I’ve purchased Monster Hunter Rise quite a while ago but despite having a character for an hour, I didn’t really do much else with it. Luckily, I have friends that wanted to play it and thus… we embark onto the world of Rise where the Rampage is threatening Kamura village’s existence.
Note: The header image is my Palico, Tammy, from Monster Hunter World… I’m using the screenshot again here because the WordPress server was busy and I couldn’t upload a header image for Monster Hunter Rise.
Another Note: This isn’t a review. This is just me listing impressions I had of the game without any sort of judgement. Just me… finally playing a game from my backlog.
So, right away, Monster Hunter Rise’s aesthetic reminds me a lot of the older Monster Hunter games that I’ve seen Nick play (btw, great streamer!). I haven’t played those games personally but I’ve seen them and it’s kinda cool… but I still miss Monster Hunter World’s style, even if it possibly was much more demanding for my PC. It felt like playing a movie.
At the same time, a lot of the weapons, especially the Kamura-style ones, look very Japan-inspired and it’s honestly really cool. My weeb heart skipped a few beats when I saw them.
Note: This character here is just something I created once but I didn’t like the face and stuff… so, my main character is female and on a different save slot.
The story centres around the so-called “Rampage”, an event that happens every fifty or so years, I think, where lots of monsters storm towards Kamura village and endanger everyone who’s there. At some point, a big monster that feasts on the Rampage, Magnamalo, shows up and we have to hunt it…
I assume that there is some sort of Elder Dragon at work here that is doing things… that then cause the Rampage… and we’ll hunt Elders until the big-bad shows up… and that’s the story. I’ve hunted Magnamalo already btw (more on that later) but I haven’t played more of the story… yet. Looking forward to it!
At its core, Monster Hunter Rise is yet another Monster Hunter game. It may look more modern than older titles and yet more retro compared to World… it may be very much inspired by Japan’s culture… and it may have dogs… but it’s still a “hunt monster, craft equipment out of monster parts” type of game and I love that.
It’s grindy at times. It’s very challenging at times. But I can take my mind off of things as I grind the same monster for the fifth or sixth time… and that’s great.
So, whereas the gist of it is the same, we now have a dog, a so-called Palamute, alongside our trusty feline familiar, the Palico, and while the Palamute isn’t as cute as the Palico, it’s a very nice addition as it allows me to ride on its back (instead of using Jagras like in MHW) to get to different areas faster… and I can sharpen my weapon or use items while on the back of my trusty Palamute. Nice.
We also have an owl back in Kamura… I named ‘er Minerva, for reasons, and love ‘er to bits… but she hasn’t done anything yet, so it’s whatever. I still pet and feed ‘er, so it’s fine. She’s a good girl.
And then there’s the wirebugs mechanic… which works like the grapplin’ hook in MHW but they’re different because you have special attacks with them, can ride monsters with them, fixate them… and they’re very useful to feather falls and to manoeuvre the big maps.
THOSE MAPS ARE HUGE! I mean, they’re great. I thought they were smaller compared to MHW’s maps but no, not at all, they’re massive… with many secrets and all sorts of life in them. Love it.
All that aside, though, I don’t like Rise as much as I loved World.
I mean, they dumbed down combat a lot. My two main weapons from World are no longer useable: Glaive just doesn’t work. It’s not great. I mean, it does things but you can’t get charges fast enough, your move-set is limited, and it’s an honest shame really that the combat isn’t as great as it was in World… you’re not gracefully swinging through the air but rather just trying your best to stay up there somehow.
What doesn’t help here is probably that your Wirebug Attacks are not useful at all whereas all other weapons’ Wirebug moves just add so much to the gameplay. Honest shame. Missed opportunity…
Meanwhile, the Horn sucks as well. It’s a lot simpler now and while it’s supposed to be a support weapon, the damage just isn’t there anymore.
In World, I could actually perform animation-cancelling and other things to dish out massive damage. The clutchclaw allowed me to get up and personal with flying monsters… at the same time, I had utility with many different aspects to it.
In Rise, your damage is garbage compared to other weapons. The weapon feels sluggish, in my opinion, compared to World, and there just isn’t as much complexity to the combat with the horn anymore… which is a shame. I liked the skill ceiling and having to try and cancel the music animations to not die while applying buffs… and now, you just hit like three buttons and your team is fully buffed, idk.
The gameplay is dumbed down by quite a bit, so I needed to find a new weapon to play. The Switchaxe is now my main weapon. It’s kinda fun and the wirebug attacks add a lot to the gameplay. At the same time, I’ve also been playing around with the Gunlance, Longsword, Great Sword, Hammer, and both guns.
I didn’t enjoy the Bow, Lance, and Switchblade one bit… but the other weapons appear to be at least “okay”. I still gotta play daggers sometime and I can’t get all the Longsword combos down quite yet but I’m really, really, really enjoying the Switchaxe and the Gunlance used to be something that I played for a while in World, so it’s nice to find back into it. Greatsword and Hammer play similarly and are pretty fun as well, and well, the guns are… guns. Love me some.
And then there’s the monster designs. DAMN. I love ’em.
Magnamalo has been so much fun with the hellfire attacks and the second explosion and whatnot. There are also other monsters, like the Bishaten, that are a ton of fun. I still hate Diablos. Khezu is an amazing monster, too, since a lot of the weapons look like dildos and stuff…
That’s a plus, right?
Uh, I dislike some changes, like the fact that your Palico can’t change professions like in World but I can have many different Palicos if I want to!
Kinda looking forward to playing more Monster Hunter Rise on stream although I don’t think that I’ll actually write much about the game, really, as that kinda kills the fun of games for me… or at least, it did in the past.
This post was first published on Indiecator by Dan Indiecator aka MagiWasTaken. If you like what you see here and want to see more, you can check me out on Twitch and YouTube as well.
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