Is Monster Hunter Rise good enough? | Deep Dive Review

when I was about 15 I adopted my little sister's Nintendo 3DS and I began buying games for it one such game was Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate I remember my review of it at the time being it sucked movement was slow and clunky the graphics were adequate of Nintendo's mobile toaster and the control scheme of using elements on the same side of the grip for both movement and camera was in professional terms the worst so I did what any rational person does when confronted with something they dislike I simply moved on with my life and yet despite this clear and dramatic breakup between us I distinctly remember thinking [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] to 2018 Monster Hunter World blows the franchise up in ways never before imagined the niche action RPG series becoming a household name within a few short months and on a personal level it also finally sunk its teeth into me after usual two attempts it takes everyone to get into monhan World finally clicked for me made me sink 700 hours into it across the base game and iceborn expansion made me go back and play almost all previous entries and became my favorite game and game series of all time I even went back and loved three ultimate although on an emulator because I'm not playing a 3DS Monster Hunter anymore unless it rhymes with Thor multimet also Capcom remaster for you please safe to say monster underworld was a massive success partially because it streamlined the already excellent basic formula of Monster Hunter into its easiest to enjoy form while also being technically impressive on all fronts while not all changes were unambiguously positive it presented a definitive step forward for the franchise so how would the cap of the calm be able to follow up on that dog Monster Hunter rise originally released on a Nintendo switch in March 2021 and met with a resoundingly positive critical reception however there was this air of discomfort around it despite being a follow-up to World it sported many seemingly obvious regressions from the hit title additionally as the switch is the newest entry in Nintendo's obsession with selling toaster-powered consoles rise was never going to live up to world on a technical level not even with its later PC release and thanks to an ongoing Global cataclysm the video game launched without a Content so honestly what's the point the point is that even through ryze's positive reception there seemed to be this apprehension regarding its continuance of world and the Monster Hunter franchise at Large did it evolve the series enough to justify its apparent and seeming steps back is Monster Hunter rise good enough hello I am Dennis and I only agree with some of what I just explained which parts well you'll find out as we use this video to both investigate this question and review the game as a whole now if you haven't noticed yet I am very passionate about ripping off Tim Rogers style of reviews seriously check him out he's probably the best video game reviewer out right now and so this review will not be structured like your typical Long YouTube video instead this video will have various segments that you can watch quests to complete if you will more crucially these quests need not be completed in order or even in completion you can experience them however you want all at once in any order or only watch the topic you are actually interested in they are simply arranged in my recommended order but hey I'm not your dad once you have done enough quests you will be ready for the Urgent which is the conclusion you don't need to complete all quests to watch the urgent but you should watch at least a few I think you should watch all of them ideally but that's just me there are 10 quests in total all of a different Hunter Rank and in between there are gathering quests super optional segments that focus on more specific topics and function as low energy palette cleansers if you want them with the help of these 10 Hunter ranks we will together become Master hunters in understanding Monster Hunter rise and answer the question is Rise enough [Music] [Applause] [Music] breaking news making video games is hard in today's hyper commodified gaming industry a landscape of tailored demos sponsored content and rigorous PR training people tend to forget the immense work that goes into making any game let alone a good one here's a fun idea download unity and try to make a video game just a tiny one maybe one level even and then imagine that effort escalated to the scope of a modern AAA title it's an exercise that has definitely helped me gain some perspective personally the fact that something takes effort naturally does not excuse any shortcomings within that something but understanding the gargantuan task that is video game development on an intimate oh how does one even do this level allows us to properly understand if and when a shortcoming is an understandable concession made in the face of a Herculean struggle Against the Machine and when it is less excusable moreover it entirely eliminates the notion of laziness in Game Dev someone is lazy they will simply never make a video game because the base requirement of making any functional executable is effort and hard work combined with the kind of Ingenuity I can only be envious of the notion that any developer is lazy rarely comes from a place of thorough analysis of cost versus benefit utility vs Prestige but rather from superficial observations of things the hurricane of online discourse has arbitrarily denoted as lazy reusing assets and animations can save hundreds of man-hours while maintaining a game's look and visual consistency avoiding unnecessary and Superfluous World interactions can help laser focus a game into its core mechanic appeal a departure from photorealism is often a godsend for artistic creativity etc etc and yet these and many other practices often end up at the tail end of the word lazy despite being themselves neutral elements tools a Dev team can use to achieve a specific purpose there is a larger discussion here about how many AAA Studios have enabled and encouraged fetishization of Prestige Graphics and nonsensical immersion details from useless expanding pupils to hilarious horse genitals the bottom line however is that as a player it is rather hard to unequivocally categorize any game as lazy because many of the design decisions we are told to consider as such are usually purposeful deliberate and adequate I have read many pieces on why monster arise is a lazy game it doesn't look as good as Monster Hunter World it has less content than Monster Hunter Generations ultimate it shipped without its final boss it relies on microtransactive monetization it reuses too many assets some of these and many other criticisms I agree with but I fundamentally reject the notion that any of these problems and non-problems are the result of laziness in this section I would like to focus specifically on the technical aspects of the game the graphics effects work presentation as well as functionality stability and anything else that speaks of machines before we get into specifics it is valuable to have an inkling of how the development of Monster Hunter actually works history on these games is somewhat nebulous and I do not want to go into too much detail this video will be way too long as is so in simple terms it goes as follows there is a main team and a portable Team Monster games come in ways of generations groups of games that are developed and released in close proximity to each other within one generation there will be one game made by the main team and one made by the portable team the main team's games are considered the big boy release of that generation often marked by Massive Paradigm shifts that seek to evolve or even transform the franchise be it through weirder weapons or underwater combat main Team titles will also always get an expansion either as DLC or a new Ultimate release the portable team then releases their own game around a year later building off of the main team's work and furthering their design ideas the portable team tends to introduce more Niche experimental features some of which may become Mainstays While others drift Into Obscurity the portable team games have also received expansions in the past but it has not been 100 consistent now that you understand the existence of these two teams I have the pleasure of revealing to you that they might not actually even exist you see these are development structures that have mostly been theorized by fans after a fact by looking at who appears in the credits of which game however with the fifth generation of games these differentiations become harder to make for even the hardest of Hardcore fans as staff from either team began showing up in the credits of either game and expansion with monster rise even including a few people from the now defunct Monster Hunter MMO Monster Hunter Frontier the current gist of it is that it is likely that if these two teams ever existed they have now merged into a much more flexible Collective that can rotate Talent around freely this is a very short and very bad summary of it for a deeper look at the past of these games and their development go watch super ads excellent history of Monster Hunter series it's in the description Monster Hunter rise does indeed look worse than Monster Hunter world this factoid is often paired with how come does the sequel look worse did they have acid what were they thinking and the answer is always the same maybe look up the consoles these games originally released on Monster World was from the ground up developed for home consoles the PS4 and the Xbox one but even more importantly the entire point of mons underworld was to look as good as possible as the game destined to finally conquer the AAA photorealism loving West World hyper fixated on its graphical presentation a plan that paid off tremendously months on the world being a pretty game is its fundamental result monsant arise meanwhile was a completely different Beast a beast destined to run on a hamster-powered console monster rise was developed for the Nintendo switch a console that is I dare say much less powerful than almost any mainstream gaming device currently on the market the eventual PC release would explode the potential potency of the game's Hardware into nigh Infinity but rise was nonetheless conceived to run and look well on a hamster-powered tablet masquerading as a console it was never going to look like monster in the world a factoid as easy to understand as looking at the game's Wikipedia page in fact I'd argue that the devs were not just far from lazy they deliberately took the harder alternative when it comes to the game's aesthetic choosing to follow up on World's semi-realistic style as opposed to something more cartoony and easily digestible for Nintendo's poor make-believe machine they did this mind you on a new engine the first time the franchise ever changed its underlying engine completely yeah you heard right all monster games from Monster 1 to iceborn ran on the same basic engine Mt framework which was kept updated internally but ultimately never changed until rise rise represents the first break as it runs on the newer re engine of Resident Evil Fame so Monson arise sought to emulate The Prestige of mons on the world on a graphically underpowered console on a new engine regardless of the result that does not sound like the path a lazy person would take at least not to me naturally none of this absolves the game from any observable shortcomings effort does not excuse a poor product because ultimately no matter how much or little effort they put in you will still be paying 60 or 70 bucks for it and if you don't get a satisfying product that's simply a reality of it and your right to be mad so let's thus look at Monster Hunter rise specifically at how it looks photorealism is a losing game on the Nintendo switch whose modest resolution and notoriously inconsistent performance make the idea of anything close to Monster World running on it at acceptable frame rates more of a pipe dream than anything actually achievable and yet son of a they actually did it while ryze absolutely does not hold a candle to World in terms of graphical quality and detail it pulls off the realistic style very admirably it hits a middle ground between the hyper realism of world and the stylization of past games by necessity anything to switch can render in the more realistic style it does whereas anything more complex is relegated to a more cartoony visual language the result of these two flavors is a unique look that convincingly builds the creatures environments and animal cruelty devices to codify the franchise's identity the tldr would be it doesn't look like world but it looks incredible for a switch game that is attempting to look like world it is not a Flawless approach however while its General aesthetic is more than satisfactory months on the rise makes a few stylistic choices that ultimately dilute its visual identity departure's visuals that the game chooses to render in a more stylized cartoony way are to borrow a colloquialism very hit or miss for example rojang's Thunder beam looks incredibly jarring I would go as far as to say simply bad whereas theostra's fire breath looks pretty much perfect to me this variance in quality heavily hinders the stylized elements of the game's visuals and because even the best ones contrast with the attempted visual realism pretty brutally the visual identity of the game can often find itself suffering I think that the core visual difference between the visuals of world and those of rise isn't one of raw quality but rather their understanding of how and when to stylize away from the realistic art style monster in the world was almost entirely defined by its dedication to Triple A Prestige Graphics but even then it knew when to inject just a tad of anime aestheticism especially in the faces and hairstyles of the characters rise meanwhile seems much more aggressive with this injection of stylization and it often misses the mark by emphasizing it in the wrong places and creating an overall dissonant image however it cannot be ignored that this dissonance is itself somewhat core to Monster Hunter as a franchise it gladly obsesses over the Ecology of an eagle made out of kitchen knives while a warrior clad in Blood and iron sits down to cook a steak to the tune of so tasty combining imaginative realism with some of the goofiest in the industry has from the very beginning been a part of Monster Hunter which is why I think that ryze's visual dissonance might not be a problem for everyone personally I think rajang's beam looks awful but there is a clear pathway of logic behind someone not minding it what is less overall excusable is the color Direction the Monster Hunter franchise has experimented with many color profiles over the years the cool shades of three ultimate the hot and warm oranges of 4u and the bright saturation of generations World being the prestige game that it was try to dial down on some colors to retain the realistic look but it did so in a very cinematic way understanding when to be colorful and when to be more understated it was a very balanced look that facilitated its photorealism while not castrating the beauty of these Landscapes that could produce by comparison ryze's call direction is outright Dreadful the entire game has this intensely desaturated look to it colors are muddy and washed out and it really impacts the game's look negatively and a few areas where color does manage to shine through it then looks way too bright out of place and jarring again the game's visual language is incongruous within itself making for a generally unpleasing image as far as colors are concerned nothing illustrates is better than the flooded Forest a map that return and Rise after having been introduced in three ultimate three U's flooded Forest is downright beautiful with a Serene sky and Lush Greenery looking wet in the day and beautiful and Lush in the evening while ryze's version looks as if every texture and lighting preset got replaced with mud and while not everyone will mind these color choices they are at least to me a consistent eyesore whether you mind them or not you will be looking at these Graphics at a buttery smooth 30 frames per second a number whose acceptability is much contested whether you are like me and consider anything under 60 atrocious or are fine with anything that lets you see motion the bottom line is that monster rise on the switch targets 30 and hits it almost flawlessly four player hunts will tank it slightly but that's understandable considering all the effects going off and those effects constitute another unfortunate problem while the effects work for monster attacks strictly go towards cartoonish many player hit and buff effects look like stock Unreal Engine glow sliders set to their maximum size be it a normal hit a crit a gunshot whatever the body of the monster is always erupting with so many hit effects that it becomes genuinely hard to parse what is going on at times while the amount of effects can be turned down as of the release of the sombre expansion the extremely stalk-like quality of these player-directed auras and flashes makes them again visually jarring and not pretty to look at the tech side of monsoon arise also comes with some odd issues and quirks specifically in the PC version which is my preferred version of play I am sure the switch has other little nuances that I don't know about but because I spent most of my time on a PC that's what I want to focus on a big bonus of playing games on PC is