Pros:
+ Best OST in the series.
+ Palamutes are good addition
+ Wirebug is fun to use in battle
+ It's still MH that you know and love
+ Pretty fast loading times

Cons:
- Downgrade in terms of QOL if you compare Rise to World.
- Very short main story
- Field bonuses are meh
- Capcom still hates lance

Monster Hunter Rise brings the series back to a more traditional setting while bringing along with it more quality of life changes than World/Iceborne did. This is the best starting place for new hunters and also a great game to return to for players that may have been burnt from World's awful endgame. While it may not have as much content as other base games in the series the style and art direction carry this game and make you fall in love with Kamura village and its colorful cast of characters.

So far I have over 57 hours on my save and have completed every Monster hunt available while still being addicted to grinding out materials to make weapons and sets for the rest of the weapons I use.

So it's Monster Hunter which means it has sucked far more hours of my life than just about any other genre but it's also definitely one of the weaker entries of the post-Tri series.

There's plenty of good; getting around the map feels pretty great; Wirebug spidermanning just works out of combat, you can ride your ninja dog like a horse or yoshi him for extra height, and wirefall recovery gives you a way to get up with your weapon sheathed, something I've wanted for over a decade now. Narga and Ziggy are the coolest they've ever been and I enjoyed the hot new cat Magnamelo as well. The problem is that other than those three and newcomer Goss Harag the monsters just aren't very good; bad hitboxes abound and there are several weird shared telegraphs. The final boss giants are probably the worst the modern series has ever seen and the new Rampage mode, monhun tower defense, is an abomination unto good taste. The fact that the two worst parts of the game are the easiest way to farm charms almost makes me miss rusty shard farming in 3U.

There are plenty of other upsides; armor set skills are designed much more with purpose now instead of being a mismash. Switchaxe and Gunlance are the best they've ever felt to play, with the former using the actual morph aspect as a meaningful part and the latter having actual chasedown and fast punishes. Hunting Horn got a total rework into being the super invincible machine instead of a bad hammer, and LBG lets you go full gunfu on monsters, which is pretty cool.

The biggest downside though is that the game just sort of ends at what would normally be the 70-80% mark or so for a monster hunter game; it feels like 8 quests just got cut from the game; for comparison World went to 9 on launch instead of Rise's 7*.

There's also some serious camera issues; monsters are just bigger and I think the camera might be more zoomed in, but it's far harder to keep track of everything compared to previous entries, like they took G's Plesioth as the new standard where you spend the whole time staring at his weird little feet.

Again though, it's Monster Hunter, it's fun, Long Sword is even more broken than it was before, and it's got one of the easiest LRs for getting you into the game, but I'd still recommend waiting for the next big content patch to get in if you're not a big MH fan.

Played some of world and a bit of 4U but never made it to HR in either of them so this was the first monster hunter I really got into. I still have a bunch of sets to make and weapons to try out but I beat the final boss so I feel pretty confidant in saying this game is pretty cool. Having to work around the hyper aggression of the monsters and the slow ass high commitment moves is fun and most of the monsters are really fun fights to learn and the game doesn't force you through a bunch of long ass tutorial missions like world and 4u did.