Whet dog.
Simply put, Monster Hunter Rise is phenomenal. While the Nintendo Switch was never going to be able to run any sort of port of Monster Hunter World, Rise steps up and offers a companion game of sorts, well suited to Nintendo’s hybrid console. While it lacks the greater detail and openness of Monster Hunter World, Rise never feels visually disappointing, and despite the weaker hardware contained within the Switch, it runs and performs beautifully. This is without question the best-looking game on the platform and a showpiece of the scaling potential of the RE Engine.
The Monster Hunter franchise has often been a niche series, often reserved for a more involved and hardcore player. This is due to a series of complex and often obtuse systems, intricate controls, steep difficulty, and while World did a lot to mainstream much of this, Rise takes that leap even further, making it the most accessible of the entire franchise while also retaining a lot of its depth. While there are several changes made to Rise from World, some more subtle than others, Rise is without question one of the best entries the series has known and likely to break all sorts of records, already shipping more than 5 million units in just two weeks and seems to be currently sold out almost everywhere you go.
Monster Hunter was a series that I had tried to get into time and time again, playing several of its titles across several platforms, but only finding my footing when World released on consoles back at the start of 2018. I applauded the game for its fantastic use of co-op, and the overall gameplay was incredibly fun, even if a few systems still felt a bit too convoluted for their own sake. While much of that complexity is still here in some cases, things such as playing with friends or other players has been made drastically easier, and the overall hub location you’ll return to after each mission is just big enough to feel like a lived-in village but small enough that you won’t get lost trying to find where you need to go. Much like you can carve up a variety of monsters on your adventurers, Capcom has trimmed the fat to make this game more focused on getting you back out on your hunts much quicker than ever before.
Where Monster Hunter World had a more involving story than the series was largely known for, Rise is a tad bit light on the narrative, and the core of the story is really just a few brief missions surrounding the mystery of a monster rampage at the village gates. This then centers around Magnamalo, a monster that appears alongside the rampage. While it goes a bit further as to the cause of the ramage, Rise is still nonetheless intriguing even with its thinly weaved narrative, offering a pretty engaging hook that I hope Capcom follows up on. The story largely focuses on your character’s acceptance as one of the village’s new hunters, as well as a few key residents of Kamura Village; Fugen, who is the leader of the village, Hojo the Guildmaster, and the twins in Hinoa and Minoto, who also serve as your quest givers in both the multiplayer Hub missions and the single-player Village missions. Apart from those key players, you have a fun cast in those who run the shops, the blacksmith, Dango cafe, and various little places around the village to interact with.
The core gameplay loop of Monster Hunter is still here in all its resource-gathering glory. You’ll prep for a hunt by consuming stat-increasing food, this time in the form of a gooey-like substance called Bunny Dango, and then take to a hunt to carve up a particular monster. Each hunt will have you tackling at minimum one of these beasts, as you’ll sprint and dash towards them, under the pressures of an often too generous timer, eventually felling the creature and carving up materials from its corpse, or earning more if you are lucky enough to trap them. Unlike Monster Hunter World, you won’t have to worry about tracking them down, as the monster will show up on the map right from the start, making each hunt significantly faster as a result. This causes grinding for monsters to be quicker, more efficient, and far more respectful of your time. I found it easy enough to simply hop into a multiplayer match, hunt and kill the beast in around 10-15 minutes, carve the items I needed, then return back to the hub location to craft a new weapon or piece of armor or two.
Spread out across five biomes; Ruins, Islands, Plains, Forest, and the Lava Caverns, you’ll hunt from a total of 61 monsters, with 47 of them returning from previous entries. You’ll have several returning favorites ranging from Diablos, Barroth, and Rathalos, to those that debuted in Monster Hunter World, such as Anjanath, Jagras, Pukei-Pukei, and more. Of the new 14 monsters present in Rise, the cover beast himself Magnamalo is a real treat, featuring one of the best monster designs in the game, and an equally challenging fight to go along with it. While the game does lack the more open-world nature of what was present in World, these smaller locations still have a vastness to them, offering plenty of paths, caves, detours, and depth to make them appear far bigger than they initially seem.