being free to set resolutions and frame rates free to play the game at whatever quality your machine can run this counts doubly for games that start their lives as switch exclusives as it is I repeat not a very powerful console the PC Port of Rise which arrived nine months after the switch release mostly lives up to this promise except in one drastic key way Monster Hunter has always had bad UI to some extent be it the ugly mess of blurry textures of Freedom Unite or the cramped Huds designed for tiny handheld screens of well every game in the franchise the only game that had genuinely great UI in my opinion was monsie under 3 Ultimate with its crisp and stylized design perfect typeface and properly sized HUD rise's UI is not particularly great with the HUD being way too big and cluttered including skill descriptions monster status indicators and most bafflingly continuous markers indicating your maximum possible health and stamina these elements can be turned off but not resized so things like the maximum health bars are almost impossible to get rid of because they're just bound to your health bar there is a dynamic HUD mode included which just hides certain elements when they aren't needed but doesn't mesh well with gameplay in my experience the motion and animation of them extending and disappearing is distracting and annoying in its own right and it does not make for a very smooth experience the lack of a resize option really sticks out here as it would have been the perfect way to allow every player to customize the HUD to their liking perhaps not on switch but again we play on PC because we want a more customizable more tailor-made experience so do not have these options in the year 2022 is a little Annoying what makes this unappealing HUD worse is the fact that it alongside the entire UI does not scale that is to say that no matter what resolution your game is in the HUD and UI elements such as fonts and icons will always be at the original resolution of the switch any PC worth using will outdo the switch's resolution by Leaps and Bounds and as such the UI ends up looking extremely blurry by comparison there is no internal upscaling of the UI elements and thus it is almost impossible to get crisp and good looking text or icons in the game without mods having UI that accommodates various resolutions should be the norm by now and it's kind of incredible and unacceptable that it still is not speaking of bizarre and unacceptable issues for some reason PC multiplayer has region locked matchmaking meaning that when you're looking for quests or lobbies to join you will almost never see those from outside your download region this was already a problem with monster hunter stories too and just like with that game the modding Community has had to create a mod to circumvent this in Rise as well at this point it seems to be a problem on steam's end but for a game like ryze issues like these should really be ironed out as a first priority since Global multiplayer is a huge part of this game's overall appeal and the fact that this still has not been fixed means that it must be a pretty deep-seated issue either way I hope to see this amended before the game is eventually over because this really does limit your options if you're on PC and don't want to mod and lastly the PC release of sunbreak specifically brought with it one of the funniest Tech problems I have ever seen in the form of its new dlss support deep learning super sampling is an Nvidia functionality that allows a game to look better and have higher FPS by running the game at lower resolutions and an AI upscaling the image up to the Target resolution which eats fewer resources than just rendering the game at high resolution directly thus saving performance and increasing FPS in essence it is a free boost to FPS with virtually no graphical downsides in fact it can allow some PCS to run games at much higher settings than they are usually capable of the catch is that dlss has to be implemented into the game by the developer and in monster under his case this has led to a hilarious problem for whatever reason turning on dlss in some break at launch did do what the setting is supposed to but it also forcibly disabled some graphical functionalities among them hair rendering this meant that turning on dlss effectively shaved your palicos higher Graphics at better frame rates but all your cats are now naked now that's what I call gaming this has been fixed by the way now before we get too deep into it I guess we should discuss why am I making this video right now I can already tell a lot of people are probably asking themselves that rise is a game that is currently being updated after all so wouldn't it be wiser to wait for making in making this video wouldn't it be a lot smarter to make this video once all the title updates are out well to answer the question of why am I reviewing rise now the answer is simple I want to I've been sitting on what I want to say about this game for as long as the game has been out pretty much and I kind of just wanted to get it done with and my second reasoning is that the title updates in Monster Hunter tend to not be that transformative of the base experience we have only really months on the World to look at in terms of examples but in months on the world both base world and iceborn the title updates didn't exactly reach back into the game and transform it from the ground up they were additions they changed the end game and the final few things you were doing in the game if you had reviewed iceborn at launch and iceborn after the title updates the differences of that review would have been pretty marginal and I believe some break and Rise is going to be pretty much the same thing however there is of course always the possibility that I'm completely wrong and that one of the title updates is going to really change the way the game works on a fundamental level and if that so happens I'll be happy to be wrong and I'll be happy for this video to be outdated because I am of the opinion that any update rise will make will probably make the game better and not worse after all it will be an update made after fan response and after feedback and after additional time and deliberation on the developers part so I am pretty confident that at the very least what I say here will in the worst case scenario simply be corrected and made better in the future which is the kind of stuff I love being wrong about foreign I am almost comically certain that some viewers will be wondering why I'm even dedicating an entire segment to the story as any cutscene hating redditor will tell you monster hunter is not about the story so it doesn't matter well if that is you I must inform you with zero regret that you are wrong the story is immensely important to Monster Hunter and we can prove it with a very simple question if you ask the core Community what their favorite old school monster under game would be as in the ones before World what game do you think would come out on top as someone who has followed these sorts of tried pissing contests a lot over the last few years let me tell you Monster Hunter 4 ultimate sure comes up a lot that magala fellow is one popular dude and why is that because monster 4 ultimates distinguishing feature was its as of yet unmatched focus on its story and it's not even like a great story it still very much falls into the generic oh no a problem with wings quick kill it Trope all monster games follow but because it puts in genuine effort in producing a narrative framework wherein your progress is structuralized along a road trip with a genuine rival monster that grows alongside you it lodges itself into the memory of the player humans like to have a framework that allows them to conceptualize their own progress and stories and games are exactly that stories in Monster Hunter have enormous potential because so much of the game's progression is entirely tied to the player's growing ability and expertise at the game and properly tying that growth into an actual plot gives us moments like the final confrontation with chagaru magala in four ultimate considered one of the most memorable scenes in the entire franchise now if having a story automatically improves a monster hunter game then clearly mons underworld should be the absolute Pinnacle of the franchise as it has the most story out of any of the games and yet whenever it is brought up World story is generally considered a negative this again however gives us Insight in the fact that story matters if it didn't a bad or unengaging story would not make a difference the game will be fine regardless of the story's quality world's story was poorly received partially because of those unskippable cutscenes where the were they never fixed but also because the story was not really a journey as much as it was a sightseeing tour the skill and progression of the player and the game's story were not meaningfully connected as your character was always merely a witness to whatever ecology cut scene was currently playing very little of the story interacts with the notion of growth at all the road trip from four ultimate is kind of emulated through your penetration into the continent but the player's skill level and position within the world of hunters is a complete non-factor staring down chigaru Atop The Sanctuary was satisfying because the story had built up both your and its progression no such thing happened in World however where World stories succeeded was informing a connection with its Flagship monster nergigante having the flagship show up a few times before the main fight is Monster Hunter 101 for a reason it creates tension rivalry and anticipation from the very first game the franchise would have the boy on the box capable of showing up way before the player was ready to slay it forcing a retreat and planting the seed of vengeance over the years this trick has been used and reused and it still remains effective even at its most basic as is seen with ergante whose scripted interruptions and innocuous tracks make him a fan favorite despite monster worlds generally unpopular story in essence the story of Monster Hunter matters because by tying it to the player's progression in a non-disruptive way and creating distinct and interesting relationships within the player and the world and the monster it reinforces the game's core appeal and makes it more effecting to the player when they finally finish the story and succeed in becoming a master hunter it isn't Shakespeare and it doesn't have to be it just has to function for the type of game the monster hunter is this has been a very long preamble to say that Monson arises base game story is maybe the worst it's ever been in the franchise in my opinion let's back up a second though and talk about the setting this is arguably more important than the actual narrative story as it defines the entire Vibe of the game and is the Cradle in which the story takes place or in different words the story is only a part of the setting rise's base game is set in the Kamura region which is mainly inspired by traditional Japanese Aesthetics and cultural artifacts from Ninja to Sakura this game is drenched in Japan's history and culture similar to how yokomo from Monster portable third was Kamura Village serves as a sort of melting pot of anything and everything that is considered iconic about the island nation something the game leverages heavily in this current ERA of obsession with all things Japan this might sound very hypocritical coming from a man who spent four years making video essays on anime but this setting does very little for me its break away from a generally more European inspired Aesthetics of the past games excluding portable third is appreciated but it never quite graduates Beyond shallow set dressing there are basically no Unique Mechanics that hinge on this setting specifically making it so that you could very much replace the entire style of the game with any other cultural setting and be left with the exact same game which to me is a sign of missed opportunities the closest to it we get is the way food skills are modeled around the three Dango balls you choose for your meal which is cute and gives this entry a unique canteen but I can't help but be reminded of the Moga Woods or for a more modern example celiana's cobbled together Steamworks Lottery these are auxiliary mechanics but they gave the setting an identity that could not just be replaced by a different skin another Village in setting that suffered from the lack of this identity was actually Astera which never really fully took advantage of its concept of a stranded derelict Shipyard Kamura succeeds more than Astera but it still doesn't Forge its own unique flavor of monster under Vibe it's just kind of a Japanese Village not more and not less this extends to the characters as well while Monster Hunter world had its characters emote with some mild anime mannerisms kamura's population consists entirely of anime stereotypes and particularly one note ones at that each Villager has one defining characteristic which is exaggerated into genuinely uncomfortable awkwardness at times this isn't much worse than how old games are even World handled it but because Monsanto rise attempts to forge a sense of community and character presence through the story and the Rampage game mode these hiccups stick up much more painfully I have spent quite some time absolutely dumping camura which I don't enjoy so before we move on to me absolutely dumping all over the story let's explore how and where this Village succeeds while the characters are one note anime cutouts their exaggerated mannerisms and hyper-focused character traits makes them easy to identify and like if they happen to be of a Trope that you enjoy I think a reason why the characters of world never really work for most people including myself was that they were all fairly samey from the Handler to the a-lister to the captain everyone was an excitable confident go-getter type which turned the entire cast into a vague homogeneous soup sometimes someone would be a little more Gruff a little more experienced and elderly but generally everyone felt very similar by comparison kimura's cast manages to be much more varied because they are so starkly defined by whatever anime Trope they embody another aspect that helps here is that monster arise finally breaks one of monster hunter's oldest and most nonsensical Traditions the franchise's absolute refusal to give NPCs actual names up to an including World 99 of characters in The Monster franchise did not have personal names instead always being referred to by their occupation in hindsight this almost feels like a mission statement stop trying to care about characters they don't even have names well now that rise exists we can finally say that this was a dumb idea because the fact that you actually know these people by name changes your relationships to them so much immediately you are now not just going to the chef or the canteen you are going to your Mogi by having its characters named the game forces your brain to recall and internalize not just a cold functionality of their mechanical place in the game but their personality as well this makes Kamura much more homely not inhabited by useful and use less NPCs but by guys and gals with names and Lives who share all of that with you in some kind of United Community and it is these guys and gals that accompany the player through the game's story a story which actively undermines much of the appeal of the base game on the surface it is your standard Monster Hunter Affair a big bad monster is threatening the village you rise to the ranks until you are strong enough to take it on you defeat it and then you find out that oh no there was a bigger better monster hiding in the shadows that was the real culprit all along this formula has been used in basically every monster in the game and has a general framework it is fine it lays out a simple structure when the game can take place rise takes this basic premise and does impressively little with it its unique setup the Rampages have 90 of the lore relegated to unvoiced text boxes it is in fact extremely easy to outright miss the crucial explanation of why these Rampages even happen or why the village fears them or why the villagers fear Magnum Malo in comparison every piece of interesting story is entirely contained in these silent boxes of neutral text begging you to skip them and just get back to hunting this is very much in line with how stories have been told in the older games of course story cutscenes were a rarity in classic monster hunter and so much of the narrative had to be communicated through text but this was before voice acting before an industry that relied on cutscenes the four world now the cutscenes and voice acting are a thing there is a genuine missed opportunity whenever the game decides to tell you something interesting in a boring way you could do a lot of cool stuff here and make us really care for Kamura something the game clearly wants to achieve but instead the game goes out of its way to have any and all narrative context be purely in the background it comes across as this pathologic fear of having the story impede the gameplay a complaint people often had with world and its long unskippable cutscenes but this fear is in my opinion entirely misplaced because guess what just make the cutscene skippable world's problem wasn't that the story was trying too hard its issue was that you were forced to experience it in full and that it locked you out of multiplayer even if you weren't interested it wasn't an addition to the game but a mandatory gatekeeper of it by focusing