Is Monster Hunter Rise a good Game? Review of Game

Review of Monster Hunter Rise from two very different perspectives, think of it as two reviews in one! So, is monster hunter rise worth all of the recent hype poured into the series? Can a newcomer like myself jump into the series with this game? Do veterans of the series feel it holds up compared to previous entries?

Monster Hunter Rise Gameplay

Let’s find out! Like the other games in the series, the bulk of Monster Hunter Rise’s gameplay consists of hunting monsters, either by yourself or online with friends, then using the parts obtained from the hunts to upgrade and make new weapons and armor allowing you to hunt bigger and meaner beasts. But it also brings some new features to the series too, including dog companions called Palamutes to work alongside the series’ iconic cat companion Palacios, along with Wirebugs for new Spiderman-like movement, and a tower defense mode called The Rampage.

Hunts are generally shorter than in Monster Hunter Worlds, closer to previous games being more portable-friendly as handheld experiences. The Monster Hunter Rise game opens with players in Kamura Village, where they’ve just officially become Hunter, ready to take on monsters to defend their village. The Rampage, a phenomenon where Monsters attack the village in groups, is set to return, and the village must be ready.

Therefore, it’s up to the player, this brand new hunter, to refine their skills and be ready for the dangers that lie ahead. And That’s about it for plot set-up. The game is very light on the story and plot, which keeps the focus on, well, hunting monsters! I’ve personally never been one to pay too much mind to a Monster Hunter game’s plot but the plot is more in line with older monster hunter games being short and sweet, unlike monster hunter World’s more active and engaging story.

Game story

The plot is more tied to the single-player quests than anything else so players won’t be blocked from multiplayer quests if they haven’t done something in the story. Yeah, I wasn’t really going into this game expecting a grand story or anything. Frankly, the fact that it has a story focused on protecting the village is charming, but that’s less about the plot and more about world-building–and that’s where the game excels. I really love seeing all of the NPCs interact with one another from time to time in passing.

I also really like the Dango, I think it’s cute and fun with how it’s presented and used. It’s really nice to see all of the fun they have had with food in the other games like the large cheese fountains and cats stirring large woks of rice. Dango may feel like an odd choice for a focused food, but I really enjoy just how much this game Monster Hunter Rise uses it. If there’s anyone food your civilization is best known for, why not make it something fun?

Kamura Village, despite being a small place, feels lively. People go about their daily lives and business, running shops, cleaning tables, transporting materials to different ends of the village, or socializing. Whether I’m ordering dango to eat at the tea shop, buying supplies from the merchant, forging new weapons or armor at the blacksmith, or looking for new buddies to hire, there’s plenty to do around Kamura Village. Thankfully, not only is there a quick-travel option, but also multiple places to perform these various actions.

There’s plenty to do to prepare for the hunt, and as players progress through the game, you’ll likely become very familiar with these services. All of the facilities offered are the same as other monster hunter games. Although these services are extremely easy to access with each one appearing in several places. The fast travel system also takes almost no time to load areas so if you happen to be somewhere the facility you want isn’t it doesn’t take long at all the get to it The intricacies behind the various systems available in Kamura Village definitely require some patience and time investment to fully understand.

Thankfully, there are tutorials! I really appreciated the one-by-one quick tutorial at the beginning of the game to ease into each of these systems, especially since it didn’t drag out at all. When I put in the time to try them out and closely look at it all, I found myself getting a pretty decent understanding relatively quickly, and then frequently making the most of them maximize my gameplay.

I will also admit that some of the between-hunt systems can seem a bit nuanced, as you will need several buddies to be able to use them as well as having a lot of different options. If you have played a previous monster hunter game though they’re about the same. These systems may be a bit awkward to learn at first but you’ll likely find they aren’t too complicated after you’ve spent some time learning them. I would also highly encourage players to take the time to learn them as it greatly helps prevent manual grinding for tons of useful items and tools to use on your hunts. Speaking of, let’s get to what you’re all here for the hunts.