Separated again into Low-rank and High-rank quests, you’ll be hunting monsters of varying difficulties as you attempt to earn materials to craft new armor and weapons. Some items will be rarer than others and will result in you possibly killing that same monster a dozen times over before you can earn enough materials to craft a whole set. While there are systems at play to allow more pieces to break off during a fight, you can often see parts flying off of them in droves when another monster shows up and attacks them during your hunt. During these moments, you can use the new wirebug mechanic to leap on top of the beast and slug it out monster to monster, taking control of them briefly through a mechanic called Wyvern Riding While they don’t quite control as easily as I’d of liked, it’s a fun mechanic nonetheless and is often a sight to see.
While much of the game can be played alongside other players, the single-player component to the game; the Village quests, will have you accompanied by your Palico and your Palamute, the latter being a new addition to the series. The Palamute is the dog to your Palico’s cat as they can dive headfirst into battle, often leaping onto the monster’s head, as well as be used to traverse the map at great speeds, even allowing you to sharpen your weapon via your whetstone while you ride them. Both your Palico and Palamute can be outfitted in gear, increasing their stats in the process. Where you will use raw materials to craft your own gear, the scraps that are leftover from your efforts are then used to fashion a new piece of armor or weapon for your animal companion. It’s a nice system that allows you to create some very hilarious and yet very cool-looking outfits to mix and match to your heart’s content.
While you’ll pick your starting pair of companions, you can also hire new buddies to shake up certain ability dynamics, as well as send your recruited buddies on their own resource-gathering hunts, complete with the Monster Hunter World style of humor as you send them off into battle. One mention of note is that during online play with other players, you can only bring in one buddy, as from what I can tell at least, it defaults to your Palamute only. You are also gifted a cohoot, an owl friend who can take pictures with your camera, as well as scouting the monsters on the map, giving a narrative reason as to why they are visible from the start of the mission. While you can dress them up in outfits, and have them explore parts of the village, they do lack a significant reason for their presence in the ways that your Palico and Palamutes offer in spades.
Another new addition to Rise is the wirebug, a zip line insect that allows you to launch yourself into the air, as well as bind monsters to you, causing damage as the line snags. The wirebug allows two charges, with various traversal moves and attacks that use either both charges or just one. While you can find wirebugs around the environment, they only allow a temporary use of a third. Wirebugs are greatly used to dash around, launch yourself into the air, or assist with climbing. I also loved launching off of my Palamute during a jump and then using them to slingshot me further into the air, causing me to drive my dual daggers into a monster for far greater damage. The wirebug takes a bit to get used to, but once you do, it becomes second nature to just zip around at breakneck speeds, dodging some brutal hits that can knock you clean off your feet.
Right from the get-go, you’ll have a wide assortment of weapons to use, upgrading them as you go, with various charms and gems that you can equip to make them vastly more powerful, or shine even brighter with a vast assortment of abilities to make surviving or combat more engaging. High-Rank weapons and armor, as you start to craft them, both allow for these enhancements, and you can freely pop them in and out as you craft new items. To add to the variety in combat, each of the 14 available weapons also contains what are called Switch Skills, which lets you change up how certain attacks work, not to mention your silkbind attacks, which are attacks you’ll make through your wirebugs and vary from weapon to weapon. Switch Skills can really affect how your weapon acts, as with daggers, I can have my character spin around with my daggers, launch into the air as I spin upwards, or change how my demon mode works, allowing me more speed or slashing while I dodge. Each weapon has a wealth of combinations, making for a lot of experimentation in finding your preferred playstyle.