on story like world did but making the cutscene skippable ryze could absolutely have had a more extensive narrative without impacting the gameplay negatively those who are invested get to experience an engaging narrative framework to guide their progress and those who just want to get back to hunting can skip through unimpeded win-win another Vestige of this is a problem rise somewhat inherits from the older games namely that its quests and gameplay situations are very disjointed from the story one of world's greatest additions narratively was its insistence on giving good story explanations as to why you are hunting a specific monster and showing those reasons within the story cutscenes sure ninety percent of the time it was Big Boys sending our research go slay him but it tangibly connected story and gameplay in some of the old games and inrise no such connection exists Quest info blurbs and sporadic dialogue do the bare minimum to justify the quest existing and while they are pretty funny at times and sometimes do give you a good idea they just do not manage to make a progression through the game feel organic the sequence of monsters and world is based on a logical series of events that puts you into conflict with the specific targets it isn't done all of the time and it isn't always consistently good but it is good and often enough for it to feel like a strong sense of narrative progress alongside your journey through the game in Rise there is basically no reason that you are hunting the specific Monsters the Urgent quests ask you to do you are just being faced with an arbitrary parade of Boss Battles until the credits roll this is further made apparent by the lack of unique hunting situations no matter where you are in the story ryze's quests will always be normal run of the mill hunts or gathering quests this is fine but considering how the story centers around tracking down and distracting Magnum Hollow playing around this formula could have helped Forge a stronger connection to the story and the flagship monster maybe have the player find dead monsters engulfed in purple Flames from time to time maybe make a quest where rampaging arzeros continuously spawn because they're running from something maybe just do anything besides the normal Quest structure from time to time to shake things up again the game exhibits a fear of having its story detract from the core hunting experience but realistically as long as you steer clear from escort missions modified quests can really only be a benefit by playing with established factors such as Quest timers faint limits atmosphere monster spawns Etc one could tie story elements into the gameplay without derailing it and enhancing both in the process and this is not an hypothetical we know this works because sunbreak does this exactly once I know this section is supposed to be out base rise but this is a great example so I will cheat and you cannot stop me right before the final boss of sunbreak the player receives an urgent Quest called the Gathering of the curio in which your tasks to investigate weird monster Behavior influenced by the curio little vampire upon entering the quest its unique features become immediately apparent no music plays the sky is colored ominously and the map is littered with dead animals uninterrupted silence fills the air until the player reaches their target a Luna Garen slathered in marmalade by all intents and purposes this is exactly what ryza's story and monster under story modes in general needs more of a unique and memorable Quest that ties into a story without distracting from the main appeal of hunting for those that care about the story this Quest presents a compelling demonstration of the stakes regarding the Kurio and for those that skip cutscenes this Quest presents a unique and cool atmosphere that soon enough transitions into the regular hunt they want to play obviously doing this exact trick too many times will cause it to lose its luster but by just being more open to the idea of modified Quests for story purposes rise could genuinely have benefited and created a more engaging progression World tried this but mostly failed because it's only Quest variation was run around the map endlessly until you find a cutscene something that rise could have improved on but instead ryze's story does the bare minimum and as a result produces one of the most tragic victims of Monster Hunters historic neglect of its storytelling Magna Malo in the old games even with their limited and fairly disinterested approach to storytelling the flagship monster the boy on the box always received special attention villagers would mention it continuously but more importantly it would stalk the player in numerous ways on a try and 3u would have you encounter lagayakras in the depths way before you were ready and in Generations you find yourself ambushed by a glavinous during a mushroom Gathering Quest we already discussed how this is done even a world with nerkigante making this a tradition that both worked incredibly well in creating a bond between player and Flagship and a technique used by even the least story focused games even Monster Hunter 1 made you fear Rathalos by having him randomly pop in and select quests early on rise for whatever reason completely neglects this old tradition and in turn drastically gimps magnamalo's impact no gameplay interaction no special quests no ongoing rivalry this giant plastic toy is mentioned twice and appears in one cut scene and about 20 minutes later you are facing it for the big final battle I wish there was more to say here but you get the idea Magnum Hollow becomes the weakest Flagship in the series because no time is dedicated to building up its presence and threat this is redeemed very slightly when it comes in to save you during the all-mother fight but that is way too little way too late the game again tries to inject his name in the dialogue tries to invoke that fear but because you never get anything that you can latch onto to give that fear a face it falls flat entirely and when you do see him once the one time you see him before you fight him all he does is throw an arzeros at you which is just not a particularly impressive moment it's cool I guess but it doesn't set him up as much of a threat he also just runs away immediately if you could have just repelled him during this cutscene maybe even had this be a bespoke sudden Quest where you had to quickly survive for I don't know five minutes it would have already made a massive difference in how you feel about Magna Malo but because he doesn't even get that he ends up feeling very very unimpressive that was a lot of bitching and I'm very sorry so let's close the section out with some Story related aspects I think work very well for rise because of its somewhat unfortunate focus on story through text the game actually pulls a few clever ideas on how it communicates lore story and character through that limited means for one every character now comes with a chit chat option allowing for loads of characterizing dialogue to be found at the player's leisure Additionally the player home now comes with a ninja cat called fukushigidi informant who will divulge secrets to the player mostly centering around the various characters of Kamura but the best story vehicle added in Rise are The Relic notes these Snippets of lore are found all over the world serving as Collectibles that encourage exploration they carry loads of cool information and implication with them from early valstrax sightings to the destructive threat of a narwha giving birth in essence my big compliment to the game here is the increased amount of context and lore for everything the old games had a fair bit themselves but they always struggle to communicate that to the player often relying on art books and developer input after the fact making the lore of the world an actual collectible is a perfect way of fleshing out the fiction of Monster Hunter without loading it all into cutscenes and explicit story and I think it really AIDS in giving the world of monster to rise a real sense of place and history even if only to those that go out of their way to uncover it what's the difference between Monster Hunter and crack trick question there ain't none gameplay is at the Forefront of monster hunter's appeal and has been since its Inception the series humble beginnings on a PS2 could not rely on fancy Graphics viral marketing and high quality cutscenes to sell itself so instead these games cultivated a specific gameplay fantasy that they hone and iterate on to this day you will hunt monsters in order to hunt bigger monsters it's not as much of a gameplay loop as it is a single bullet point that continuously reinforces itself orbiting only itself how does this core monster under formula work why is it so addictive and how did ryze iterate on it the most basic cycle of interaction in any monster hunter game is almost ridiculously simple pick a weapon find a monster hit the monster until it dies collect monster Parts make armor and weapons from the monster Parts find a bigger monster rinse and repeat a formula so repetitive it is almost destined to become boring and yet it never does as anyone who has played these games can attest to this gameplay Loop can easily remain engaging for dozens or even hundreds of hours despite or maybe because of its simplicity I believe this is because the simple basic structure is deepened at every step of the way to make the simple Milestones of this journey feel involved and interesting beyond what you can do justice in just a few quick bullet points for one pick a weapon undersells the absolutely incredible achievement that our Monster Hunters 14 weapon classes in a time when discussions around difficulty and easy modes are particularly tense it is a crying shame that monster hunter rarely comes up as it has one of the most modular most fine-tuned difficulty selection systems in all of gaming the weapons while they may not be labeled as such they unambiguously constitute a difficulty slider with 14 levels a massive amount of customizability and that's not even all those 14 levels aren't equally delineated between themselves or even for every player the long sword is often considered the easy mode but I always found it pretty hard to get the grips with charge blade is the butt of many jokes aimed at its perceived complexity and yet I know plenty of players who feel right at home among the files and discharges monster hunter's weapon classes achieve the true end goal of difficulty options they collapse the very notion of hard versus easy in the mind of the player making the choice and instead create a gradient on which each player must Place themselves not by considering the difficulty they wish to experience but by organically finding a play style and a configuration that clicks with them a true custom game experience that at its best provides each player with the exact experience they want and need now obviously this is very idealistic and optimistic 14 is a big number but a finite one and yet it cannot be overstated how genuinely impressive it is that you can play these games in 14 different ways some similar between each other some wild and unique someone who has only ever played insect glaive will have had a massively different experience with the franchise than a hammer user this uniqueness combines with the personal choice and diverse complexities of each weapon's play style to forge a surprisingly strong connection between player and their preferred weapon this is doubly true due to just how deep these weapons are in terms of mechanics even straightforward ones like the sword and shield hide a wealth of systems and mechanics that allow for high skill ceilings and continuous growth through experience as well as Choice regarding which part of the weapon you want to focus on just how a fighting game player will likely become emotionally attached to their main so too will Monster Hunters bond with their weapon experience making the simple Act of hunting some dumb looking bird an act of personal expression I am a hammer Mane and I love to Bonk this personal connection is aided by the depth of combat hit monster until it dies is again an intentional oversimplification because while the process itself can be done somewhat mindlessly depending on which specific game in the franchise we are looking at the systems and factors are played during any given Hunter monster interaction are exquisite on a base level the player simply applies damage to the Target until they win but wait your weapon has sharpness which deteriorates over time and has to be maintained through a wet stone that has to be used in a disruptive and vulnerable animation okay now that you're sharp it's time to get to a oh wait though where are you going to hit the monster it's various body parts take different amounts of damage from different weapons have you considered that well okay maybe wait wait wait have you considered Elemental damage can you poison it what if you broke its kneecaps what if you stole its 2004 Hyundai Maverick G model 6 and you get the idea by wrapping the simple Act of hunting a monster in so many interlinking mechanics Monsanto turns even the smallest bit of damage dealt into the end result of a massive chain of small but meaningful decisions with them all also being influenced by the player's chosen weapon monsters have elemental weaknesses that players can exploit by using weapons that carry that element but because Elemental damage is more effective when applied over the course of multiple fast hits not all weapon types benefit from it as much the Lightning Fast dual blades will always prefer Elemental play Styles way more than the slow great sword not only do different body parts of a monster take different amounts of damage and even different amounts of Elemental damage but they are also more and less resistant to certain weapon types by default wings are generally very susceptible to having their membranes pierced by bullets and arrows Tails can only be cut by blades and hard shells and skulls shatter under the impact Damage Done by Hammers and hunting horns that's not even to mention part breaks we're in a body part of a monster can be permanently damaged for extra rewards and abnormal statuses like poisoning or paralyzing the Beast all of these systems combined with the weapon Choice create a sort of multiplicative roster of possibilities that can feel both endless and hyper-specific to what you the player enjoy and once all of these systems converge and allow you to destroy this innocent creature in your own personal way you realize why the m in Monster Hunter stands for math be it through carving the monster's corpse Park breaks or Quest rewards you end your entanglement by receiving a number of monster materials claws hides teeth Etc that you can then use to craft escalatingly powerful pieces of armor and weaponry generally fashioned after a monster you just killed and somewhat emulating their look and abilities it might take a few hunts or it might happen after the first but at some point your brain explodes with the prospect of having an ever expanding Arsenal to play with each with unique benefits and drawbacks each gated behind a new fun monster to encounter and this is what a monster formula hooks into your brain because when it is at its best it makes you feel like everything you do in the game is significant progress no matter what monster you fight or what quest you do by tying every World interaction into the cycle of getting loot that will be useful for something the franchise Fosters this feeling that everything you do progresses you one way or another even doing side activities and ignoring main quest progression feels like you are working towards something like you're using your time well this makes these games insanely addicting because jumping into the cycle is easy personally fulfilling and continuously rewarding oh did I happen to mention main story progress yes I did because even though the narrative ranges from back seat to non-existent depending on the game this cycle still exists within the framework of a progression system progress in the franchise is denoted by Quest ranks themselves defined by stars one star quests are the easiest and least impressive quests and every Star rank UPS the danger and the glory along this path across the Stars the various star ranks are themselves grouped into larger ranks low rank which has monsters at their weakest and mostly functions as a tutorial high rank which is the main meat of the game and the intended experience for the average player and master rank an exceptionally difficult and Meaty section of the game generally added after the game's initial release generally any monster hunter game will have at least two types of quests urgent or main quests which directly progress the player onto higher star ranks and optional quests which do not selecting either of these Quest types launches the player into the cycle we laid out which then itself guides the player to make further decisions on what quests to take on depending on what monster they feel like fighting or what armor they're trying to build now this is a general framework of how gameplay Works across the entire franchise that is to say this is a laughably bad simplification this series is made up of around 15 games each reinterpreting and reiterating this basic formula and at times even modifying its very foundations trying to describe the average Monster Hunter experience is almost impossible especially after Monster World changed the franchise so dramatically however by laying out this Bare Bones outline we can then superimpose how each game