I have decided to revise my review as of Sunbreak. Most of the reason I did not recommend this game are due to the relatively low difficulty of the base game until post credits, and the lack of much to do post-credits compared to other Monster Hunter titles. Sunbreak has mostly both of these issues, and while I still have problems with it I would strongly recommend you give this game a try if you like games with a high skill ceiling for combat such as other Monster Hunter games or the Souls series.

I still prefer World/Iceborne to Rise/Sunbreak personally, but both are amazing games. Rise's base game, while somewhat lacking, is a fine introduction to the Sunbreak DLC especially if you haven't played a Monster Hunter game before. I would advise against using the "Defender" gear however, as while it is intended to help players skip to Sunbreak faster, it may cause you to learn bad habits in the base game.

Sunbreak leans even further into the high damage that Rise had, but compensates for this with tons of free mega potions. If playing solo, you can use up to 16 before depleting your own resources, if playing in multiplayer divide that by the number of players. The challenge is not about running out of resources, but about getting an opportunity to use them at all.

All pre-existing monsters are faster, have less recovery, and have at least one or two new moves in Master Rank, the name for the part of the game unique to the expansion. This matches the player's newfound mobility with wirebugs much better than the base game; many monsters are able to punish poor uses of counters and wirefall. There are also quite a few completely new monsters with equally challenging movesets, some even more so.

Sunbreak's endgame is already bigger than base Rise ever got, with 3+ confirmed title updates (3 confirmed title updates over the next year, and "more to come"). It is quite likely that the endgame will be comparable to World's Iceborne, perhaps even bigger, by the time the game stops receiving updates. I personally prefer World/Iceborne endgame with the Guiding Lands, but Sunbreak handles it's current endgame very well, far better than base Rise.

The main complaint I have about Sunbreak is a complaint about Rise in general, and is more a matter of personal preference. I prefer how in World and the older mainline titles, the hunter was less powerful than in Rise. Most notably most weapons did not have counter moves to use on reaction to dangerous attacks, and quick recovery from a knockdown wasn't an option. If this is what you are looking for, you will not find it in Rise, but I'd still encourage you to give it a try as Sunbreak content is fun. It's likely this style of play will return for Monster Hunter 6 (Rise is not Monster Hunter 6, it's Monster Hunter 5 portable), but for now Rise/Sunbreak is still great fun and a much more challenging experience compared to the base game, while still being fair.


It's a great shame that I have to give this game a not recommended review, because my feelings are more mixed than that. In general if you are a Monster Hunter fan and just want more content, you may well enjoy Rise at least for long enough to get your money's worth, like I did. If you are new to the series World even without Iceborne is imo a better experience than this game, even with the improvements it has. If Sunbreak is truly amazing though I may revise this statement.

The main problem with this game occurs in the later stages, in fact the entire base game up to the credits is mostly fine in my opinion. Monster Hunter is a series however well-known for an enjoyable infinite post-game and Rise's endgame is sorely lacking, but more than that, I personally think the game has a fundamental design flaw that I will get to later.

First-up, the obvious. Rise doesn't have the graphical fidelity of World, but that's fine - it's a Switch port and it's more cartoon-y graphical style has it's own charm. If you want a game that looks next-gen however definitely give this a pass, but at that point I doubt you'd have even got to looking at reviews.

Next, another criticism that often comes up that I think is more major: the end-game has very little content. You beat the final boss and the game gives you like 5 more difficult monsters to hunt. Cool. You beat all of them and your reward is a few more quests with monsters you've already fought but there's a catch - they now do more damage! That's literally it. World's endgame is often criticised for being excessively grindy but Rise is worse - not only is it grindy, but there is nothing really to grind for.

The final biggest criticism I hear people use is that the game is too easy. I'd like to clarify that because depending on how you play it may seem far from easy. The main issue in my opinion is that the game is too hard at base, but makes you too strong to compensate. How so? Late-game and particularly post-game monsters can hit you harder than your standard mega potions can heal, and kill you in a minimum of 2 hits from any move that is remotely major. A lot of moves, especially from the aforementioned post game challenges with more damage, outright one shot.

So how come people say this game is too easy? Well, there's a mechanic called wirefall. Wirefall, when used right, essentially makes healing completely free. So any time you get hit, a well timed wirefall means you can easily get away, heal up and go right back into the action. Like World, you can restock resources at camp. This means virtually any encounter can be beaten even with low experience provided you have a basic grasp of how the game works, but it feels awful. I don't personally find the gameplay of healing this much any fun. Maybe some other people will, but the issue I have is that no matter how many times I do a fight, even if I can do it almost flawlessly, it just takes getting hit once to need to use a potion. This leads to fights often feeling like you are "tanking through them". This is especially a pain if you use a weapon like greatsword were you get hit intentionally during certain moves, and the chip damage tends to add up and force you to use a certain number of potions at minimum even when playing optimally.

The game does, on the plus side, have interesting mechanics such as the new wirebug moves added to each weapon, and the fact that many of the weapons have more interesting gameplans than World. But fundamentally, the way health and damage is balanced in this game leads to gameplay I find very unfun by comparison, and it worries me that community complaints about the game being too easy will lead to Sunbreak being full of one shots like the postgame.

I would previously have thought to give this game a tentative recommendation, but the more I have played the less I want to play. When I first bought it I disagreed with all the haters and in many ways liked it more than World. Every hour I've spent playing has been time taken to eventually come to the same conclusion. I will be buying Sunbreak but I don't expect it to suddenly fix this game.