chill vibes once you wrap your head around this portion of the gameplay loop.

Other random thoughts;
- I love riding the dogs and wish they didn't feel just much worse than the cats outside of the convenience they offer
- Spiribirds suck as a mechanic and seem like the way the game is encouraging you to actually do some exploration ever but the reality is they actually force you to choose between running around a loop for a few minutes before battle to pick them up and actually be fully powered or entering battle without them knowing that you could be stronger
- Despite the fact I only played as a hammer-wielder all game long the sheer variety of weapons here continues to rule and be one of Monster Hunter's greatest strengths and really adds to the multiplayer experience when all the different playstyles start interacting in cool ways
- I think the multiplayer experience in Rise is just generally better than playing alone, but this is particularly emphasised with the handful of rampage quests which are quite unfun on your own but become very chaotic but really exciting and tense when you're coordinating them with a friend
- For the most part the monsters here are fantastic, a lot of them feel unique and compelling, turf wars are spectacular, and a special shoutout to Magnamalo who is anime as hell and easily my favourite monster to fight
- The story and dialogue are Quite Bad. I'm someone who will read almost every line of dialogue in games and even I found myself not bothering to read almost anything here after a certain point
- I love everything about the wirebug mechanic; the range of movement they offer, how fun wirebug attacks are, managing your wirebugs to make sure you can escape quickly if you're knocked down, it's all great
- The final fight of HR7, also the final fight of the main story content, was very exciting and a clear high-point of my time with the game

All said and done I played for about 50 hours, got to HR11, beat the main bulk of the story stuff, and whilst I think it's likely I play a bit more Monster Hunter Rise I'm definitely not invested in pouring in tens of hours of grind against the same monsters over and over to see a couple extra pieces of content or to get some slightly better armour so I am mostly done I think outside of the occasional multiplayer session with friends. Had a blast.

Nunca pensei que caçar monstro fosse tão divertido e viciante!

Monster Hunter já apareceu pra mim muitas vezes mas eu sempre ignorei essa franquia, até porque quando tentei jogar o World a um tempo atrás, o jogo não me pegou. Me deixou uma sensação meio ruim sabe de desconforto, pareceu um joguinho meio bobo pra mim, mas hoje eu vejo que eu estava totalmente errado, e esse jogo me mostrou que atualmente eu amadureci e mudei completamente de personalidade.

Dei uma chance ao Rise pois ele me chamou muita atenção, gostei muito da estética dele, seus gráficos mais cartunescos e caricatos me encantaram mais do que o World, que já tem uma pegada gráfica mais próxima ao realismo e menos simples ao ver. Quando entrei nessa maravilha eu não tava conseguindo me adaptar direito aos controles, sério, realmente MH tem um tipo de controle diferente e que nas primeiras horas é um inferno pra se adaptar, mas fica tranquilo que depois ali de umas 3 horinhas ou 2 jogando você consegue manjar melhor do estilo do jogo.

E falando sobre estilo, MH é um jogo sobre caça de monstros e pra caçar monstros você precisa de um equipamento! E as armas são o destaque principal da franquia MH, pois tem arma pra todos os gostos, seja pra quem gosta de algo mais lento, mais rápido, equilibrado, até mesmo pra quem gosta de coisa a distância ou de da tiro (existe um fodend* fuzil nesse jogo), e não se engane nessas coisas de qual arma é melhor ou qual da mais dano, todas em igual consegue matar muito rápido, é só questão de gosto e de se adaptar, algumas demoram mais tempo pra você mestrar e outras nem tanto.

Uma coisa que eu gostei muito também desse jogo foi os preparos antes de uma caçada, tu comer tua comidinha, preparar teus equipamento, comprar os suprimentos.. tem todo um processo muito foda antes da caçada (claro que não são necessários, é opcional) que te favorece bastante na hora que tiver pau a pau ali com o queridão.

Eu não posso dizer muito sobre as criaturas desse jogo, porque de fato este foi o primeiro que joguei a sério, a única criatura que reconheci ao ver assim foi o Anjanath e o Rathian, que aparentemente são clássicos da franquia (me corrijam se eu estiver errado), enfim, eu AMEI o design de cada bixo desse jogo e o moveset deles, é tudo muito bem trabalhado, da um certo tesão conseguir atingir o golpe neles e finalizar tua missão, uns são mais rápidos outros mais lentos, uns mais fáceis e outros mais difíceis. Só sei que meu bixinho favorito de caçar é o Tigrex, e ele vai ficar no meu coração pra sempre.