puts its own spin on it some try to add on to the movement and moment-to-owned experience doing a hunt some try to expand the scope of what the hunt could be While others try to fundamentally reinvent how the loop is even conceptualized so what did rise do the general structure remains unchanged hunt loot gear repeat the biggest addition rise makes is located within the actual Act of hunting and it is called the wire bug this little critter is an insect that can launch and hover in midair while also extending a wire from its ass Bonkers concept is then used as the game's excuse to include what is essentially a grappling hook that attaches to thin air very cool fine by me this innocuous change however transforms the entire game the added mobility of being able to zip around influence the game Pace in the obvious ways sections that were once filled with dull walking and unengaging traversal are now a high-speed playground for wall runs Spider-Man swings and trick jumps Through the Wire bug rise achieves something that many game franchises still struggle to do it makes the basic Act of movement fun next time you're playing a game pay attention to how much fun moving around actually is chances are not very many games struggle with making this basic interaction with the game World enjoyable as they generally Focus much more on actual gameplay mechanics and not simple Locomotion and none more than Monster Hunter while the game's up to an including World gradually sped up the player character and made them more Nimble movement was by itself never enjoyable at best being something you just did on an unengaged autopilot but at its worst monster movement was actively mind-numbing extremely slow and never quite as responsive as you'd want it to be once the fighting started then all games shined in their own way but in between you'd be hard-pressed for anyone to actively enjoy walking around like this so rice takes a part of the game that was historically at best kind of whatever and turns it into a real highlight the wire bug is Snappy and extremely responsive the speed and distance that you can zip feel just right and because they are on a cool down they are both infinite and balanced since they don't depend on a resource but can also not be spammed forever it also fundamentally changes the player's relationship with the environment mounts underworld received a lot of criticism over the Ancient Forest as many found the introductory map of the game hard and confusing to navigate this was due to the many branching Paths of various elevations which were not only fairly intricate but also extremely selective there was no visual indicator when you could go through somewhere and when it was just set dressing forcing you to bump around the map until you found the one narrow path you were allowed to go through this was itself meant to be a solution to a perceived problem in the older games namely that they didn't really have environments but rather consisted of various completely flat Arenas with little in terms of natural terrain shattering the illusion somewhat and making it more of a boss fight type of game now I don't think that bothered me specifically much but it clearly was something the team at monster hunter wanted to change and while worlds struggled to descript the complexity of some of its Maps as well as its completely useless minimap rise solved both of these problems with the wire bug now terrain can be whatever it wants to be because within the confines of the map space the player has complete freedom of movement the ability to climb any wall at any point and then zip around by definition eliminates confusion since you can just seek out a vantage point and Orient yourself we won't get into the actual map design here and now but by itself the wire bug completely transforms the act of existing Within These Maps it is actually genuinely impossible to get lost here for all that long because you're only ever one wall run away from getting a good Glimpse at where you are the wire bug's influence extends into combat as well being able to swish swoosh around as long as you have a resource obviously allows for some pretty snazzy Maneuvers but it's true utility in battle is the wirefall a special move that can make you fly out of danger at the Press of a button specifically after players sent flying by an attack after getting hit the player can use a wirefall to instantly evade and get back on their feet provided they have the bug to do it the effect this maneuver has on combat is twofold on one hand it adds yet another meaningful and tactical decision the hunter can make wire falling is immensely useful but crucially it cancels out iframes usually when you fall to the ground or are flying through the air you receive invincibility frames or iframes that is to say a certain period in which you cannot be hit by further attacks to avoid you from being comboed in an infinite cycle of pain but wire falling instantly ends your invincibility making you vulnerable once again so if you get hit and then wirefall carelessly you could just immediately get hit again this creates a very nice risk versus reward system a micro interaction that keeps combat interesting and full of decision making another more specific benefit of the wirefall is that it changes how grabs work many monsters have attacks in which they take hold of the player in preparation for some large deadly follow-up move in the previous games getting out of the situation required button mashing or help from your teammates or having the right item equipped but in Rise you can actually wire a fall out of these attacks if you time it correctly this further adds the level of risk to the combat as getting grabbed with no available wire bugs is a potential problem that encourages and rewards active planning resource management and good timing on the other hand however wirefalls make evasive maneuvering extremely easy while the added depth to movement is fun it allows for a kind of speed and versatility that only very few monsters can keep up with while the wirebug massively Buffs the movement of the player the monsters seemingly did not receive much to even the playing field and as such the proposed risk versus reward of wire falling often does not manifest instead replaced by mostly brain dead waterfalls that most of the time will save your ass no matter how little you thought about them while we won't get into monster specifically in this section what is relevant here is just how few monsters actually have been given the means to properly threaten the wire bug Combos and conditional punishers are extremely rare and while sunbreak made them more common the average monster still cannot effectively counter smart wire bug use which unfortunately dampens their overall threat and presence to the player and makes the wire fall simply not nearly as rewarding and interesting to use as it could have been and as it is in its best moments another and more overt way the wire bugs influence combat is through switch skills and silk bind moves these names can get a little confusing so let's just clear it up real quick switch skills are moves and abilities that can be switched out for different ones for example The Sword and shields forward advancing slash can be replaced with a sliding slash switch skills thus allow you to customize your move set and this includes customizing your silk bind moves are basically ultimate attacks as they consume either one or both of your wire bugs and unleash special moves and abilities they range from auxiliary to overwhelmingly powerful with each having different nuances as well as incurring different cooldowns on your wire bugs these two elements together make for a more customizable experience that gives players some truly powerful options when dealing with the beasties such skills especially constitute a massive level of Personality as some of them like the alternate demon mode for dual blades or the performance settings for hunting horns fundamentally change the flow of your gameplay but this is n't really an entirely new feature instead it is an iteration of Monster Hunter Generations Hunter style and arts Styles or preset loadouts of Combos and special skills while Arts were just straight up silk bind moves and unfortunately while I do really like switch skills and hope that they remain as part of the series in some form I do think Hunter Styles and arts were overall a superior system I have not played the games with every weapon so I can't speak for all of them but of the ones I have played and through the experience of the people I have played with they crystallize one key tendency almost inevitably instead of switching skills out regularly or even experimenting all that much in the first place what actually ends up happening is that for each weapon one very obviously Superior Loadout ends up being heavily favored some weapons like the sword and shield do have two equally strong options for different purposes in isolated cases but that's the exception not the rule many switch skills are a completely binary decision do you want the obviously bad one or the one that actually works this dampens the whole customization aspect a tad since you are generally just going to gravitate to the one combination that is obviously Superior this balancing issue was also somewhat present in Generations but there due to Styles being presets of very clear and hard disadvantages of post on them disadvantages that you could not manage for and needed to just deal with it felt less impactful in Rise switch skills are just overall unbalanced which is not to say that they are not fun because oh my God perfect mezsu countering a basil Goose's dive bomb is actually orgasmic while the switch skill system fails at adequately providing balance within the various loadouts playing with some of these new and returning moves makes the combat more hectic more exhilarating and just more enjoyable at least to me silk bind moves especially end up becoming a highlight as many hunts become a sort of rhythm game where you rotate between pulling off your silk bind moves and then playing more traditionally while they recharge this gives new players a conceivable gameplay flow they can follow regardless of weapon while giving veterans and experts more tools to play and experiment with pushing themselves to the absolute limits of what they can do one of those additional tools are the palamutes while pelicos warrior cats that help you out in battle have been a staple of the franchise since second generation it was only in Rise that players were able to recruit dog equivalents just like palicos they have a specific role while the cats offer combat and Gathering support the palamutes are primarily a means of fast reversal as the hunter can jump on their back at any time to speed across the map palomutes can also help in the fight but are generally not as strong or versatile as palicos are these very good boys are initially a very useful feature as speeding and drifting across your pet wolf feels pretty amazing however as the game goes on they too reveal themselves to not have been balanced against the palicos very well while the atom Mobility is nice the more varied and Powerful abilities of the palicos as well as their ability to pill for additional monster materials including rare drops makes them a much better choice as companions not only that but the mobility offered by polymutes is not actually that impactful skillful use of your wire bug can render them entirely obsolete this is a shame since the palomutes are such a cool idea perhaps in a future entry they could be tied with sniffing out and tracking large monsters it rolls so natural for a hunting Hound that it's kind of incredible ryze didn't already do it what ryze did however do is add one more mechanic on top of all of this wyvern riding this new system allows Hunters to momentarily take control of a monster and ride it around either slamming it into walls or attacking other monsters with it a monster becomes rideable after a certain amount of blue damage has been dealt blue damage is any damage done by Silk Pine moves as well as jumping attacks wyvern riding thus replaces the mounting system seen in previous games an idea that resurfaces in the community every few months is which elements fit into a monster under game and which don't is the Jet Plane dragon in congress with the franchise's ideal are palamutes just too Whimsical at what point does something become not Monster Hunter everyone has a different threshold for what they consider unfit for this franchise but I think I draw the line at wyvern riding there is a reason the excellent monster stories franchise which entirely revolves around taming and riding monsters is relegated to being a spin-off taking control of the monsters just doesn't feel right as a concept for the main series and rise at least to me proves why that is wyvern riding disrupts the flow of combat immensely when a monster becomes rideable any player that hasn't turned it off in the options will instantly mounted upon attacking and once mounted a monster takes basically no damage from other sources or players meaning that the only active party is the hunter on top of the monster this isn't the worst thing mounting had a similar effect where the players that weren't mounted would use the window to sharpen and heal the problem though is that with mounting you had the choice you could either use the time to use some items or you could attack the mounted monster getting damage in and contributing to a topple wyvern riding eliminates the latter option by making the monster almost invulnerable which causes awkward breaks in the fight where we all suddenly need to stop doing what we're doing and either ride a monster or wait for someone else to finish writing it but it's not like you will stop using wyvern riding because it's just so free wyvern riding turns every wall and monster into a damage opportunity it showers you in shinies and costs absolutely nothing to pull off not to mention that in the moment it can be quite fun to beat the out of someone with rajang and while that is cool it does mean that wyvern riding becomes the dominant strategy that you will see in every single hunt a completely brain dead damage option that is disruptive to the flow but also way too useful to reasonably ignore another controversial feature that rise brings to the table are Spirit Birds these Critters are small colibri's that fly around the map and provide various Buffs when the player approaches them this is by itself inoffensive the problem is that the Buffs the birds give are not actually additive they are stat bonuses that players used to have access to by default or by using certain skills which are now locked behind collecting these birds on each hunt so for example no matter what skills you use and what you eat at the canteen you can never naturally reach your full health to do that you will have to run around and find enough green Spirit Birds to boost yourself to the max this has earned the game much chagra as it feels like a forced and out of place mechanic I am torn on this on one hand Spirit birds are clearly designed to encourage players to explore the map which I quite like as the Monster Hunter ecology guy I'm always up for mechanics that emphasize learning about and witnessing the game's world there is also a certain level of satisfaction associated with getting good at collecting all your spirit Birds quickly a different type of challenge that can feel great to master its own right the kind of challenge that you might see in speedrunning the problem I think is that Spirit birds are not one way to max out your stats they are the only way besides a single skill added in sunbreak there is no way to make the collective of spirit Birds any less mandatory or any faster you're just stuck at lowered stats until you run around the map for a few minutes which kind of sucks in a game where much of the end game revolves around squeezing out a final few optimizations speaking of spirit birds are a static mechanic meaning that their importance and mechanism does not change as the game progresses this means that whether you are hr1 or 900 you will still have to run around grabbing these little guys this is counter to another core aspect of Monster Hunter progression in all games old and new the amount of non-hunting gameplay decreases over time as you start out having to gather and craft until you become prepared and self-sufficient enough to the point where those mechanics are much less prevalent this is a strong additional layer of progression as you don't just feel like you're getting stronger but you become increasingly more prepared and capable not having to waste time on menial tasks once you hit the end game Spirit Birds undermine this dimension of progression but what really shoots this mechanic in the leg is the way the UI communicates it to you the ghostly Silhouettes Of Your Potential Max health and stamina bar bear down on you endlessly always visible on the top of your screen huge and ugly reminding you that you are missing out this further makes the spirit Birds feel like a mandatory mechanic and it doesn't feel great so even though they are designed to be encouraging helpers that make your life easier it's understandable why they annoy certain players through the specific way they are integrated and designed which brings us to the big elephant no not you in the room difficulty this topic is absolutely obnoxious to discuss online so let me set clear parameters as to how I want to treat it difficulty in video games is like level design or UI a tool it's a conscious Choice by the developers that shapes