Recent reviews by usernameisinuse

MH Rise is a really solid Monster Hunter game where they have made some changes to keep the pace of the hunts going much more evenly than for example in MH World. If you have never tried a Monster Hunter game before, this is definitely the game to try as Monster Hunter has never been so accessible.

In earlier games the pace of the hunts would come to a bit of a standstill when you had to start chasing after the monster on foot (or fast travel to camps), but that issue has been alleviated in this game with the introduction of supporting dogs that you can use as a mount. The mechanic of Wirebugs is similarly a great change as you can use them basically as a grappling hook, which opens up the traversal in the levels. They also feed into combat nicely via new moves and recovery mechanisms after being hit.

If you have experience of MH World, expect Rise to be an evolution but still in many ways familiar experience.
The game has streamlined some areas of the game which results in having fewer consumables you need to juggle during hunts, and there is a drastic reduction in reliance on randomness in certain areas. This is most prominent in the decorations, which are crafted from monster parts and thus you have more control over them, rather than having to hope you get what you want from hunts as I found the experience to be in World.

There are still some negatives in the game that I wish to highlight. I personally found the initial experience a little overwhelming since the game introduces most of its mechanics in the hub town in one go. I ended up ignoring many of them initially as I knew from World what I should prioritise. However, you can safely ignore a lot of it in the beginning and interact with it if/when you feel like doing so.

Second thing I would mention is that I found the game somewhat easier than World overall, but there are some difficulty spikes especially towards later in the game where you might find yourself suddenly needing better gear or having to really upgrade your gear. This is not really a negative for me personally as I appreciate the difficulty increase towards the latter stages of the content. However, some might find the beginning a little too easy if they are familiar with previous entries to the series.

Probably because the game was originally a switch game, I have found that it runs really well and evenly on my PC even in 4k (with 3060ti GPU). There are some not so pretty textures in places, but I was not personally bothered by that. The game did not wow me with graphics, but I liked the visual style which serves the game well.

So in summary, MH Rise is a well flowing action game that still has that MH charm and the core gameplay loop is just really satisfying. Coming from the already great MH World they have made some nice quality of life improvements and evened out the pacing of the hunts, which for me were enough to warrant jumping on this latest instalment.