Falam que o Rise não é o MH ideal pra se iniciar, mas sendo sincero eu gostei de ter começado por esse aqui, o único problema é que ele ainda não é um MH finalizado né eu acho, dizem que ainda vai ter mais atualização (pelo menos até a data desta análise), eu ainda não matei la todos os bixos, mas fiz os principais da campanha e da DLC, agora só me restou os do RM 20 pra cima pra concluir tudinho do jogo até agora mesmo, mas como estou sofrendo com um problema de crash dei uma certa desanimada.

Mas enfim, ta ai galera é um jogão do caramba, mesmo se não gostarem do que ve por ai na internet, deem uma chance, aproveitem que o jogo base ta na gamepass (infelizmente sem a DLC que dá um upgrade insano pro jogo), experimentem monster hunter! Pode ser que a sua primeira entrada nesse game, seja um ponto pra você embarcar na franquia toda !

The very bad new player experience pushed me off this game once (the tutorial consists of about 500 overlapping dialog windows explaining every mechanic in the game at the same time). I came back and powered through and while I can say I do understand the appeal, this game just isn't for me.

Coming from a background with a lot of Soulslikes and DMC-likes the combat felt incredibly slow and clunky. There's no target lock and a lot of the weapons have incredibly long windup and recovery animations, so it's easy to miss (which feels pretty bad when the thing you're fighting is the size of a school bus). I didn't get very far, only about 13 hours, but all of the enemies I fought were very repetitive and didn't exhibit any unique or interesting behaviors.

I did like all the cute little guys that help you out, and the wirebug was pretty fun to swing around on. The time sinks are egregious, but that's just typical GaaS game design for you. Like anything, I bet it's a lot more fun to play with friends.

Update: March 2022
Bought this on PC to play with friends and I've sunk even MORE time into it than I did on Switch by trying out more weapons this time around, as well as finishing ALL the offline quests, which I didn't do on my Switch version playthrough. I can't wait for Sunbreak to release!

Original: April 2021
Quite possibly the best Monster Hunter title to date. I LOVE the new monsters, the variety in the roster, the Wirebug system, and most everything else that's here. There are some aspects that feel a bit unfinished/rushed, but I'm hoping that future title updates (and hopefully even an expansion?) will make this game pure gold.

De certa forma, uma versão "lite" de Monster Hunter World, mas isso não necessariamente é algo negativo.
Na verdade, caçar monstros nunca foi tão dinâmico e simples, em todos os sentidos.

Monster Hunter Rise traz consigo tudo o que torna um jogo sobre caçar monstros extremamente divertido, principalmente por conta do combate fluido e diversificado de opções.

A adição do chamado "Cabinseto" não só traz uma verticalidade extra tanto no combate quanto nas expedições em busca de recursos, mas também agrega ao dinamismo que o jogo se propõe a se basear.

O elenco de monstros do título também agrada bastante, apesar de eu particularmente não gostar tanto do design do monstro final, mesmo que tenha proporcionado uma luta bem divertida.

No geral, Monster Hunter Rise cumpre muito bem tudo que se propõe a fazer. Mesmo que sua narrativa sirva apenas como uma desculpa para o contexto de caçar os monstros e seja completamente esquecível, é possível perder boas horas por todas as caçadas e mais caçadas disponíveis.

I've been playing this series on and off since the original PS2 demo that came with Devil May Cry 3. Without the online component available here in Europe it was kinda ok but forgettable playing it solo. Moving onto the PSP releases of Freedom, Freedom 2 and Unite where my friends and I would all get together to play it wireless on our PSPs was an absolute blast and I've been a huge fan ever since.

