Monster Hunter Rise

Monster Hunter Rise is the second Monster Hunter game I've played, the first being World. I've finished the "main" quests after 33 hours.

By "main" quests, I mean that I've gotten to hunter rank 7 and beaten the two elementally named large monsters. Basically, the end of the story. There is still farming to do for armor, weapons, decorations, talismen, etc., but I've seen most of the content that the game has to offer. I am playing Rise on PC; I played World on PlayStation.

Overall, it's a good game, undoubtably. It looks good, runs very well, loads extremely quickly, and the main Monster Hunter gameplay loop is there. The main thing I hold against the game is that it is so short when compared to World, especially with its outstanding "master rank" expansion Iceborne. Obviously, Rise hasn't had it's expansion yet (Sunbreak comes out summer 2022) so it has plenty of room to grow. I "finished" Iceborne at around 350 hours, and although my character has a full set of Fatalis armor, I've still never actually killed him, meaning there's still gameplay for me to finish in World. In Rise, I am continuing to increase my hunter rank so that I can fight against the few post-story monsters and working toward a post-story build.

I like the evolution of clutch claw from World to the wirebugs in Rise. The maps are smaller in this latest installment in the franchise and easier to navigate, and Capcom has mostly cut the "hunt" part of the game out - no having to follow monster droppings and goo to find the monster before starting the fight. Rise has fewer fast-travel points on its maps, and favors the use of new dog-like buddies called Palamutes to get around the maps quickly (along with the wirebugs and great wirebugs).

As most of World's low and high ranks I was still largely learning how the game worked and trying to settle on weapon to play for longer than a few hours, and end-game master rank was what I remember most vividly, it's not quite fair to compare World's difficulty to Rise, but I definitely got through the hunts in Rise faster for many reasons. I am playing different weapons in Rise: I tried several in World but settled on lance, and I've pretty much played switch axe in Rise since starting the game.

The "village" in Rise is much smaller than either of the "hub areas" in World/Iceborne, which I think is for the better. World's starting hub area was visually impressive, but annoying to navigate. Iceborne's hub area struck a nice balance between open areas and ease of navigation, and this progression seems to have continued into Rise where a bit of menuing grants fast-travel to the various areas in the village with nary a second of loading time to do so.

I prefer Worlds' art style overall, but I'm not opposed to Rise's; the game still looks good. And for how well it runs (and the fact that it launched in the Switch), I'm not complaining.

Overall, Rise is a good game, and I look forward to the content coming in the expansion.