the way a game plays High difficulty is not by itself a good thing the same way that complex level design is not by itself good it has to feel right and fair within the game it is in however High difficulty does have one positive effect when the stars align The Challenge and the overcoming of it form a connection between player and game that goes beyond enjoyment is sort of Pride and a sense of achievement that etches the game into the player's favorite list higher levels of difficulty also impart on the player the necessity to consider all their options push the game's mechanics to their limit and become familiar with the digital space this is why from soft games are so beloved and it's a quality often ascribed to the older monster hunter games the deliberate and slow pace of combat made those games harder but more rewarding and I am inclined to agree sometimes as the franchise has evolved the games have progressively become more fast-paced and more flashy with ryze fully embracing a Twitchy almost arcade-like Vibe where hunts are short numbers are big and monsters are mostly helpless as you decimate them while some of the boys can still pack a punch the player now has so many options and abilities that there rarely is much incentive to truly learn a fight the pressure of having to persevere against the adversity of limited mobility and tougher monster AI is gone and with that the necessity to improve and bond with the game in a way the older game force you to is also gone thus I think that on a base level it is inarguable that monster on the rise is one of the easiest Monster Hunter experiences available but and this is the 11th Hour plot twist that you all should have seen coming why is that a bad thing difficult games are not inherently better and conversely easier games are not inherently worse the old monster hunter games were great at immersing you into the world and forcing you to improve but you know what else they were really good at alienating newcomers the high commitment slow gameplay is fantastic if you're already into it but is nightmarish for anyone trying to get into it there is a reason almost every story about becoming a monster under fan starts with yeah I didn't actually like it at first meanwhile rise as anecdotally made getting my family and friends into the series extremely smooth and effortless and it's not hard to see why the arcadey playstyle for Rise may be a departure from The Game's initial identity and a new identity that feels less impactful overall as a working adult the ability to sit down in the evening and actually make some meaningful progress in the game in the limited time I have is a severely undervalued benefit the old games demand your time to do literally anything and if you have that time to spare that is phenomenal but as the average age for gamers Rises there's a growing desire for pick up and play experiences and Rises reduce bureaucracy speedier pace and briskier combat offer exactly that because of this getting people into the series through rise is the easiest it has ever been but even on its own merits while the decrease in difficulty does definitively change the game's Vibe quite a bit rise is fun quests are shorter and easier absolutely but if I after a long day need to choose between 8 minutes of fun and Breezy gameplay that I can repeat to progress within that same evening and 35 minutes of slow walking and hitting which won't really get me any further for this Knight itself I know what I'm picking rise is a perfect weekday Monster Hunter game while the older games are weekend games so while ryze absolutely moves away from the original identity of Monster Hunter the new identity it forges has distinct advantages that are often underestimated in an online culture that often sees difficulty not as a game mechanic but a trite measurement of value and ego while some of the game elements rise introduces do overall detract from combat in my opinion they also contribute to a gameplay experience that fully Embraces new players and players who were previously driven away from the series rise is a game that tries its absolute hardest to get everyone into my favorite video game franchise of all time and me I have to respect that half of the appeal of monster hunter is the hunting while the other half is shockingly the monsters I can't think of another game where the boss fights are as integral of an element as they are in Monster Hunter but it makes sense the entire gameplay Loop revolves around fighting these boys repeatedly so their design difficulty and combat styles are going to matter much more in say Elden ring the player generally only interacts with a boss fight until they beat it the first time after which they simply move on but in Monster Hunter a boss fight needs to hold up not just the first time but the 51st time too this sounds like a lot of pressure but in my experience what actually ends up happening is that players get immensely attached to their favorite fights as a repetition cements their qualities monsters therefore stop being boss fights and instead become almost like characters a cast the player is excited to interact with even if that interaction is generally murder so the quality of any given Monster Hunter game stands and falls with its monsters a small or uninteresting roster will inevitably detract from the experience while a wide selection of varied opponents tends to leave a very strong impression additionally these opponents need to hold up not just in terms of design and variety but also in terms of the gameplay and interactivity if these monsters look cool but are not fun to fight against that will still detract from the enjoyment in terms of gameplay ryze suffers from some very clear concessions for one the ecology aspect of Monsters has been severely downscaled world was a Prestige game and as such really emphasized my new details which included a foray into the Ecology of monsters each creature had behavioral patterns and cycles that changed its idle Behavior depending on the map the monsters would eat drink had hunting behavior and designated roots that made sense for them moreover Monsanto World leveraged every system at its disposal to try and sell the fantasy of a cohesive biological world for example aggro ranges are a pretty innocuous feature in games simply the distance at which an enemy decides to engage you but by giving different monsters different ranges monster in the world managed to create the impression of different tempers and personalities the Sheepish titsyaku will let you get as close as you want and won't attack until you hassle it while a basil Goose will almost instantly charge at you the moment you two share a zip code combined with unique idle behaviors and animation this was an immensely powerful framework add to this that many Maps had specifically designed locations Mendez nests for each monsters which is something that the old games also did sporadically but World truly went hard on this gets to the point where certain monsters can only really exist in specific Maps which limits them in terms of the map variety but emphasizes their ecology when I was playing through the world with a friend I had forced to buy the game as I do he decided to fight an anjanath the first time he saw it AKA way too early after he inevitably fainted he went quiet for a second before uttering a phrase that to this day defines Monster Hunter world for me I could see it thinking I saw the moment it decided to end me the game has no hyper Advanced AI system that allows monsters to express complex decision making but the game had so effectively created the illusion of inner life that the video game dragon targeting my friend was interpreted by him as a deliberate natural and organic act this emphasis on ecology and this illusion of Life remains one of world's greatest achievements which makes Rises downscaling of this aspect somewhat bitter as a game designed for the switch this was somewhat inevitable but it still hurts variable aggro ranges are gone every monster be it a world-ending dragon or a chicken is instantly Out For Blood this change was probably made to stop the player from realizing that the unique animations and idle behaviors from world are also almost entirely gone most monsters have won maybe two special animations or when they aren't in combat but besides that a monster that hasn't seen you yet simply walks in circles until the fighting starts trust me as the guy who makes these documentaries I film them a lot while they don't fight and while in World they were pretty interesting to watch Rises monsters are pretty boring by comparison the character and uniqueness of the different creatures has been mostly sanded off they all generally behave the same way outside of combat they also generally have a much weaker connection to the maps they appear in most monsters can spawn on many diverse Maps which makes for better Quest variety for sure but further undermines this illusion of life monsters are no longer tether to specific areas and environments and as such don't feel connected to them anymore the way they did in world the old games didn't really do this either since they also had wide variety of ranges monster could appear in but after World seeing this step back is a shame thus the monsters are more video game bosses than they are living creatures another problem here is that monsters as a whole are less threatening and thus less memorable due to a few key changes for one monsters are always visible on the map which completely eliminates the possibility of surprises basil Goose became a series icon almost overnight mostly because of its highly specific behavior where it would crash your hunts and ruin your day now it really cannot do that anymore since you will always know exactly where it is and where it is going the element of surprise is entirely gone this map functionality feels especially weird due to it having an in-universe explanation that is as easily missed as it is shoddy your kahoot just magically tells you where the monsters are no interaction no real mechanic just a hasty excuse to instantly know where the target is you can't even really progress throughout this mechanic for example the kahoot could have had this ability but in a limited fashion to start that you then had to level up over time perhaps getting your kahoot to learn certain monsters and their sense who knows but ultimately this system is incredibly static and gives you full visibility right from the get-go this change robs Invaders like basil Goose of basically all of their character and charm speaking of yes rise actually has an invasion system-like world where dangerous monsters can show up to mess with your Huns unexpectedly you'd be excused for not knowing that this system still exists in Rise because it has been gutted beyond recognition while technically monsters can invade as in their designated Invaders In the code each of the specific Invaders has been tweaked to make sure that they have nothing of what made them work basil Goose doesn't chase the player anymore rajang generally spawns asleep and bowstracts Ambush not only gets announced but it also does no damage to the player if it's used outside of combat these changes essentially cast trade Invaders fully but what really seals the deal is wyvern riding because it is so easy and relies on monster monster violence having a strong monster show up on the map unexpectedly is not a problem it's an opportunity rajang doesn't Inspire dread anymore it inspires 3000 free damage on your Target Monster additionally turf wars which are special battle animations between specific monsters and were a really cool featured world have been de-emphasized to the point that you can easily go the entire base game without ever seeing one as their chance of occurring has been drastically lowered to allow wyvern riding to take Center Stage and while Invaders suffer from this change the most all monsters feel less impactful due to them being predictable homogeneous in behavior and more beneficial to the player than actual threats when you see a monster in Rise you don't think oh God now I have to deal with this you think to yourself oh another opportunity to do even more DPS a more nuanced issue is that of unique monster mechanics some creatures such as The Rock nakadaki come with interesting and entirely Unique Mechanics to their fights making them feel memorable and exciting on the other hand however many returning monsters have had their battles streamlined to be more homogeneous for example hitting orajang's tail to force it out of its rage mode technically still works but why bother doing it when the rajang will literally enrage two seconds later making the entire mechanic ultimately worthless this inconsistency even extends to part breaks some cool and mechanically interesting part breaks remain such as angina's legs becoming extremely useful weak spot after they are wounded others are entirely castrated and turned into nothing but another role of the RNG for Rewards cutting off wrathion's tale is monhan wisdom as old as time as it drastically reduces the chance of being poisoned in 700 hours of world with a friend who only played longsword I have never been poisoned by a tailless wrathian in Rise however it only took the first hunt because cutting the tail makes virtually no difference in this game the stump still poisons you about as frequently as an intact Tale these inconsistencies cause a wide variance of fight quality and uniqueness while some retain that special charm that makes Monster Hunter tick many fights feel extremely samey designated to encourage nothing but pure DPS without a thought waste to the monster specific strategies and combat flows this extends to some new monsters as well why does breaking a bishopton's tail its most used limb not impede its movement almost at all speaking of the RNG rise is maybe the most forgiving game when it comes to grinding monster materials the drop rates of the various gems mantles Etc are still roughly the same but every Quest tends to give out more rewards and have more reward slots compared to the older games Additionally the new Hunter's notes allow players to see the precise percentage chances of each material dropping under specific conditions allowing players to hyper focus on the exact part they need I am in two minds about this on one hand giving players more info is a good thing the old games reveled in never telling you anything and when it came to grinding materials that was kind of annoying as quests also gave you fewer Rewards so Rye is telling you exactly what you need to do to get what you need at what percentage chance is definitely a welcome change it puts more control back in your hands but I do also wonder if it is too much by straight up giving the player the game data the monsters and the various mechanics lose a bit of their magic like they're just check boxes on a spreadsheet add to this the aforementioned decreased mechanical emphasis on part breaks and monsters turn into walking slot machines where the focus is always on how to manipulate it for maximum Rewards which isn't a new thing for Monster Hunter but I think it's the most blatant in Rise which sends off some of the immersion obscurity that gave older games that spice World gave the various materials star ratings indicating their Rarity and I think I might prefer that system overall but where rise shines is Monster variety and roster at 73 large monsters as of sunbreak and the third title update it easily keeps up with any of the older titles in the franchise but its true strength lies in the actual roster specifically in which monsters are in one of world's biggest problem was how samey many monsters felt everything was a wyvern that probably used the fire element and while iceborn even things out on the elemental side of things the game was still mostly Dragon Hunter rajang was the only non-wyvern in that game and you could really feel the absence of different monster types rise amended this by being full of varied monster types and shapes from the get-go Tim nasarons Fang beasts amphibians carapaceons this game has great variety which gives its cast of Monsters a little bit more spice and a little bit more interest and while it's free update monsters have been somewhat fire heavy the actual overall distribution of elements is pretty similar to iceborn actually which is to say it's pretty good there is however an odd lack of elder dragons which does become apparent once the end game is reached also why the is giratodos here who thought the game needed one single piscene wyvern oh the monster type everyone loves and wants to see in every game why ryze's new and unique monsters also deserve praise based on classic japanese Yokai they all carry that distinct imaginative realism with them that makes Monster Hunter special creatures like tetranodon or gossarag effortlessly combined original myths their natural inspiration and the Monster Hunter spice resulting in designs that feel just right for the series Monster Hunter after gen 1 has always looked to marry the natural and the insane and creatures like the narwha fit into the scope just as well as Kirin or a valstrax but where it really went from good to Great is sunbreak while bass Rises roster was very Solid Sun breaks monster editions truly emphasize that sometimes quality matters more than quantity even though some breaks launch roster was only 17 Monsters the selection of those monsters was mostly superb sunbreak sees the return of fan favorites such as the magalas astalos and ceregios all of whom were reworked for the better mostly in my opinion astalos is my favorite monster in all of Monster