So for the uninitiated Monster Hunter is a co-op game of up to four players taking on missions to hunt down a variety of beasts on levels and arenas, carve up their bodies and make weapons and armour from their bits. The gameplay loop is extremely satisfying once you get past the fairly slow start of teaching you the mechanics and boy is there is a lot to learn here initially if you aren't a series veteran. There are 14 different main weapons, as well as the ability to craft traps, bombs, potions, armour, gems and accessories all of which can also have attached skills. It can be daunting at first but once you dig in you will find a decent amount of depth here to be had in the type of builds you can do or specialize in. I play with a group of friends who all use different weapons and skill sets. In fact as I mentioned on Appeciation's list of 'Perfect games if they were the only one you had' just changing weapon can absolutely freshen the game up if you are trying to learn how it works, it's skills and the right armour sets for it. In Rise I have played as the Hammer, Long Sword and Gun Lance mostly so far in about 150 hours. New to the series though is the wirebug. Kind of like a living grappling hook allowing you to propel yourself through the air like an absolute madman. It increases the games verticality in movement and recovery along with Palumutes you can ride and you ability to climb everywhere and Rise just feels much faster to play, almost more arcadey than the slower methodical approach of previous games. The wirebugs also give each weapon equipable attack skills to use allowing a small degree of customization.

I played the PlayStation port and I have to say I'm impressed by how this game looks. Capcom have always been incredibly proficient but it still looks gorgeous with fantastic art and is incredibly smooth. The RE engine truly is impressive stuff. The animations for all the monsters, cats, attacks and characters are the best part though. The attention to detail given to some of them like the NPCs in town or even some of the weapons. As an example I got a new hammer the other day to try that looks a little bit like a wheel that when you charge it up starts spinning. It's only this weapon that has that and there are hundreds. It's just full of small details like the Feyline blowing himself up in the kitchen, the Meowceneries palumutes on kites flying off backwards, the training Tetranadon powered by a Feyline that has to wind it up every so often etc. I love these aspects in the Monster Hunter games. They are just so charming despite the underlying theme of the games hunting completely innocent animals for no reason being kinda sinister to be honest.

While having a blast with this I do have some small niggles. Whilst the music is good I didn't find it as impactful as prior games like Zinogre's theme is just a bit muted in the background rather than 'you're in danger' in your face I would have liked. The endgame is kind of lacking too. I like the Rampage mode which is like a team tower defense but some more levels for variety would have been nice. All that's left for us now is crown hunting as we seem to have peaked equipment wise very early. This is possibly because as a group we also felt the Elder Dragon's with the exception of Crimson Glow Valstrax just didn't feel remotely threatening which was disappointing. I do like the mix of new and old monsters though gives a good roster. The Rakna-Kadaki and Magnamallo are especially memorable in the newer cast.

In conclusion we have had a great time with Monster Hunter Rise and I'm super happy Capcom ported it. I do prefer the slower approach of Monster Hunter World with monsters feeling far more threatening and I kind of agree with TylertheTigrex's review as he makes points that the wirebug trivializes a lot of the danger where monsters don't have the moves to deal with it as much. However despite that it's still a wonderful interactive world that is great in co-op, has a lot of options and content and looks and sounds great. I can't wait for the Sunbreak expansion release next month as I understand it adds so much to the game.

+ Looks and plays wonderfully with great details.
+ A lot of content and options for how you build your character.
+ Great co-op gameplay.
+ Rampages are fun.
+ WIrebug moves make the game fast paced....

-....and make some monsters too easy.
- Elder Dragons feel a bit weak.

It's the streamlined, simplified, casualised Monster Hunter, and I still look at 99% of it like a dog looking at a sum. Endless menus that mean nothing to me, an item box full to the brim with icons I will never understand. I take on quests to unlock stickers that are immediately lost within the labyrinthine options. I will never see them. Where would I equip them? One of my several "shortcut" wheels? Who knows? During the final battle, I found myself asking "Which button do I use to attack with again?" by which I meant "Which combination of buttons do I use to ready my weapon to attack with again?" Sometimes I send the Argosy out. Why? I don't know.

But here's the thing. Name a game. Any game.
Monster Hunter Rise is better than that game.

Johoho!

Before playing this game, I tried to get into MHWorld and failed despite nearly finishing the base game, so I wasn’t expecting to get much out of MHRise when I played it at the request of a friend who definitely wasn’t going to follow up on playing with me, but I was motivated primarily by a dearth of things to occupy me in the time between semesters. Turns out, this game is pretty nice.