The hunts, and quests in general, come in two varieties: Village Quests, which are single-player only and more-or-less equate to a story mode, and Hub Quests, which can be completed in multiplayer. Hunts and quests take place outside of Kamura Village, in different regions. Each of the different locales, whether it’s the Shrine Ruins or the Flooded Forest, feel very distinct from each other, with vastly different geography. Filled with uniquely different endemic life and small creatures to fight, collect, or simply observe, there’s a lot to find when traversing these areas.

You’re encouraged to explore the regions as you track down whatever monster you’re currently hunting, so you better be ready to stop for those mining deposits and other materials to help you craft and forge later on! I often found myself spending more time exploring than I really should be on limited-time missions, curious about the world and what could be found. Thankfully, the limited time never really became a problem. If I wanted to simply explore the region and not worry about the quest, there are Expedition Tours, free of time limits and goals.

You can explore to your heart’s content, searching for endemic life and crafting materials. I really love what the five different regions have to offer. They are very different from one another and an absolute treat to explore. Gathering and collecting items has never been more convenient, without the need for items to gather at certain spots and places like mineral deposits and only needing to be used once to get multiple ores from it. I also greatly appreciate the way the areas are designed.

The lack of load zones between the areas is great, but just as importantly each section feels like a condensed arena making it a lot easier to focus on the hunt before you. When it comes to hunting monsters, whether it’s the Great Izuchi or the iconic Rathalos, this is where the fun really is. Players use one of 14 different weapon types, based purely on their preference for playstyle, teamed with assisting Palicoes and Palamutes, plus up to three other players! When hunting alone in a single-player, having a strategy with your Buddies is key.

Maybe you want a Palico focused on healing while you and your Palamute charge in with heavy-hitting weapons, or maybe you want your Palamute to distract the monster while your Palico throws explosives and you fire ranged attacks from a distance? By going to the Buddy Board, you can set your buddy behavior! For Palicos, upon creation, you’ll need to choose an assist type, such as Healer for Fight. Whatever your strategy, make sure you get in some good hits while dodging the monster’s attacks!

There’s a ton of freedom in how you choose to take down monsters, and it’s always satisfying! Even when finally taking down a Monster I had been stuck on for a while, needing to change up my approach and equipment, it was still gratifying to successfully complete the hunt, though it was definitely mixed with a sigh of relief. Aside from the strategy, I love how every hunt feels like it could be a boss battle. These monsters are large, threatening, and can really pack a punch. While most hunts have a time limit of about 50 minutes, the average hunt focused on the monster takes roughly 20.

Despite the freedom to take on hunts however you please, it’s not always as easy as throwing yourself head-first into battle, especially with higher rank missions becoming increasingly more difficult. This is even more true when doing multiplayer Hub quests, taking out difficult monsters with three other players. Teamwork and strategy become key, coming together to set up a dangerous combo against the monster, draw aggro, and more.

Now you newcomers may be worried that you’ll struggle with this aspect, but I didn’t find that to be a problem at all! Nearly all of my Hub Quests during this review period were done in multiplayer, often with TJ here, along with strangers. While he knew exactly what he was doing, and definitely offered some guidance when I needed it, rarely did I drag the team down due to being a complete noob. Whether I was diving in with dual blades or supporting from afar with coated arrows, I was able to comfortably use the playstyle I wanted while helping the team.

Whether it was just the two of us through local wireless, paired up online, or in a full lobby of four hunters, the connection was very solid. The stuttering issue from the demo seems to be completely gone, so players with large friend lists can rest easily. When playing online, there are various ways to communicate in-game, such as gestures, stickers, quick message prompts to send, and even access to an in-game keyboard for custom messages. It goes without saying that typing out messages can be pretty slow, so the large variety of quick messages and stickers are very helpful.

While it would be nice for some sort of actual voice chat, given the nature of the Switch Online Mobile App for voice chat, I’m rather happy with the available in-game alternatives. While there’s plenty to do in the single-player gameplay, this game is absolutely best enjoyed as a multiplayer experience. Monster hunter rise did add one new feature to communicate a set of automatically translated lines that when used will display in each person’s preferred language, making communication between different language speakers possible to some extent.