Hunter so his redesign making him more colorful more electric and more deadly was absolutely up my alley just look at the colors of those wings dude and the fact that he's so fast probably pressures you even with the wire bug which is very welcome the magala are as good as they've ever been naturally without the excellent story content from for you your encounter with shigaru doesn't have the same punch it used to but that was entirely predictable to anyone who thought about it for more than two seconds so I really don't mind ceregios is a Menace now zipping around you and ripping you apart if you aren't careful this is one of the few fights that almost everyone I've spoken to considers really tough a glimpse into how much fun rise can be when the pressure is on the only thing holding ceregio's back specifically is the rework to the bleed status now bleed is essentially a non-factor as it heals by itself almost instantly if you crouch and only damages you if you get hit again and not whenever you move as it used to be this Nerf saregios a tad since his signature ailment is now virtually harmless some break also reintroduced the carapacions a monster type I am personally extremely fond of just because they're so weird and atypical what I found surprising here is how challenging both hermitor and shyanitar were initially with the latter actually carrying me and my friends a few times due to his fast and irregular movement a highlight of sunbreak was also the first canonical inclusion of espinas a monster that first debuted in the now lost MMO spin-off Monster Hunter Frontier ever since more info on the game was made accessible by dedicated community members Frontier has garnered a sort of cold status in the fandom with many now curious to experience some of the content this weird MMO had to offer so to have sunbreak just straight up drop a monster that was originally exclusive to Frontier into the mainline series was not just a huge surprise not just extremely cool but also a very good decision for the game as espinos is easily one of the best fights in it in terms of attacks it is basically just a wrathion having a simple move set somewhat lifted straight from Monster Hunter dos but this Simplicity is the espinoza's strength the moves may be straightforward but letting a single one connect can be deadly the triple ailment fireballs and the massive damage of its charge attacks puts the Espionage into the sweet spot where it's not really hard to dodge but if you get cocky and careless you will get punished it is very satisfying because it keeps you on your toes even when you think you have to fight down but bass sunbreak's greatest additions are undoubtedly the three Lords the expansion's modest roster didn't leave much space for many entirely new designs but these three the three Flagship monsters for sunbreak make up for that in just how great they are garang Golem is a hulking Behemoth modeled after the Golem of Jewish mythology and the creature made by Dr Frankenstein specifically its film adaptations with a dual element and two rage States this guy is a spectacle to fight seeing him Rocket Jump and learning how to avoid the aeroblast his second rage save produces makes this fight extremely fun also he's just a monkey which is always fun to fight a monster hunter the only issue here is that garangom has very little health and is a little too squishy which makes his fights shorter than I think it should be he even has a unique ultimate that many people probably miss because he only does it at very low health Luna Garen is all the good parts of olugaren mixed with a werewolf theme what's not to love he is fast and aggressive and notably different between his two states with his quadruped and biped modes having pretty different movesets that make the fight continuously interesting and exciting it feels like you're truly fighting a monster also the sound of your weapon hitting his ice armor is just and finally we have malzino while I won't talk about his story treatment here malzino is easily one of my favorite flagships in the entire series now vampires are a cool Concept in general and a vampire dragon is just awesome a great idea that malzino executes perfectly his Regal and Noble appearance contrasts beautifully with his grotesque skull-like face and the fact that he has a Victorian necktie made out of curios is such a wonderful touch and then as you're fighting him he transforms blackening into a true demon that can even teleport actually he can just move really fast and give you the fight of a lifetime because of blood blight which heals the player when they damage a monster this quickly becomes one of the most fast-paced and aggressive fights in the series as both the player and malzino whale away at each other relentlessly truly a dance under the pale Moonlight it's one of those times where ryze's commitment to faster paced gameplay truly pays off as this feels like a fight for survival where no second is meaningless and every decision matters a true evolution of the slower fighting styles of the older games malzino in short brings out the best of ryze's formula damn man this fight is so good it makes me wish there was like an entire gameplay system that revolves around fights like these oh well and that was just the base game some breaks title updates have in my opinion been nothing but Banger so far we got the best versions of the metal wraths to date in fact the only versions I enjoy fighting loosen arkuga is back and it's one of the coolest and most tense Encounters in the game with a fair and challenging invisibility mechanic that keeps you on your toes seething basil is alright flaming espinos is a straight upgrade over the already great base species with enough aggression and power to pose a real challenge and of course Violet mizutsune the rare species that no one asked for and despite that it ended up becoming maybe one of the most impressive fights in the franchise with a fun and extremely satisfying ultimate attack that you can use against it a phase 2 music switch and a hectic and beautiful struggle for survival dancing with bubbles of blue fox fire there is more to come still and if the game keeps us up then ryze's final roster will be among the best in the franchise so the monsters in Rise are a double-edged sword on one hand many of the mechanical changes the game makes to combat a monster Behavior end up lessening the unique aspects that make monster hunter monsters special gamifying them further in Rises continuing Arcadia design philosophy on the other hand the roster and quality of new monsters are great with many standout experiences among the cast many new designs are already quickly climbing up my favorites list and no matter how much I analyze why the game mechanically de-emphasizes certain ideas that I find important I cannot escape the fact that I had fun with most of these monsters I had so much fun foreign come on now you didn't think we were going to get through this video without having to mention this at least once right event quests are somewhat of a staple of Monster Hunter these downloadable extra quests have since Freedom Unite represented one of the most playful aspects of the franchise with many of them sporting odd and unique conditions and rewarding the player with new materials weapons and armors otherwise unattainable in the game many of them also serve as a sort of grind assistance as they offer players a way to fight certain monsters under stable conditions that may be more desirable than their regular static quests World shook the system up by a lot by making them related to seasonal festivals which rotated these quests in and made them available at different intervals rise went back to the old system where event quests are downloadable and permanently accessible once acquired now if you've hung around the community even a little bit then you probably know that ryze event quests are pretty unpopular to say the least that is because they are generally a massive downgrade from the old games and even world I took the liberty of making some pie charts the full pie represents all available event quests blue is quest with functional rewards that is to say armors and weapons with stats green represents event quests with special conditions such as unique monster Behavior or a crown size monsters just something interesting going on orange is grind assistance quests which help you receive certain materials easier than usual red is cosmetic rewards such as layered armor yellow are social rewards which are emotes gestures stickers and light blue is everything else that is to say regular quests which nothing special going on if we compare monster 3 Ultimate Generations ultimate world and iceborn and rise in some break as of right now I think the problem becomes quite apparent rise has a massive amount of event quests dedicated to social rewards gestures and stickers which many people consider not worth it Communications through these has never been a core part of the online multiplayer experience and so many just don't use them and conversely don't actually consider them worthwhile Rewards by comparison grind assistance unique conditions and for functional rewards have all but withered away meaning that the majority of event quests are simply not that interesting or rewarding to do for most players okay but why does that matter event quests are even at their worst just additive content then you can choose not to play shouldn't really be much to be mad about since you can just ignore them and indeed this is where I would like to end this segment but unfortunately there is another system in the game that event quests are by unfortunate Association tied to paid DLC the term paid DLC may be a little odd at first after all isn't most DLC paid in the context of Monster Hunter paid DLC refers to the ability to purchase various smaller in-game goodies besides the actual DLC expansion this generally includes additional music for The Hub Town costumes for various characters including a player and other cosmetic add-ons they are not quite micro transactions because that term generally invokes the in-game currencies and psychological tricks of the EAS and activisions of the world by comparison monster hunter's situation seems pretty tame there are no currency conversions no element of coercion heck you'd be forgiven for not even knowing that these are a thing if you're not on social media there is only a single banner that advertises them in the game which is in the title screen and the add-on screen and that Banner is actually smaller than it was in World by the way however this feature has evoked much chagra from players mostly because the purchasable items include cosmetic armors and weapon skins that are otherwise not available in game and are also particularly high quality this is not particularly healthy for a game like Monster Hunter where much of the appeal comes from being able to grind out equipment to personally express yourself it is the core gameplay Loop and in tandem with event quests this hurts even more on one hand you have a quest type which has now been lambasted for not giving adequate rewards for not being able to provide rewards that are cool and unique enough to justify doing them while older games could do it pretty easily and on the other hand you have cool and unique rewards that could absolutely work as the actual motivator for these event quests but are instead locked behind additional purchases now when talking about in-game purchases and the like people love to role play as old men we didn't have to buy no goddamn micro transactions the gaming industry has transformed and now for better or worse is focused on keeping any release updated and alive for as long as possible and as reasonable with that came a focus on larger teams the financial bloat of the game's industry and content strategies that focus on longevity this resulted in patches Community updates and yes DLC this change is larger than just Monster Hunter and has not uniquely led to the detriment of the industry some of the games of the last 20 years have been absolute Classics that are in my opinion better than anything that has come out in the so called good old days I'm not saying this to defend the practice of paid DLC or to tell you that you cannot be mad about but yelling about how we need to go back how we need to essentially reset an entire industry when this change has already happened and been normalized and has led to distinct benefits aside from the issues that are laid out is ultimately unhelpful it's as effective as kicking people from your lobbies for varying DLC costumes it's not helpful it's not going to change anything you're just lashing out you're crying but you're not exactly making a good proposal for how we can fix this paid DLC is a slippery slope that will if given the chance erode the identity of many games and I absolutely empathize with the desire to not let that happen but just role playing as an old guy who just wants the world to go back 20 years is fundamentally not going to help anyone least of all yourself unfortunately the normalization of micro purchases like rise's paid DLC is something that for now we need to live with thus a much healthier push against it in my opinion is to find ways to skew these practices into positions in which we can coexist with them realistically we will not be able to convince Capcom a capitalist company to turn off a money tab they found just because a few dedicated fans find it off-putting again these DLCs are not egregious enough on a general level to inspire the kind of widespread and Casual pushback that can actually force a company's hand one way or another micro purchases are here to stay for now so maybe we ought to imagine a compromise in which these practices exist without encroaching on what makes a specific game worth it in this case Monster Hunter but how can we do that well for starters I think it's useful that we draw a line in the sand at what point do we decide that these practices stop being supplementative and instead become ultimately undermining of what is core to the game at what point do paid microtransactions and micro purchases disrupt the game experience for many that line is drawn in the shape of the word cosmetic if it is cosmetic then it's fine but that doesn't really work for a game like Monster Hunter where Cosmetics directly tie into the progression and appeal of the game even if they are not theoretically functional but here's where we can make an interesting observation not all Cosmetics are made equal DLC costumes for your kahoot your owl companion are rarely the topic of ire and generally no one seems to care about those while layered armors and especially layered weapons cause a lot of anger very regularly both of these are technically cosmetic but one is clearly over the line while the other one isn't I believe this is an indication that simply dividing paid DLC between cosmetic and functional is not a sensible model for Monster Hunter instead I would like to propose a different classification one of three subordinate groups first we have primary DLC these are massive game-changing purchases that give you content that may unlock entirely new stuff or massively Empower and distinguish the buyer this is where I would put all paid to win schemes as well as traditional DLC expansions such as sunbreak then we have secondary DLC which denotes purchases that don't technically change the contents of the game in a functional way but ultimately tie into the core gameplay Loop of it thus allowing players to purchase game satisfaction in a way here is where I would put layered armor and layered weapon DLC as they don't make you stronger or better at the game but they do provide a type of content that is usually meant to be unlocked through gameplay an intentional core of Monster Hunter and finally there is tertiary DLC this is DLC that focuses on enriching and affecting content in the game that to be blunt no one really cares about tertiary DLC focuses on added content that is entirely supplementative and that no serious person could claim is part of a game's core identity it's something that is nice to have but ultimately not necessary to enjoy your experience with the game this is where I put most of the monster on DLC actually kahoot costumes Hub and house music room decorations all of that good stuff this is not a perfect model I'm literally just a guy but one that I think makes the line we should draw pretty clear here between tertiary and secondary DLC secondary DLC fundamentally messes with the gameplay Loop of Monster Hunter as it adds a shortcut into the cycle and conversely Gates content that we have been trained to expect as gameplay rewards behind paywalls it dilutes and undercuts the whole point of the game and will continue to do so if this feature is further explored but tertiary DLC does not no one would reasonably be upset that room decorations are paid DLC because no one plays Monster Hunter to decorate rooms it's a neat extra and would obviously be nice to also have for free but you can say that about anything if we need to have paid DLC options in our games I propose that they remain squarely within the tertiary tier this way most complaints and issues with paid DLC are quelled while additive content is still available for purchase for those that want it that includes me I love Monster Hunter and I have no problem spending extra money on it as a way to show my appreciation especially if I get something cool out of it heck I bought monster underworld three times I totally buy music tracks and costumes for NPCs little statuettes anything that isn't Court what I come to monster for I'd