MH Rise started out as a game I could put hours into at a time, but then quickly becomes a game I can only play a few quests of before getting my fill; and even then it only gets those quests at the promise of some new gear I could craft, which will become quickly outdated.
While the story up to the credits is really short, the games total length seems way too long for the repetitiveness of it. No hunt ever really felt different to me, it always involved the exact same "strategy" of just starting at the camp, running to the monster (sometimes exploring if it was a new map) and using the same combos over and over. Some monsters were more annoying than others, but generally speaking I never felt like I needed to change how I approached any battle, and I got through them just fine like that.
The repetitiveness is further exaggerated by things like the amount of missions not really correlating with the amount of new monsters. At first it feels like every new mission introduces a new monster, with a fantastic documentary-style cutscenes to boot, but then higher rank missions are just "fight this monster again, but harder" or "Fight this monster you've fought before, and then fight this one". Not to mention the fact there's basically only 5 maps in the entire game, and they don't even randomly generate the resources each time so it's always the exact same bugs, plants, monsters, mining spots etc in the same places.
The game was kind of middle of the road in terms of graphics for Switch. It didn't look ugly or anything, but it didn't impress me. The actual monster designs were great however. But the game did have a very slight performance issue when it came to monsters who were in the background - especially notable on flying monsters as they seemed to move and flap their wings at a very flow frame rate until you got close.
There's a few little niggles I have along with all this. Like when you gain a new hunter rank you unlock a ton of new stuff, but there's more than one of any given important NPC in the game, for example 2 blacksmiths, 2 shopkeepers, and for some reason you need to talk to BOTH of them to hear the exact same message about how they've expanded their stock or whatever. And then there's the dango girl who after a new rank will always have about 5 things to say, and you have to go through them all separately because the game can't just put them all into one interaction.
I haven't played the past games (except for a tiny bit of MH3, but I can't remember anything about it), but I do know the wirebugs and palamutes are new to this game and they were great additions, but it makes me wonder how sluggish the past games must have felt. I couldn't imagine having to run around these maps without a palamute to speed around on, or the wirebugs to accelerate climbing.
MH Rise to me is a game that is best at the beginning when everything is new and the game puts effort into making each monster introduction seem special (it should be noted that all high rank missions take place in co-op mode, which doesn't include cutscenes, so any monsters introduced there don't have them). But it doesn't have the meat in the gameplay to justify the amount of grinding and content it has. It does try, even when in late game, as each new rank will offer some new stuff, but it's usually something like a new dango meal, or a new way to make item decorations, and not enough to justify playing through 10 more quests doing the exact same thing
You could change weapons every mission to get a bit of variety, but that just means grinding more because weapons are not very cheap. Even when I only focused on one weapon type the whole game, a lot of the later weapons were hard to obtain without dedicated focus on a single monster, repeating the same mission over and over.
While the story up to the credits is really short, the games total length seems way too long for the repetitiveness of it. No hunt ever really felt different to me, it always involved the exact same "strategy" of just starting at the camp, running to the monster (sometimes exploring if it was a new map) and using the same combos over and over. Some monsters were more annoying than others, but generally speaking I never felt like I needed to change how I approached any battle, and I got through them just fine like that.
The repetitiveness is further exaggerated by things like the amount of missions not really correlating with the amount of new monsters. At first it feels like every new mission introduces a new monster, with a fantastic documentary-style cutscenes to boot, but then higher rank missions are just "fight this monster again, but harder" or "Fight this monster you've fought before, and then fight this one". Not to mention the fact there's basically only 5 maps in the entire game, and they don't even randomly generate the resources each time so it's always the exact same bugs, plants, monsters, mining spots etc in the same places.
The game was kind of middle of the road in terms of graphics for Switch. It didn't look ugly or anything, but it didn't impress me. The actual monster designs were great however. But the game did have a very slight performance issue when it came to monsters who were in the background - especially notable on flying monsters as they seemed to move and flap their wings at a very flow frame rate until you got close.
There's a few little niggles I have along with all this. Like when you gain a new hunter rank you unlock a ton of new stuff, but there's more than one of any given important NPC in the game, for example 2 blacksmiths, 2 shopkeepers, and for some reason you need to talk to BOTH of them to hear the exact same message about how they've expanded their stock or whatever. And then there's the dango girl who after a new rank will always have about 5 things to say, and you have to go through them all separately because the game can't just put them all into one interaction.
I haven't played the past games (except for a tiny bit of MH3, but I can't remember anything about it), but I do know the wirebugs and palamutes are new to this game and they were great additions, but it makes me wonder how sluggish the past games must have felt. I couldn't imagine having to run around these maps without a palamute to speed around on, or the wirebugs to accelerate climbing.
MH Rise to me is a game that is best at the beginning when everything is new and the game puts effort into making each monster introduction seem special (it should be noted that all high rank missions take place in co-op mode, which doesn't include cutscenes, so any monsters introduced there don't have them). But it doesn't have the meat in the gameplay to justify the amount of grinding and content it has. It does try, even when in late game, as each new rank will offer some new stuff, but it's usually something like a new dango meal, or a new way to make item decorations, and not enough to justify playing through 10 more quests doing the exact same thing
You could change weapons every mission to get a bit of variety, but that just means grinding more because weapons are not very cheap. Even when I only focused on one weapon type the whole game, a lot of the later weapons were hard to obtain without dedicated focus on a single monster, repeating the same mission over and over.