Monster Hunter Rise + Sunbreak: The Full Experience

 

As of the 8th of June 2023, Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak has gotten its final update in the form of Primordial Malzeno, the flagship monster of the expansion uncorrupted by the Qurio… who happens to be much more lethal than its main version.

There were many carts dumping me back at camp that day while I was grinding all the parts.

I consider this time a prime opportunity to talk about my thoughts on Monster Hunter Rise, the Sunbreak expansion, and all the changes in the game from start to finish. If you want our initial thoughts on Monster Hunter Rise and Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak, just click the links provided.

So… where to start?

Low Rank

The changes

How about where every hunter begins their journey: in Kamura Village, waiting to get into their first real hunt. To a veteran Monster Hunter player, this game felt so different as I got used to the controls, primarily because of the Wirebug mechanic, which allows more freedom of movement and the ability to use special moves. At first, I could barely use it, but nowadays, it feels so natural to me that it's ingrained into my playstyle. With Wirebugs most likely not going to be seen in another game, I’ve been wondering what the next game will feature and how it will further refine the grappling hook-like mechanics. Will they slow the game down for the next entry, or will they double down and make hunters even more agile? Only time will tell.

I also really hope we keep the customisation of our fighting styles through Switch Skills or something similar. The mechanic was vastly underutilised before the expansion, but once Sunbreak released and added new moves and the ability to switch styles, it made the system a lot more useful and customisable.

I think that’s why I like the gameplay of Monster Hunter Rise slightly more than Monster Hunter World: the freedom you’re given. You can basically go anywhere on the map, your movements and attacks are fluid, and you have more control over the fight than you’d usually have. The only change I didn’t quite like was Spiribirds — little coloured birds that grant you buffs to your stats for the hunt. They aren’t the greatest encouragement to explore the world, making you run around to achieve your full potential every time you hunt, but it was interesting to figure out your preferred path to get as many buffs before you start fighting.

High Rank

The grind

However, once you beat the story, the real game begins, which is when problems begin to arise. Monster Hunter has always been a grindy game, but here the gameplay loop felt so… lifeless at times. Like, you don’t play because you want to, but you play more out of obligation — Obligations such as the Rampage system.

This feature was fine, but I could see why people didn’t like them. Not everyone likes tower defence games, the change in gameplay felt a little too drastic, and I don’t remember ever losing one, even on the seemingly tougher challenges. Plus, the need to grind this out to encounter unique monsters and to get tickets to enhance your weapons with Rampage Skills, and you can see why eventually, all those unique monsters could now be normally fought through Event Quests. Eventually, the entire Rampage system was abandoned for Sunbreak, reducing their skills to decorations to slot in.

But the real part that made me stop playing after a while was that there wasn’t really anything to do once you beat all the monsters and finished the story. You can beat all the quests and do all the arenas, but eventually, you just don’t really have anything to do but grind talismans, hunting for skill points in Attack Boost, Weakness Exploit, or Speed Eating. If you’ve reached that point, there’s not much incentive to continue. You just get faster kill times, which is the goal of some people but to more casual fans, it can feel like more work for little reward.

To this day, though, I’m still bothered by the fact that the rest of the monsters and the resolution of the Kamura storyline had to be patched in because the time between seeing the credits and fighting Narwa the Allmother was just grinding for talismans for the perfect build, and it got really boring after a while. We did get a steady stream of Event Quests to tide us over, but stickers and poses are pretty lacking rewards, and they took up a majority of Event Quests at the time.

Master Rank

The endgame

About a year later, these problems encountered in the base game were addressed in the expansion: Sunbreak. While the story is just as formulaic as a Monster Hunter game gets, I really enjoyed the ecology of monsters, how they live, where they fit in the circle of life, and the smaller plots I enjoyed more. Plus, it actually had a satisfying storyline that could work without the later updates.

The monsters featured in Master Rank were amazing, with some fan-favourites returning, such as Gore Magala and Espinas. With that, the final monster roster is pretty massive, comparable to Iceborne, and some of the fights have to be one of the most fun I’ve had in a while. When you let out a primal yell after slaying a monster, that’s a sign of an amazing fight. The Follower system was a really good addition to the game that allows solo players to experience co-op, helps ease the difficulty, and just has some fun interactions with characters. I, and many other players, did prefer to have certain characters as their main Followers, such as the Kamura twins and Master Utsushi, mostly because they can use Hunting Horns, especially when you’re doing Anomaly Quests.

Oh god, Anomaly Quests.

Anomaly Quests were an exciting challenge at first, but slowly as the grind wore on, it really tested my patience and will to go on. A lot of stuff is locked behind your Anomaly level, and you’ll need to grind out those quests to get the materials needed to take advantage of Qurious Crafting and Qurious Melding, which vastly increases your power. All the old talismans you’ve been grinding since getting to Master Rank, they’re all obsolete as soon as you get your first Anomaly talisman. Some of the rolls I got were insane, having both skills I wanted and multiple high-level decoration slots. With each update, they increased the strengths of hunters not through stats or even skills but through the sheer potential of builds we can create.

And suddenly, it hit me that I was doing the same thing I was doing before getting Sunbreak, grinding materials to get better talismans, except the monsters are harder and inflict Bloodblight. While I do like that there’s always something you can do and new challenges to face, it takes a long time to grind up all those levels. And, of course, they didn’t get rid of the “Continue to raise your MR” notification after you beat Primordial Malzeno.

However, my biggest gripe was the fact that there was a serious lack of crossover Event Quests! We had such cool and amazing new additions in Monster Hunter World with Behemoth and Leshen (despite how hair-ripping their fights may be) and some awesome armour and equipment. Who knew Ezio’s robes were part of the meta? Here in Sunbreak, however, we did get plenty of cool layered armour, but some of them were ports from World and Iceborne, and others were remade armour sets from Monster Hunter Frontier, but that’s about it, and all the fun-looking stuff is locked behind paid DLC. It’s not often I complain about the lack of crossovers, but here I want to get stuff from other franchises.

And…that’s kind of everything I wanted to say about Monster Hunter Rise. I will always love Monster Hunter, and Monster Hunter Rise will always be a great game to me. The journey wasn’t the most fun ride I’ve had, but I’m glad to have gone on it, and I’ll always treasure the memories and the weapons I’ve made.

Plus, my character is voiced by Arin Hanson now. Thank you for making that DLC free, Capcom.

Until the next Monster Hunter game (and the 20th anniversary next year), happy hunting.