be fine with and I'm sure there are many who feel like me enough to make these DLCs worth it from the company's perspective as well Capcom often has these surveys whenever they do a new update where they ask about a variety of topics related to Monster Hunter and how you're feeling about the newest game and these surveys often include questions about paid DLC I always propose this exact shift in strategy when I get to these questions to focus on tertiary DLC and dial back on the secondary ones it will probably not amount to anything if I'm the only one doing it but you never know feel free to send this segment to any Capcom Representatives you may know by the way don't spam them you know be nice to them but make them aware of the existence of this if you feel like it you may think that I am making this sound very severe and yeah ultimately this is a granular discussion about video game monetization in the grand scheme of life it really doesn't matter that much if monster under further increases their push for monetization my life will go on and I don't even know if I will mind that much personally but at the same time I love this franchise and it would really suck to see the gameplay Loop I've grown so fond of become jittery diluted and distorted by countless shortcuts and paywalls I like to think that I approached this topic with pragmatism Capcom wants to make money and this segment has outlined an alternative in which that is still possible without regularly alienating fans the fact that the English YouTube channels have to repeatedly delete the announcement trailers for The paid DLC because of negative reception indicates that they do see the backlash and would rather not see it so an arrangement like the tertiary DLC that avoids this backlash while not hitting the cash flow too hard seems like a win-win I do not really feel like defending a multi-million company here but I also understand that we live in a world where these companies are motivated and incentivized by money and I believe that the options I've laid out here do take that into account I love Monster Hunter and I would like to keep on loving it foreign was the single biggest change Monster Hunter world did to the formula was it the speedier gameplay the more aggressive Monsters the removal of Gunner armor unfortunately for you I can't hear you so we are stuck with my answer they unsegmented the maps it's in the name monsanda World aimed to open up the World the game takes place in removing the loading screens and making the hunting locales into large seamless Maps not quite open world but a massive shift from the original games were Maps consisted of small Arenas separated by loading screens in fact this one change was so massive that it rippled through all of Mars on the world and influenced every design decision in that game Maps were opened up so monsters now needed to be more flexible in their movement around the terrain but oh no these more flexible monsters could now run laps around a player who needed to stand still to heal and buff okay in that case let's allow Hunters to move while using items oh no now the hunter is too strong we better give the Monsters new abilities to compensate it's a neat little flowchart of how a single decision can Domino through an entire development process rise inherits this design Choice from world and with it all of its benefits the more open map design allows for a more immersive experience through hunts as well as selling the sense of place and physicality much more convincingly hunts are also better paced the games have always had this sign curve of high and low tension you look for the monster you fight the monster it runs away you fight it again Etc with open areas you have much finer control of how this curve plays out as you can pursue the monster more directly or take detours for whatever reason you could do this in the old games too but here it's much more natural speaking of natural open area design also allows for more fluid transitions between the various zones and gives the entire setting a more grounded feel and all of these benefits exploded with ryze's introduction of the wire bug one of world's biggest problems in relation to the maps was their inconsistency looking at the landscape it was never clear what was actually traversable terrain and what wasn't leading to situations with a path between zones wasn't clear the most infamous example is as already mentioned the Ancient Forest where winding paths and animation dependent shortcuts sit closely together with invisible walls and unscalable ledges the areas of monster underworld were open except when they weren't the wire bug entirely eliminates this problem every visible part of the map is reachable as you can just scale walls and swing through the air until you get there every inch of the map is a viable path you just have to be good enough to make the jump while rise can't avoid using some invisible walls those are generally on the outer edges of the maps where the minimap already shows you the border so it's no big deal to me besides that maps are massive playgrounds for the player to explore want to find a monster without the minimap get as high as you can and scout out the area you will likely find out what you're looking for your targets escaped and the only designated path to take is to roundabout just climb some walls and hop over a Gorge and voila there you are I can seriously not praise this specific element enough it makes the basic Act of existing these spaces fun and interesting maps in world often felt you were just supposed to go on a sightseeing tour a railroaded roller coaster where you got to see some beautifully crafted environments but rise fully opens you up and the sense of Freedom you get from just being in these maps with no real restrictions is immense this is further enhanced by the actual detail crammed into these Maps it's a little odd to think of Rise as more detail than World in any context but because rise allows players to go anywhere the maps are littered with small little set pieces and cool little nooks and crannies to find world had extremely beautiful side areas that formed intricate dioramas of sorts but they were again limited by where the player could go meanwhile in Rise it's not uncommon to jump up a wall find a hole fall down the hole and find a cozy little area with a few Gathering spots and spirit Birds the stuff in world was definitely prettier but being able to find cool hidden areas here and there is a rewarding experience in of itself in my opinion the maps are also filled with endemic life creatures that you can collect for various benefits this is one of ryze's most underrated changes being able to pick up a parachute and Chuck it at a monster is a fantastic change and the fact that you can actually hit yourself with it by accident is just the cherry on top these guys are actual animals and they do not care who they hurt you just have a cage like Spirit Birds these Hunter helpers are there to encourage and reward exploration but unlike Spirit Birds they don't feel like tools the hunter should have by default that were ripped away from them these Critters are true additions to gameplay and thus make exploring worth it there are also rare enemy creatures that have no direct use but can be photographed for your gallery and a couple of extra Rewards as a side note taking pictures of these animals and all monsters in general was insanely fun for me because you can use those pictures to replace their icons in the Hunter's notes which gives it this tad bit of customization it's a very fun side Challenge and something I didn't expect to enjoy as much as I did traversal within the maps also takes multiple forms the player can unlock sub camps the way they could in world to allow for fast travel which is a nice way of adding more stuff to unlock in the game with sunbreak the player also received the ability to set buddy Recon points where a cat companion is sent to mark one spot on the map as an additional fast travel Point these Recon points are generally placed in very useful positions but cost resource points to use and can only be traveled to once per Quest this is a more marginal mode of travel that you won't use too often but it is appreciated additionally every map is littered with Jewel lilies which can be topped with a great wire bug to become a permanent pseudo-fast travel point you can't teleport to or from them but instead get to physically walk to one to then let it launch you far up into the air to get around quickly this is easily my favorite mode of traversal as compare it with your regular wire bug for some stylish flying and like the hunting helpers jewelries encourage exploration since you need to place a great wire bug on them first before you can use them they are in many ways an evolution of the few zip lines from world and a really good one at that but ryze also inherits the shortcomings of the open area approach or rather it's one main shortcoming while the switch from segmented to open area seems like a fundamental reimagining of the world design internally the change is actually not nearly that complete you see the maps are still separated into zones except now they just have corridors between them instead of loading screens this is perfectly fine for the player as it creates a sense of cohesion and congruity and the fact that certain rooms on the map are labeled the way old school zones would be doesn't really matter to us who it does matter to however are the monsters all game logic regarding monster Ai and other in-map events still base themselves on the map being separated into zones which means that monsters can and will only hang around and fight you in these designated rooms while you can aggro and briefly fight a monster while inside one of the corridors the monster will quickly run to get back to the Arenas it's supposed to fight in this creates a disconnect the player has unprecedented freedom of movement within the maps while the monsters are locked on Rails only having access to the same flat terrain they were confined to in the older games this was the case for world as well but that game designed its map so densely and intricately with different elevations and interconnected areas that you would rarely notice just how bound monsters were to the predetermined zones in Rise however where maps are wide and open to accommodate liberal use of wire bugs and palamutes it is plain as they these monsters essentially move on railroads only allowed to move around the maps most flat and archaic Terrain this not only further undermines the naturality of these creatures but it also wastes much of the map design there are many cool and unique locations in these maps that you will simply never visit all that much because it's impossible for Monsters to fight here because of this the maps and Rise can feel really small as despite the massive surface area in theory you always end up fighting monsters in the same few zones many of which are entirely flat Arenas with little in terms of visual flourishes which is a massive shame fighting a monster into sewers under the Citadel or under the great jungle tree would be amazing but unfortunately the game's open area approach simply doesn't break with tradition enough yet to allow for that to happen the individual Maps also vary in quality and execution the shrine ruins is the first map the game presents you with and it is the second ugliest map in the game it's desolate gray atmosphere and desaturated grass largely Define Rises unattractive color design the shrine ruins do cram in quite a bit of character into themselves though the atmosphere of this abandoned Holy Land littered with derelict shamples and shrines is pretty strong if a bit dampened by the extreme Lack of Color and contrast as far as gameplay area is concerned the map has decent variety with grasslands ruined temples and watery shallows it's all very flat however and only the hidden areas high up the mountains have any interesting features at all to them the areas the monsters can actually Traverse are fairly samey all around which combined with the color design makes for a gameplay experience reminiscent of playing on a game engine's default map placeholder The Nest high up on the highest mountain is a very nice touch though the frost islands are unlocked shortly after and they are already a much stronger map the frost islands are separated into four levels of elevation Hills Plains water and caves which gives the map strong verticality and unlike what the shrine ruins most of its verticality is actually leveraged as monsters controverse three of the four elevations meaning that just by casual playing most of the map is used and the terrain used for combat is fairly varied it's still all very flat but with enough little kinks and upsets to make it feel a little less stale the non-monster areas of the map are also great especially the crash dragon ship speaking of this map also incorporates environmental storytelling into the mix which is a wonderful addition and really lends this place a real sense of character also the relics on this map are extremely well hidden with some of them being truly sadistic the Sandy Planes are an interesting map because this is actually a remake of an older map namely de Sandy Plains from Monster Hunter try it is recreated extremely Faithfully with most core zones being reimagined and fit together very well this map also takes the most advantage of verticality out of all of the maps in the game the Sandy Planes are full of plateaus Dune planes and underground passages all of which are traversable by the monsters meaning that the map is utilized much more completely than for example the shrine ruins in fact there are only very few player-only zones which makes the entire map feel more cohesive and the monster is less restrained the flooded Forest is another remade map and by far the ugliest map in the entire game every texture looks as if it's covered in mud and while that's not inaccurate for a flooded area it makes this map extremely unappealing to look at what makes it worse is that because this is a remade map we can compare it to its original iteration in 3u and boy does it not hold up the original thought of forest is downright gorgeous with a lush color profile and an amazing nightly Skybox it feels tropical and exotic and wet in the best ways rise's flooded Forest looks like a slimy landfill with the saturation turned down so hard the knob broke off and because it uses the same desaturated lighting preset as the shrine ruins monsters fought in his Locale also look worse than they normally do beyond the visuals however ryze's flooded Forest has a decent ratio of monster to player terrain with caves rivers and plateaus all being conversible by both the flooded Forest has this wonderful backdrop of this ancient civilization and pyramids and none of them are useful for actual gameplay because monsters cannot scale such complex terrain making this map just very jarring to play the lava Caverns are a pretty unusual volcano map because a lot of it is actually filled with water the map consists of a few outdoor areas and many more cavernous areas only a handful of which are actually filled with lava this allows for a very decent level of visual variety which is really cool but again this map only has a tiny fraction of it open to the actual monsters while much of it is entirely exclusive to player movement another Oddity is that this map falls into the Ancient Forest problem of having so many interconnected and convoluted paths the traversal can be a little confusing for quite some time the map does however make excellent use of verticality with many large holes and chasms to jump down the jungle is the third remade map and stands out due to just how colorful it is with Lush greens and blues the jungle ends up being the prettiest map in Rise elevating the look of every hunt that takes place in it as far as map design goes this remake actually makes significant changes to the original adding an entire underground ruins section with an included arena for monster showdowns this again adds multi-dimensionality to the map which is very welcome unfortunately some of the best areas this map has to offer are once again player only making them rare to really go to during normal hunting it also suffers from being a visible Island and thus surrounded by monsanta Rises water textures which look fine for small puddles and lakes but less so for wide open areas the frost Islands also have this problem The Citadel is the largest map in the game and the only one to be made up of two distinct biomes a tiger forest and an icy mountain range this already introduces a massive level of variety which the entire map goes very hard on from ruins to mines to sewage canals to castles to Frozen Peaks to forests to even swamps and Tiny hermit houses this map truly has it all in terms of pure visual detail The Citadel is an absolute Delight unfortunately this delight is dampened by how much of this detail is once again entirely exclusive to the player as this map might have the worst player to monster terrain ratio in the game monsters are locked to only the flattest and most basic areas of the map and while there is decent Variety in those the vast majority of the map goes unused unless you go out of your way to hang out there which is a huge shame because some of these areas look like they'd make for some really cool fight set pieces overall the maps in Rise manage to successfully Leverage The Joy of moving around with the wire bug creating wide and engaging spaces that allow for stylish and entertaining traversal further emphasized by the many interesting