During hunts, you’ll also have a variety of Endemic Life creatures littered about, each consisting of different abilities and buffs. Spiritbirds, which are likely to be part of the diet of every single run, boost your stats for the duration of the hunt, even sticking around if you’re carted back to your camp. These little helpers exist in key locations of the map, always present during your hunt, and can become essential during some of the most challenging missions. These are the perfect complement to your Bunny Dango, and boost your health and stamina to greater heights.
As you head off into hunts, you’ll carry with you a collection of side quests that you can equip five of at any given time that see you killing a set number of monsters, gathering materials, and variations on those. These will reward you with upgradable materials such as Armor Spheres, or Kamura points, another type of currency to use in exchange for money. Also, some villagers will have requests of you, and a fast travel map system makes it easy to tell who has what for you and where even if the duplication of some things like having two Bunny Dango stations and Blacksmiths can result in hearing the same conversation over again when they have something new to tell you. Another feature in the village is your home, a location that features a brief element of customization, and something I hope they do more with down the road.
One of the new features brought to Rise is a mode called Rampage. These are a series of tower defense missions that sees you protecting a large gate to the village from an onslaught of monsters. While there is something engaging here with plunking down turrets and other weaponry, the mode itself just lacks the satisfaction of the hunts present elsewhere in the game. I found I didn’t really enjoy these at all, only doing them only if the story required it of me. As you progress from wave to wave, you earn more weaponry, upgrading your defenses until the last wave is put down. Completing these via the Hub quests allowed me to play them with random players, whereas in the villages quests, you’re left to just yourself to tend with the horde, with the mission being slightly easier due to it being meant for one player.
I’ve mentioned it before, but Monster Hunter Rise is a damn gorgeous game for the Switch. Yes, it lacks a lot of detail we received with World on consoles and PC, but given the hardware capabilities here with the Switch, what they were able to pull off is damn impressive. Equally, the more Japanese flavor to the world design and menus really suits this title greatly, with the fluttering of cherry blossom petals throughout the village, and the fantastic use of color and design to make so much of this game pop. The music that fills the village square, to the pulse-pounding orchestra that floods your ears on a hunt, this game shines on nearly every level, making for one of the best sounding and playing games in the franchise. As for the more tech side of things, the game runs 1344×756 docked and handheld is 960×540, both having a locked 30fps. The game also sports some insanely fast load times so that hunts are super quick to get in and out of, making for some very fast-paced excursions.
While the game does support local play with those in the same room, playing Online in Monster Hunter Rise does require an active Nintendo Online subscriptions to jump into the fray with other hunters all over the world. Now, Nintendo Online isn’t expensive, and with the family plan, it’s a downright steal, but, the online systems for the platform are lacking a great many features, and while you can add in your friends via the Hunter Connect tab via the game’s menus, you’ll have to figure out voice chat away from the Switch as while there are communications systems built into the game, such as free chat, or preset chat options, they lack the quick nature of getting a more detailed point across easily.
Monster Hunter Rise is a title that Capcom will be quick to follow up on, adding in new monsters, quests, and content to come. World was a huge undertaking to make a massive entry into the franchise, and while Rise slims much of that down with smaller and more intimate environments, it places the gameplay front and center, speeding it up greatly with a few new mechanics here and there. The addition of the Palamute and wirebugs solve a lot of the traversal problems found in earlier games and makes exploring an engaging affair with a bevy of new and returning monsters to quickly hunt down and hopefully carve that rare material needed for your next trip to the blacksmith. Rise is a downright impressive game on hardware rarely capable of what we’re seeing here, so if you’re ever wanted to take a chance on the franchise, Rise is certainly one of the best to jump into.
Developer - Capcom. Publisher - Capcom. Released - March 26, 2021. Available On - Nintendo Switch/Lite Rated - (T) Alcohol Reference, Blood, Violence. Platform Reviewed - Nintendo Switch Review Access - Monster Hunter Rise was purchased by the reviewer.