The first two things that made a good impression on me were the better pacing and the movement. The game rushed through tutorial prompts to get me into playing the “real game” as soon as possible. The information overload isn’t for everybody but I preferred it to the unskippable cutscenes and tutorial missions of World. In general, most shitty inconveniences from previous MH have been filtered out of this game.

When first forced to do a gathering quest, I was surprised by the game’s map design and movement. The wirebug swinging and dog-riding made moving around the map, at worst, a fast and painless ordeal, with room for improving your efficiency at routing and tons of collectible resources hidden in vertical spaces encouraging you to swing and climb your way around the locale. Moving around the map was a tedious and boring necessity in older MH, but in Rise, it's comparable to and perhaps better than a game like BotW who’s entire appeal is exploration. Having nearly every surface be climbable at the cost of stamina reminded me of BotW, but unlike BotW, Rise’s movement is fast and arcadey, and wants you to get to the real star of the show (the combat) as soon as possible. That alone made dumping time into this game much more palpable, since I'm never dreading the dull moments that I had in MHW.

When it comes to combat, I should preface that I primarily played insect glaive, longsword, and greatsword. Everybody knows that MH’s gameplay structure is a standard rpg compulsion loop, but the secret sauce imo is that MH’s compulsion loop exists to give a natural incentive to mastering its deeper systems in a way that most action games don’t do. Usually, a scoring/ranking system grades your gameplay in order to incentivize you to play better even if you can complete the game by playing badly, but MH’s depth comes specifically from optimizing your use of the weapon’s moveset with knowledge of the monster’s quirks in order to kill it faster. Strong gear is gonna require a lot of materials, and there will usually be some material with a very low drop rate that you will need to grind for, making you fight the same monster over and over again. Naturally, you’re gonna want to learn how to kill that monster as efficiently as possible.


This is where MH’s monster and weapon design comes in. Monster attacks are generally easy to avoid if the only challenge were to be surviving, but dodging while also placing yourself in position for a rewarding punish is more difficult than it is in a game like Souls due to less i-frames on your standard dodge, slower movement with your weapon out, and the nature of enemy attacks. In order to get that meaty punish after avoiding an attack, you will need to take advantage of your weapon’s quirks, and all the ones I've tried are full of wonderful nuances to take advantage of, allowing your ability to kill monsters to effectively scale with your skill.

For a simple example, the Teostra (a late game boss) flame breath attack where they sweep the area in front of them from side to side with a highly damaging beam of fire. Running away from it works, but will leave me unable to get much damage after his recovery. With the Insect Glaive, taking advantage of this attack is easy, as that weapon allows me to leap above fire breath and hit their head with aerial attacks. It makes me pay attention to how monsters control vertical spaces and how to take advantage of that.

With the longsword, I want to counter the flames with a well timed and highly rewarding samurai slash that nullifies the flame’s damage, but that will require me to place myself in harm’s way in order to “parry” the attack. Since he begins his attack from the sides, I position myself in the center to make it easy for me to react regardless of which side he is coming from. Good timing and reflexes are heavily rewarded by the Longsword.

With the greatsword, I need time to charge up its highly damaging charge slash, which requires me to be safe from damage while I charge. So I want to get to the blindspot at the side of his head as soon as possible to do that, which made me pay very close attention to the tell for the flame attack. If I successfully recognize the tell, I can wirebug dash into the side from which he starts his attack, where the return stroke will miss and give me ample time to charge my counter attack. Gauging my punish windows and positioning carefully to see what kind of damage I can get away with is the main skill encouraged by Greatsword.

Different weapons emphasize different skills, can take advantage of different aspects of the monster’s moveset, and the same weapon can have multiple correct responses to the same attack, but give higher reward to more intelligent responses. This is where I found the appeal of MH’s combat.

The game’s lack of difficulty for most of its monsters is a noted criticism that I agree with. Hunts give you too much time and too many resources, which can make it pretty easy (and relatively unfun) to blow through every monster once, and consider yourself done with the game. This game really benefits from giving yourself a build goal and grinding for it. In most other combat focused games, this could be a deal breaker, but given what MH combat is about, I don't think traditional boss difficulty is required to enjoy mastering the game.

