I feel like the time is now to update my Sunbreak thoughts, about halfway (I’m guessing) through the title updates, and, well, I was in the mood to write about it. The game has changed a lot since I wrote my first review, and my suspicion that this’d end up my favorite Monster Hunter turned out…even more true than I expected. So I wanted to write about why.
Anomaly investigations feel like an endgame designed specifically for me. Or, almost. My favorite Monster Hunter endgame is essentially what we got in Rise: essentially nothing making you play, beyond you wanting to play, because it’s fun. It gives you some hyper challenging monsters, and no reward for fighting them, because it is so confident in simply being fun to play that it expects you to fight them anyway. I didn’t care about Apexes not having gear: I liked that the game just made these challenging fights and invited me to do them, if I wanted to. I did fight them, and I did have fun. I had so much fun in the endgame of Rise. But I acknowledge that these days, most people playing a game like Monster Hunter crave more concrete tasks to accomplish, more systems to engage with, and rewards for doing so. I don’t begrudge that, even though it usually ends up making me less interested in a game in the long run.
But anomaly investigations. I love them. I spent about 200 hours in base Rise simply using the “Random” button on Join Requests. This was my absolute favorite feature of Rise. This is why, despite knowing Rise’s matchmaking is objectively worse than World’s, I still kind of prefer Rise’s. It’s pretty shit for trying to find specific monsters to fight (pre-anomaly investigations, at least) but the Random button. I love that button. In World, scouring the board for Join Requests and manually choosing one every time, when I just want to “play Monster Hunter” and don’t care about the particulars, I’d usually grow tired and bounce off after about four hunts. In Rise, I’d keep going back and jumping into Random fights all night. Random hunts actually made the camp feel somewhat less egregiously casual, since if I suddenly realized, “I brought a poison SnS to a monster immune to it,” I could go swap out a build real quick. Or I’d equip a weapon I was still learning to play, get something like Valstrax that I felt not ready for on that weapon, no worries, I’ll just switch to my trusty GS. Or so on. I never got bored because I was always fighting different monsters, trying different weapons, and always felt like I was helping people out, and the time to jump into the next hunt was just about zero.
Anomaly investigations feel like the team at Capcom saw how much time I spent doing random hunts and made an endgame system specifically for me. I’m using my well-tuned GS build? I’ll limit my search to the upper levels. I wanna try out a new build, a new weapon, new switch skills? I can just cap the level to 40 or something low and hunt something without having to worry about carting (probably). Because I will essentially use any of the materials investigations give to me, I’ll just have it give me any random target. Pre-investigations, I thought anomaly quests didn’t quite stick the landing on “making the entire roster relevant in endgame,” but investigations nailed it, since you have augmentation as an endless anomalous material funnel.
And I get why people don’t like armor augmentation. But I really enjoy it. I felt base Sunbreak had a really diverse array of viable options for builds, and I think that augmentation makes that even more true. Sure, I can’t take a crap gear piece and make it great, but for example, I really love the skill on the Malzeno armor that heals you when you hit a broken part. Stacked with bloodblight and recovery up, a single hit on GS can heal me to essentially full, which helps me stay really aggressive in anomaly hunts. So I take some of the Malzeno armor into augmentation and basically roll on it until I get some better offensive skills (which the armor largely lacks). Is it a meta set? Absolutely not. Can I still pump out far better damage than in a world without armor augmentation? Yes yes yes.
I think armor augmentation is bad for min maxing, for the more hardcore community, but I think Sunbreak is really about encouraging build and playstyle diversity in a way that the MH series has, in my experience, never done (GU is close, but most weapons have extremely extremely “the best” art/style combos, where I just feel Sunbreak allows for a bit more diversity. Partly because it’s easier! Which I don’t think is inherently horrible). It feels bad rolling a bad augmentation roll, but since I’m not really going for a God Roll, I just get a good offensive skill on a comfy piece, or a good comfy skill on an offensive piece, and then call it a day. If you’re happy with the “good enough” augment, it really takes extremely minimal grinding.
Then I’ve really enjoyed the title update monsters so far. I like that the weapons don’t feel dramatically, insanely better than what we already have, just providing even more options (the armor sets, on the other hand, have some pretty great unique skills, but even they are there to encourage you to try out new types of play, eg. attacking the monster from behind). I again don’t really care about how many fire monsters we’re getting, I guess probably since I main raw-focused weapons and don’t really pay attention to elemental resistances in my armor (giant fireballs are generally very easy to dodge) and just don’t care that much what color the big projectile being thrown at me is. Again, I kinda get why some people care, but I don’t. Which is a running theme with Sunbreak—all of the common criticisms are just things that don’t bother me, or that I actively like. I hope we get at least a couple completely new monsters (new to this game, I mean; I don’t really expect fully original monsters in title updates) but I like all the fights we have so far. While base Rise has some monsters I really hate (Volvidon, Basarios…that’s it, really), Sunbreak has only added monsters I really like (Seething Bazelgeuse I find a little boring). Which is not true of any other Monster Hunter game I’ve played (Portable 3rd is close, but alas: Nibelsnarf).
I think Monster Hunter will return to the World mode for its next entry, or something at least closer to it (a bit slower, more emphasis on ecosystem interactions, more grounded combat), and I’m fine with that. I’m sure I will really, really enjoy the next game. But I think it’s possible Sunbreak stays essentially my perfect modern Monster Hunter. And I’ll always have it, and I’ll be playing it for a long time.