To be honest I am incredibly impressed with this feature as I’ve had several experiences in earlier games where this would have been really helpful. Something worth noting is the music! The song that plays in Kamura Village is beautiful, and I’ve found myself standing around just to listen to it. Actually, that’s a bit of an understatement. The music in the Monster Hunter Rise game is actually incredible, and I can’t stop listening to most of the songs. They add to the feeling of the world or the panic of a tough battle. It’s exciting to go into battle with other players with an epic battle theme playing in the background.

Discovering unique themes for some monsters is also exciting. While that mostly sums up the Monster Hunter experience that has been pretty consistent across the series, we have yet to touch upon the new features, such as the Palamutes. These big dogs are incredibly handy. Sure, they may not be filled with puns like the Palicos are, but you can ride them for much faster movement, even making them drift, and best of all, you can pet them! We have a whole video dedicated to petting the animals, so please check that out after this review.

I’m surprised that the Palamutes are new to the Monster Hunter series, they’re integrated so nicely into the game that it’s hard for me to imagine the series without them. Also, the default Palamute looking pretty similar to Repede from Tales of Vesperia is rather funny to me. All dogs, even blade-wielding ones, are good dogs! I will admit at first as much as I love having doggos finally run free in monster hunter games I was also very concerned.

I was worried about how they would affect the use of palicos or if they would be inferior because of Palicos many different tools. I was elated to find that this isn’t the case. While it’s true that Palamutes don’t have as many tools to work with as Palicos do, on top of helping you get from place to place quickly they have their own unique and different set of tools to use that really separates them from palicos.

Monster Hunter Rise also introduces Wirebugs, granting players new movement options among various other bonuses. Powering up weapons, climbing the environment, factoring into special attacks, or helping dodge a hefty incoming strike. The wirebugs help keep the Monster Hunter Rise game moving at a quick pace and they’re the key to thorough exploration. Like the Palamutes, it’s hard to imagine that these didn’t exist in the series until now.

They feel integral to gameplay, with fantastic implementation, I especially love the Spider-man-like swinging. Although, sometimes it can be a little difficult to fully climb up a cliff side or wall with just two Wire bugs, the hunter simply wall-running before jumping off, instead of making the extra little push to the top of the cliff. The movement options from Wirebugs are great, but I can’t help but feel they would have been even better if paired with more systems to help exploration.

The wire bug was a massive addition to the game and it’s been fantastic getting to play around with it. At first, it was a little awkward getting to use for me with just how different it is from other monster hunter game gimmicks, but after using it for a while it’s been an incredible tool that makes exploring the already beautiful areas even more fun. This feature also adds a lot to combat the silk bind attacks as well as the wire bug recovery.

Game fight

The silkbind attacks are more or fewer hunter arts from monster hunter generations but they are no less fun to use providing each weapon with devastatingly fun attacks or invaluable utility. As for the wire bug recovery, I worried at first that the quick and free recovery would be easily used without a second thought and trivialize some of the challenges of escaping monsters to attempt to recover.

Thankfully I was met with both that not being the case but learning how to do it is just as important as not doing it. It’s incredibly helpful to dodge monster attacks, but if used carelessly you’ll get carted by some monster’s stronger follow-up attacks. It’s a strong tool to help the player but not a cure-all for every situation. One place Wirebugs are incredibly useful is in the brand new mode: The Rampage.

This tower defense-like mode tasks hunters to defend Kamura Village from an onslaught of large monsters. Players get a preparation phase to set up various traps and tools, some automatic and some manually controlled, to take down waves of monsters. Wirebugs are needed to reach the various platforms to access the different tools, so don’t waste them fighting monsters! This mode can actually get pretty difficult, requiring players to really work well together to make sure gates aren’t overtaken by the monsters.

One should also take care not to get surrounded by Monsters because that certainly won’t end well. That being said, it’s a pretty fun challenge offering a completely different change of pace from the normal hunts. I was really impressed with how rampages play out. This mode really doesn’t hold its punches throwing more monsters at you than someone can handle. Even when using most of all the tools provided it can still get really difficult to handle.