Speaking of which, I'm not a big RPG build-making guy, but I do like what MH allows for with its builds. For example: I went for a standard meta critical hit build. The premise of the build is to make a weapon with a high crit chance, and pair it with gear that increases your crit chance when hitting weakpoints and makes it so that your weapon doesn’t degrade in sharpness when hitting weakpoints. This makes your damage pathetic when hitting anything that isn’t a weakpoint, but highly rewards precise hits, making this a build tailored for higher skilled play, but punishing to other playstyles. There are other gear skills that allow you to break resistant parts easily and deal more damage to them, allowing for a less efficient but more flexible style. I see a lot of potential in how the builds can facilitate a nice variety of playstyles and allow the player to tailor the game to their preferred approach.

The biggest criticisms I have with the game come from the camera and the console. The default “target camera” type usually isn’t bad, and you can adjust it to be more zoomed out and turn more quickly (which I highly recommend), but some of the game’s later bosses, most notably the poster boy Magnamalo, are insanely mobile and attack in ways that are difficult to track with traditional target camera, feeling more designed for the lock-on camera mode. The issue is that MH’s implementation of lock-on is kinda shit.
The game requires you to be precise with hitting monster parts and the lock-on camera often gets in the way of that. This wouldn’t be a problem if you were allowed to toggle lock on with the tap of a button, but it can’t be turned off and instead switches the lock-on to other major monsters in the map. Bizarre fucking design that could be easily fixed, dunno how they let that one through. Just make tapping L1 toggle lock-on, that input currently does nothing in the Lock-On Camera type.

Also the Switch kinda sucks for playing the game, at least for my situation. On top of fps drops, it makes it very inconvenient to play the game with my circle of friends. It would be so much easier if it was a PC game where I could be in a discord call, but it being a switch game makes the process of communicating with friends while playing awkward as hell. Because of this I only got to play with pubs, and never experienced any real coordination to gauge what Monster Hunter gains from the co-op play that made it so popular in japan. Thankfully a PC release is planned, and I’d like to play the game with 60fps if I’m alive for it. If you’re on the fence with MHRise I recommend you wait for the PC release.

You made it this far? You read something this long? Weird. Here is some extra random thoughts:

I love the music, it's catchy.

The Nargacuga and Valstrax are easily the coolest looking monsters. The Valstrax’s attack animations are so fucking cool.

Zinogre looks kinda ugly and overdesigned to me, but still managed to be cool to me despite that because of his moveset and concept. Really fun monster to fight.

fuck the Tigrex. i hate that his name is “Tiger” and “Rex”. i hate that he has a jurassic park trex head pasted on a wyvern body. i hate that he has no consistent theme and all his abilities are random bullshit. He can throw rocks because he’s smart?? but he also bites walls like an idiot?? He glows red for no reason?? And worst of all most of his moveset is him spamming a charge attack where his entire body is a hitbox. even his music fucking sucks. fuck you you ugly sack of shit.

All it took was Yasunori Ichinose directing another MH game to make easily one of the best games in the franchise.

Never did I expect how hard they would work to make both classic(Gen1-4) and new MH(Gen5) meet halfway with all the changes they did. The return of Village and Hub separation, classic Talisman and Decoration system, a combat system that gets very close to how GU felt, a buddy system that's back to classic's albeit not as complex, very well-thought out adjustments for monsters in terms of HP and damage, and a ton of other small stuff that just pile up to collectively make the experience an extremely enjoyable and memorable one.

I'm very very happy that they did away with World's realism aspect and went back to classic MH's playful and comical feel, aesthetics, and humor. Weapon designs are once again back to their expressive and unique designs save for the returning World-introduced monster's weapons. Armors are sadly lacking in count but what we do have are designs that definitely feel like classic MH design-wise but given the graphical upgrade of Gen5 MH.

The maps are back to classic's style of wide open spaces that highlight the fight between you and the monster and it is so god tier how they recreated some of the Gen3 maps so perfectly. These, on top of the new ones that are extremely well crafted, are all very fun to navigate, explore, and fight in which is definitely the type of maps MH should have. Paired with absolutely mesmerizing battle themes and remixed tracks, make for hunts that feel extremely immersing, satisfying, and fun.

Returning monsters in the game were treated very well with moveset updates to make them feel fresh. The new ones are all very cool thematically, being inspired by Japanese youkai, and are very fun fights. But the standouts would definitely be the flagships which are honestly some of the most memorable in the franchise ever and definitely land a spot on my favorites of all time for sure.

