- 90 hours played
- Weapon of choice - Light bow Gun

YouTube tells me that I can’t prefer this game to World. YouTube also tells me that comparing them is unfair due to the Switch’s limitations. Limitations be damned. I loved this game. Also since World is the only other game I have played in the series, that’s my point of comparison.

I recently completed base World and whilst I enjoyed it, I found its sluggish combat and immersive elements frustrating. Rise doesn’t suffer that at all because it’s made for handheld consoles. Its gameplay is designed around pick up and play short bursts. This game wastes no time and I appreciated that.

The combat is fast, flashy and always frantic. The wire bug enables fantastic levels of traversal. I was flipping around these arenas bullying the monsters. It felt amazing. The monsters can’t really compete with your mobility and couple that with some Insane damage output and Rise can be a very easy game. But it’s still enjoyable and its gameplay loop is maddeningly addictive.

I much preferred the hunt quests in this game. Gone are the immersive elements of looking for tracks and scratch marks to find the monster. The maps are already scouted by Cahoot, your pet owl so the monsters show up on the map at the start of the quest. The Palamute dog mounts act like horses, making traversal faster and getting to the action quicker. The quality of life changes make picking up bone piles and mining spots much faster, one click of the button picks up everything from the spot. Instead of three separate presses of the button in World. They also added a pause function in this game which I really missed in MH World.

Despite the graphical limitations of the Switch I much preferred this games art style. I felt it had more character. There was no issues with visual clarity and reading what was on screen and I loved the monster designs. Especially the little monster symbols drawn on the quest board.

The monster roster felt more unique as there seemed to be more types of monsters other than Wyverns. Quest wise there’s not much variety. We get Hunt, capture and rampage quests. Hunt and capture are self explanatory but Rampage is something new. It’s a horde mode style of mission and to be honest, these were awful. I only played those required for story progression and then forgot about them entirely. I also wasn’t a fan of the Spiribird system. Collecting Spiribirds every hunt to increase my max health and stamina got boring fast, therefore I never completed a hunt with a full health or stamina gauge. Outside of the missions where a Max Spiribird is supplied right at the start.

Overall I loved my time with Monster Hunter Rise but there’s a decent chunk of the game I just don’t care for. The inclusion of the Rampage missions is the only thing holding this game back from 5 stars.

Top 5 Monster Designs
1. Magnamalo
2. Anjanath
3. Mizutsune
4. Rakna-Kadaki
5. Khezu

Top 5 favourite monster fights
1. Magnamalo
2. Mizutsune
3. Anjanath
4. Rathalos
5. Rajang

Top 5 least favourite monster fights
1. Jyuratodus
2. Barroth
3. Volvidon
4. Basarious
5. Tigrex

- 78 hours played
- Weapon of choice - Light Bow Gun
- This is going to be a long one

Upon release this was one of my most highly anticipated games ever. I had only dabbled in the franchise with the PSP entries but the tutorial’s seemed to go on forever and therefore I would always end up dropping the games. Monster Hunter World released and like many of us, it seemed to appeal more to my tastes. I got it on release, loved it the 50 hours I put into it. I fought Odogaron over and over then I dropped the game and moved on to something else. With Monster Hunter Wilds out next year I decided this was the year I would get World and Rise completed to see if this franchise is for me. Long story short, it is. But there’s some caveats.

First of all, I’m new to this franchise and the new player experience is pretty awful. This game will throw system after system at you explained in boring ass text boxes. You can’t help but want to skip them but doing so means some mechanic hasn’t been explained. There’s so much depth in this games combat, player builds and item usage that it can all seem a little daunting. But I found after some time I acknowledged what I didn’t know and just moved on without it.

The combat is slow and methodical. Your punished for your mistakes, missed swings and poor positioning. The monsters are pretty fast and not afraid to dish out the hurt. Each one being completely different to fight and each one also has their little identifiable quirks. The variety in combat encounters is fantastic. The Weapons are all diverse and there’s a play style for everyone. Each weapon also having a great amount of depth to its move set. It almost feels like a fighting game character select screen when looking at the weapons. I adore the switch axe but due to RSI in my thumbs I had to go Light Bow Gun. This was a fun weapon but my god it seemed to absolutely trivialise a lot of the fights. Especially the Elder Dragons.

The environments all look great. In fact this game looks amazing but at times there was too much on the screen. Too much details where I felt that it actually hurt the games visual clarity. Pair this with some poor level design and you’re sometimes in for a really rough ride. The Ancient Forest is an absolute nightmare to traverse with its verticality and numerous branching, twisting paths and a poor map screen.

The scout files seemed to really hurt the game as well. I hated having to find and track the monster before every hunt. I get some may love this as it adds to the feeling of a living breathing world but I’m here to hunt. I enjoyed this game as a boss rush game. No interest in collecting footprints and scratch marks. The scout files that lead you to the monster also distract you from how gorgeous some of the maps look. Tunnel vision sets in and you end up doing nothing other than looking at the flies.

There’s content for hours and hours here and I get why that’s perfect for other people. This game can last you forever if you want it to. The gameplay loop of hunting stronger monsters to make stronger armour and weapons, to hunt stronger monsters is perfect. It continuously feeds into itself. But after the main story I was done. I have no interest in playing the dlc despite wanting to fight one or two of the new monsters. It’s just not enough.

My other issue with this game is that I played it alongside playing Monster Hunter Rise on the switch. Now that is a Monster Hunter experience I much prefer. Its gameplay loop lends itself perfectly to portable play. Quicker hunts. No tracking. Faster base movement and mounts that get you straight into the action. Alongside Rise this game felt slow, clunky and unwieldily. I will most likely try Wilds when it releases in 2025 but my tastes seem to lean more to this series being on handheld and made for handheld. MH World on steam deck wouldn’t change the fact it’s a home console game.

But this is all just my opinion on the game. I don’t look to be objective about games. I can clearly see this game’s quality and appeal. Just didn’t do a lot for me. Here’s a list of my favourite and least favourite monsters from a new players perspective on base game World. Odogaron is such a good boy.

Favourite monsters
1. Odogaron
2. Anjanath
3. Deviljho
4. Bazelgeuse
5. Legiana

Least favourite monsters
1. Lavasioth
2. Uragaan
3. Jyuratados
4. Rathian
5. Rathalos