Anomaly investigations feel like an endgame designed specifically for me. Or, almost. My favorite Monster Hunter endgame is essentially what we got in Rise: essentially nothing making you play, beyond you wanting to play, because it’s fun. It gives you some hyper challenging monsters, and no reward for fighting them, because it is so confident in simply being fun to play that it expects you to fight them anyway. I didn’t care about Apexes not having gear: I liked that the game just made these challenging fights and invited me to do them, if I wanted to. I did fight them, and I did have fun. I had so much fun in the endgame of Rise. But I acknowledge that these days, most people playing a game like Monster Hunter crave more concrete tasks to accomplish, more systems to engage with, and rewards for doing so. I don’t begrudge that, even though it usually ends up making me less interested in a game in the long run.
But anomaly investigations. I love them. I spent about 200 hours in base Rise simply using the “Random” button on Join Requests. This was my absolute favorite feature of Rise. This is why, despite knowing Rise’s matchmaking is objectively worse than World’s, I still kind of prefer Rise’s. It’s pretty shit for trying to find specific monsters to fight (pre-anomaly investigations, at least) but the Random button. I love that button. In World, scouring the board for Join Requests and manually choosing one every time, when I just want to “play Monster Hunter” and don’t care about the particulars, I’d usually grow tired and bounce off after about four hunts. In Rise, I’d keep going back and jumping into Random fights all night. Random hunts actually made the camp feel somewhat less egregiously casual, since if I suddenly realized, “I brought a poison SnS to a monster immune to it,” I could go swap out a build real quick. Or I’d equip a weapon I was still learning to play, get something like Valstrax that I felt not ready for on that weapon, no worries, I’ll just switch to my trusty GS. Or so on. I never got bored because I was always fighting different monsters, trying different weapons, and always felt like I was helping people out, and the time to jump into the next hunt was just about zero.
Anomaly investigations feel like the team at Capcom saw how much time I spent doing random hunts and made an endgame system specifically for me. I’m using my well-tuned GS build? I’ll limit my search to the upper levels. I wanna try out a new build, a new weapon, new switch skills? I can just cap the level to 40 or something low and hunt something without having to worry about carting (probably). Because I will essentially use any of the materials investigations give to me, I’ll just have it give me any random target. Pre-investigations, I thought anomaly quests didn’t quite stick the landing on “making the entire roster relevant in endgame,” but investigations nailed it, since you have augmentation as an endless anomalous material funnel.
And I get why people don’t like armor augmentation. But I really enjoy it. I felt base Sunbreak had a really diverse array of viable options for builds, and I think that augmentation makes that even more true. Sure, I can’t take a crap gear piece and make it great, but for example, I really love the skill on the Malzeno armor that heals you when you hit a broken part. Stacked with bloodblight and recovery up, a single hit on GS can heal me to essentially full, which helps me stay really aggressive in anomaly hunts. So I take some of the Malzeno armor into augmentation and basically roll on it until I get some better offensive skills (which the armor largely lacks). Is it a meta set? Absolutely not. Can I still pump out far better damage than in a world without armor augmentation? Yes yes yes.
I think armor augmentation is bad for min maxing, for the more hardcore community, but I think Sunbreak is really about encouraging build and playstyle diversity in a way that the MH series has, in my experience, never done (GU is close, but most weapons have extremely extremely “the best” art/style combos, where I just feel Sunbreak allows for a bit more diversity. Partly because it’s easier! Which I don’t think is inherently horrible). It feels bad rolling a bad augmentation roll, but since I’m not really going for a God Roll, I just get a good offensive skill on a comfy piece, or a good comfy skill on an offensive piece, and then call it a day. If you’re happy with the “good enough” augment, it really takes extremely minimal grinding.
Then I’ve really enjoyed the title update monsters so far. I like that the weapons don’t feel dramatically, insanely better than what we already have, just providing even more options (the armor sets, on the other hand, have some pretty great unique skills, but even they are there to encourage you to try out new types of play, eg. attacking the monster from behind). I again don’t really care about how many fire monsters we’re getting, I guess probably since I main raw-focused weapons and don’t really pay attention to elemental resistances in my armor (giant fireballs are generally very easy to dodge) and just don’t care that much what color the big projectile being thrown at me is. Again, I kinda get why some people care, but I don’t. Which is a running theme with Sunbreak—all of the common criticisms are just things that don’t bother me, or that I actively like. I hope we get at least a couple completely new monsters (new to this game, I mean; I don’t really expect fully original monsters in title updates) but I like all the fights we have so far. While base Rise has some monsters I really hate (Volvidon, Basarios…that’s it, really), Sunbreak has only added monsters I really like (Seething Bazelgeuse I find a little boring). Which is not true of any other Monster Hunter game I’ve played (Portable 3rd is close, but alas: Nibelsnarf).
I think Monster Hunter will return to the World mode for its next entry, or something at least closer to it (a bit slower, more emphasis on ecosystem interactions, more grounded combat), and I’m fine with that. I’m sure I will really, really enjoy the next game. But I think it’s possible Sunbreak stays essentially my perfect modern Monster Hunter. And I’ll always have it, and I’ll be playing it for a long time.