I honestly cannot overstate how much they grinded this game for it to be as god tier as it ended up being. After my utter disappointment with World, I already resigned myself to the fact that classic MH was gone but was hoping the next installment would be somewhat at least enjoyable in more aspects. But after having finished the game, I can confidently say that they went way above and beyond that and made me feel like I was back to classic again, and reminding me why this is one of my favorite franchises ever.

The first time I played Bloodborne I had an incredibly difficult time getting over the muscle memory of attacking and using items from Monster Hunter Rise.

I just beat Bloodborne in December, and figured I should give Monster Hunter Rise another shot, since I never played the Sunbreak DLC, and it has much smoother performance on PC as opposed to the Switch (like with every other game ever ported to the Switch).

Now that I have the muscle memory for Bloodborne, I am having an extremely difficult time re-learning Monster Hunter Rise.

Nobody could have seen this coming.

For the first time in 16 years they made a Monster Hunter game that's not for me, and honestly thats kinda rad.

I've been playing MonHun since attack was bound to the right analogue stick, and I've watched so many people bounce off this series because it's fucking impenetrable. Rise is finally the game that I can point to when someone wants to get into the series.

They've streamlined a lot of stuff, for better and worse, but most of the weird useless shite is gone, and I really hope the newcomers who play this honestly have a great fucking time.

I have my fair share of issues though, a lot of which boil down to "not in my monster hunter" shite. I grew up on paintballs and psychoserum, I have a real soft spot for the pure archaic shit that this series is known for, so you can imagine half of my complaints already.

The wirebugs seem antithetical to what MH is.
The range of monsters to hunt is lacking.
Some of the Monsters have lost a bit of their character, like whats up with the Tigrex these days.
The game feels so short.

All of the usual shite.

I will say though, the majority of the environments are dog, the worst in recent memory. Someone sucked all the colour out and it's such a crime because some of the DS games looked great compared to the fucking flooded forests 20 shades of brown.

All of my bullshit aside, I'm honestly so glad Rise exists, there is a lot to love here, at the end of the day it's a Monster Hunter game and it's a blast to play, especially if you've got some homies to come along for the ride. I'm just dumb and like all my obsolete garbo, I guess I've got the past 16 years to scratch that itch.

Shouts out to my boy Rathalos who finally stopped being a jobber and got a sweet move set.

My friends really hyped this game up, but after playing it with them for about 20~ hours, I just can't get into it.
It was fun at the start, but the gameplay loop just seems extremely samey. Take missions, kill boss, use boss materials to make gear, repeat. I didn't find it rewarding in any way, and there was an armour/weapons set much stronger than the rest without needing many items at all.
There was also this 'tower defense' mode, it sucks.
I think people play this game because the two girls are very cute.

Made it to HR7 and absolutely clowned [REDACTED] so I'm calling that completed for now.

It might be the best MH so far. They streamlined a lot of stuff and made it so much more accessible, despite what certain outlets might claim. We got a newcomer pal into the series nae bother. So much multiplayer fun to be had wrangling monsters and bringing them into ongoing fights.

They even did us Insect Glaive Boys justice with the Switch Skills (the Diving Wyvern in particular) making up for otherwise quite bland silkbind moves. I'm excited for DLC so I can continue to fly through the air very big and smash giant creatures.

Everything limps...

É fascinante observar a evolução da franquia Monster Hunter ao longo dos anos, desde os seus primeiros títulos até os mais recentes como Monster Hunter World e Monster Hunter Rise.

Cada jogo traz suas próprias nuances e melhorias, e é natural que os jogadores tenham suas preferências baseadas em sua história com a série e nas características específicas de cada título.

Monster Hunter Rise é uma abordagem ousada que simplifica as mecânicas avançadas dos jogos anteriores para atrair um público mais amplo, enquanto ainda oferece uma experiência de caça aos monstros emocionante. Embora o jogo seja mais simples e intuitivo em comparação com títulos anteriores como Monster Hunter World, ele ainda oferece uma experiência gratificante. Se você está procurando uma introdução mais suave à franquia, Monster Hunter Rise é uma excelente escolha.

E com a chegada de Monster Hunter Wilds cada vez mais próxima, é emocionante antecipar como a franquia continuará a inovar e a cativar os fãs antigos e novos.