Thankfully the more difficult rampages are part of the Hub Quests so getting help from other hunters is a good way to handle a rampage that’s a bit too tough. Despite all of these new systems and a whole new mode, the controls thankfully remain surprisingly manageable. It definitely took me a little bit to fully grasp all of the controls, especially with how the control scheme changes depending on if your weapon is drawn or not, but once I figured it out it was pretty simple to keep up with.

Tutorials and Training Mode proved helpful! We’ve talked about the different factors to the various hunts, namely 14 different weapons, Palicos, Palamutes, and fellow hunters, but there’s one part of these factors I’ve yet to even touch upon: the customization, which is incredibly thorough. Admittedly, I was slightly overwhelmed at first. Are you used to adjusting your eyelids in games?

I can’t say I am, but I enjoyed the number of options, even if it may be a little much. The same goes for customizing your Palamutes and Palicoes. As someone who loves character customization in video games, this made for a good first impression. Beyond the characters, you can also customize your armor and weapons! While these are a staple for the series, there’s plenty of options available to work with, whether it’s for your hunter, Palico, or Palamute!

It may take some time to get the materials needed to craft these, of course. With how stylized and special many of these look, some might just be worth the time and effort! I personally think the armor, weapons, and buddy equipment look amazing this time around, as in the like in previous games, and I feel this is important to get right in a monster hunter game. I find that the more cool armors and weapons there are, the more I’ll enjoy the time I’ll spend trying to get it all.

While I agree with TJ that the armor, weapons, and equipment all look great from a design standpoint, I don’t think the game is all that amazing graphically. It doesn’t look bad at all, and though I’m impressed by many of the animations and art of the game, I wouldn’t say it’s a technical marvel.

Game graphics

That being said, it runs very well, the performance holds up, both online and offline, rarely having noticeable slowdowns. The graphics are a massive improvement from what monster hunter generations ultimately had. While It is a noticeable step down from monster hunter worlds, that’s to be expected given the hardware and it still looks amazing in its own right.

These graphical improvements don’t stop the game from running really well either. The game runs at 30fps like previous monster hunter games excluding monster hunter worlds. The frame rate is incredibly stable in both handheld and docked modes. The game looks and plays nicely in both handheld and docked forms, though I think I prefer docked gameplay for when I’m using motion control-based aiming for the Bow weapon.

This is a game I can easily pick up and play on the go for a quick hunt, or sit on the couch and play on my TV for hours. Whereas I prefer playing it in handheld mode, though it’s perfectly fine in both. When Monster Hunter Rise was revealed back in September 2020, I was excited to finally get into a series that so many of my friends enjoy, with a fanbase that has grown exponentially over the last few entries. Having never played one before, I was a little worried if I’d truly be able to enjoy it as a newcomer, but remained hopeful.

Now that I’ve spent several weeks playing the game, whether I was playing by myself or online with others, I can confidently say that I love Monster Hunter Rise. Going in with a patient mindset was important, taking the time to understand everything about the game instead of simply rushing into it. From a world filled with charm to genuinely fun gameplay that never seems to get old thanks to a variety of weapon types and plenty of movement options with the new Wirebugs and Palamutes, Monster Hunter Rise is an absolute delight.

I’ve had a hard time putting it down! I highly recommend this game if you’re looking for something to sink countless hours into with your friends because I know I will be. If an absolute newcomer like me can enjoy it, then I’m sure you can too. I was extremely excited as always hearing when a new monster hunter game is on the way. At first, I was a bit uncertain as to what exactly to expect, given how different monster hunter generations and back are compared to monster hunter worlds.

After finally getting to really play the game I can honestly say that I Love Monster Hunter Rise as this game has completely exceeded my expectations. The game managed to take practically every good choice from worlds and mix it with everything good in generations while adding its own flair with the wire bugs and rampages.

While I’m not certain if this will be my favorite monster hunter game this is mostly due to my fond memories of the previous games myself with friends. I can confidently say that it’s among the best in the series so far and I am more than excited to make more memories playing this one and looking forward to what updates capcom has on the way.