and useful creatures and locations one can find unfortunately this comes together a bit clumsily as the maps take on a sort of dual personality one map for the player by themselves and one that includes Monsters the latter being far flatter and smaller this disconnect makes the maps fun to experience in either variety but makes the Divide between the hunting and traversal more jarring than it needed to be foreign foreign if you had to make a pie chart of what makes up monster hunter's appeal how would you divide it up I would probably divide it into thirds one third of the appeal is gameplay one-third of it are the monsters and the final third that is equipment the gameplay Loop of Monster Hunter simply does not work does not even exist without the armor and weapons you work towards be it a badass armor or a silly costume gear is what ultimately motivates and also allows for gameplay the equipment system in Monster Hunter can seem kind of daunting when looked at on a spreadsheet but in execution it is actually extremely simple armor has defense values a general defense and then specific defenses against the various elements like fire ice Etc the higher the number the better because the higher defense the more it diminishes the damage that you receive weapons meanwhile have a damage value as well as some having an additional Elemental damage value just showing how much Elemental damage this weapon can produce additionally weapons have Affinity which is really just the chance of Landing a critical hit that does extra damage and a series staple sharpness sharpness is a sort of color-coded durability stat with higher sharpness slash durability giving you a damage buff while lower sharpness not only reduces your damage but also makes your attack bounce off the tough hides and armors of your opponents depleted sharpness has to be restored in the quest with a wet stone the sharpness automatically recharges if you finish the quest and go back home this basic skeleton is then added onto by skills skills are special passive abilities with various effects and sizes for example the antidote skill makes poison less effective on you while handicraft increases your weapon's sharpness these skills are generally baked into the various armor pieces you can craft in modern games skills come at varying levels which increase the effect of the skill for example antidote level 1 only reduces the effectiveness of poison while antidote level 3 makes you outright immune to being poisoned any armor piece that gives points to a skill is counted towards the level of that skill which cannot exceed a predetermined maximum so for example if your three separate armor pieces that all give you one level in antidote you will have level 3 antidote activated which is the maximum skill level for that skill these skills are not actually exclusive to armors but can also be acquired from gems also called decorations skill decorations are jewels that Grant points in a specific skill when worn many armors and weapons have decoration slots for this exact purpose both decorations and decoration slots also come in varying sizes which affects which gem you can fit into Which slot so for example if your armor piece has one level 3 slot you can put in a gem of level 1 2 or 3 size but not a level 4 gem the bigger the gem the rarer the skill they give or the more points they give in that skill this is the basic system there are additional nuances with weapons specifically but this is generally how Equipment Works in Monster Hunter it's a very fun and encouraging equipment mechanic which pushes the player to think and decide what to craft and where and which skills and defense values to prioritize the joy of squeezing in that little bit of extra oomph into your build is a fundamental part of Monster Hunter this system is so fundamental that it only rarely received large changes with the biggest change being the skill point overhaul from generations to world but that's what makes the system so interesting to use as a comparison point between the games because the changes tend to be somewhat granular we can examine the subtle differences in design philosophy so how did rise evolve and add on to the system generally like with most of its content rise inherited some of its ideas from world it retained the simplified skill point system as well as many skills World introduced slash reworked but the first difference we can observe is in the skill decorations throughout the franchise decorations have always been craftable while talismans which are amulets that give skill points of which the player can only wear one were randomly generated and given at the end of quests World inverted this making talismans craftable while decorations were randomly awarded at the end of certain hunts this was a very controversial change decorations are in many ways the backbone of skill customization as the many slots in any late game armor piece can make a massive difference for any build having this entire aspect of the equipment system now be complete RNG robbed players of much control and the system of intentionality by comparison talismans have very little impact on builds as they only ever give one or two skills at most while they can certainly push an already good build over the edge into greatness talismans are more an addition rather than a necessity and as such no one ever really minded them being randomized and acquired through RNG and they could not make up for the fact that decorations the main aspect of customization your skills was now locked behind RNG it was very common for your final armor set to be entirely dependent on what you were able to acquire through complete Randomness not a great feeling end game for sure ryze recognized this and in what feels like a response to world's reception reverse the system again in Rise decorations are once again craftable while talismans are once again randomly received control over armor skills is once again in the player's hands and personally I definitely prefer this approach this is however not a complete return to the old system in Rise talismans are only available through the melding pot a magical soup pan into which you throw an acquired amount of monster materials to generate a few talismans there are various levels of melding with lower level melding giving you the ability to choose which skills to roll for while high and end game level melding is entirely randomized the melding then happens between quests with each complete a quest producing one Talisman at the melder this system feels at odds with the rest of the game because if I was separated from the actual gameplay it is pre-World talismans were acquired through gathering in that mining would sometimes yield mystery charms which would then be turned into a randomized talisman if you didn't like the result some of the games had melders who could re-roll it but because the act of gathering a Talisman was something you had to personally do in the game World it managed to feel earned even if it was pure RNG by situating the generation of talismans within regular gameplay the older games created a sense of cohesion which encouraged players to look for talismans in any hunt they were in making it just another layer of hunting by comparison rise's melder is completely departed from hunting and only engages the gameplay in that hunting simply progresses your Talisman order this doesn't encourage any specific gameplay as long as hunts are being completed you're fine what you do in quests doesn't matter anymore which removes that last layer of perceived control and earned reward to form talismans it's a very subtle difference but one that negatively impacts the system in my opinion there is a reason the end game for base rise was so reviled because the only thing you could do was order large amounts of talismans and then just grind quests to generate as many as possible hopefully getting that one god-like charm that you are waiting for this is not very engaging gameplay because again it happens outside of gameplay speaking of subtle differences in the old games you could theoretically craft any decoration you wanted from hour one with some very end game exceptions the decoration list at the Smithy showed you almost all of the decodes you could make as well as what materials you need so while obviously you could not craft most or even any of these at the start of the game the full list gave you a decent idea of what you'll be able to do creating a sense of anticipation and even promoting early abstract planning getting the player to wonder what they could work towards and if a player got lucky and somehow found a material way earlier than expected well then they could use that to make a powerful decoration and boost themselves ahead an extremely satisfying and personal moment of emergent gameplay in rise this is no longer possible the decoration list only reveals itself gradually as you progress through the ranks this feels really arbitrary and again moves control away from the player in favor of streamlining the power curve ensuring that players only have access to a tightly defined pool of skills at any given point in the game I don't know if this was done for balancing purposes but either way it is again a very subtle but ultimately negative change in my opinion what is however positive is the overall quality of the skills available while there are still many that feel like extremely marginal stat boosts or ridiculously situational Buffs many skills in Rise genuinely change the way the game is played skills like bubbly dance seem almost like joke skills as a skill Buffs you only when Afflicted with bubble blight an ailment only a single Monster in the game can inflict but at maximum level this skill actually allows you to inflict yourself with it making it much more useful and also changing up your gameplay by encouraging you to prioritize keeping these Buffs alive or for another example redirection which rewards a perfectly timed switch skill Dodge with a refill to your wire bugs pushing players to use this alternate Dodge mechanic more often overall skills and Rise feel more varied and more impactful than they have in a long time in terms of armor the biggest change rise makes is the removal and the reworking of set bonuses set bonuses were a mechanic that sporadically appeared in the series which gave the player unique Buffs and skills when wearing a certain number of armor pieces from the same monster or set for example in World velcana armor pieces would give the player Frost craft which charged their weapon with a buff while sheathed which could be released as a devastating draw Attack iceborn also used set bonuses to introduce the skill Secrets which allow specific armors to push certain skills past their usual level limits ryze completely removed skill secrets and reworked set bonuses entirely now no armor has a designated set skill instead there are skills that are not technically called set bonuses but are at least initially only found on certain armor sets some like the aforementioned bubble blight start out as exclusive to one armor set before gradually being made available through other means While others like bloodright remain unique to one armor set as of right now while this does reduce the uniqueness of certain armors it does also give the system more freedom to make some of the more unique skills available in various ways which is pretty neat the only set bonuses that are still called such and Rise are flat Elemental resistance Buffs which grow with each piece of matching armor the player wears these are fairly small but they're cool enough I guess one unfortunate part about armors however is the look while their designs remain extremely cool across the board Rises lighting and material engines make many of them look fuzzy and plasticky in a really undesirable way any armors that include hoods are essentially unusable due to how ugly the Desert Shadows are for example real shame what has however received a massive upgrade in looks are weapons one of the most consistent criticisms of monster in the world was the weapon designs many of which abandoned the unique and memorable designs of the franchise in favor of basic weapon models with monster Parts slapped onto them the actual reasons behind this change are still contested but the result was unanimous these designs made over half the weapons in the game visually unappealing and undesirable this was the big thing ryze needed to fix about the weapons and it did ryze's weapons look fantastic and are entirely unique all the way through not only that but there are now many weapons besides the monster specific ones including Guild weapons special weapons and even joke weapons it really Revels in variety and while the pure visual detail is naturally not anywhere close to World it makes up for that with actually unique and good looking designs this makes a huge difference to player motivation when you're working towards a weapon that you know is gonna look cool you're gonna be a lot more motivated than if you've been trained to know that most weapons will just be a steel weapon with a couple of feathers on it this is an incredibly welcome change and I really hope we never go back to world's abysmal slap-on designs rip to any monster that was actually introduced in World though they are stuck with their original slap-on designs unfortunately lastly rise retains the layered armor and weapon system that world introduced layered equipment has no stance and is essentially a purely cosmetic version of regular equipment that you layer on top of what you're already wearing they are essentially skins to equip for maximum fashion allowing you to hide whatever hideous but effective armor combination you came up with under a look of your choosing a cosmetic armor feature for monster hunter is a sort of no-brainer with how many unique and cool designs the series has to offer it's only natural that players would want to experiment with their look without having to worry about stats however it's a difficult feature to manage the choice between being strong and being stylish is a key part of decision making in early Monster Hunter as the infamous early game clown suits are integral to the experience so a cosmetic system that allows you to look however you want has to be introduced and balanced very carefully in order to not disrupt and undermine this layer of decision making unfortunately I think neither World nor rise do this particularly well in both games layered gear is both too hard and too easy to acquire on one hand this system is only unlocked extremely late at the very end of the game which means that the player doesn't have access to this feature for 90 of the game but on the other hand once the feature is available layered armors and weapons are extremely cheap to craft only requiring some vouchers and basic materials in rise and low-level guiding land materials in world what this means is that after going without layered gear for the entire of the game you will suddenly end with no extra effort be able to craft almost half of all the available skins instantly upon unlocking the feature this makes for a very weird and uneven integration into the game but most importantly it nukes any feeling of reward and connection the player could feel towards a layered gear it's cheap takes no effort no real grind and is absent for most of the game which makes the entire system lack that personal satisfaction that the rest of the equipment exudes tacking it on at the end May avoid disrupting the early game clown suits but it makes players unable to really care about the layered gear they acquire they're just ephemeral skins separated from a gameplay Loop and thus hard to get excited about this is extra weird because this has been done really well once before you see I lied world was not the game to introduce layered gear just the first game to use that name in generations and generations ultimate there was a system called transmog the player could sacrifice one armor to craft its look onto another armor piece creating their own Cosmetic Skin this meant that creating a cosmetic armor piece was a genuine achievement since you had to actually craft both the armor you wanted the stats of and the one you wanted the look of where rhiza system encourages experientation quite a bit more transmog makes you work for your style and thus makes the process feel more rewarding that is not to say that this was a perfect system it was just like in the modern games introduced way too late which made much of the grind feel tacked on instead of a natural part of progression I think a good middle ground would be to keep the transmark system and make it available in the mid game instead of the end game while keeping it relatively expensive this would give players the opportunity to get used to the system while not undermining the clown suits as a steep prize of having to craft two armor pieces would gate this feature until the player had more disposable materials make this the case for weapons as well and bada boom badabini clown suit linguine also let me name my weapons please if we can already customize their stats I would really like to just give my weapons dumb names just put a profanity filter on it like you do with everything else thank you foreign ER games are special in many ways but one aspect that truly sets it apart is the way each game evolves during its lifetime thanks to the G expansions massive additions to the games are completely normal and I think we often take that for granted each initial Monster Hunter release is by itself a fully fledged game fully complete and then the G expansions just double the content basically it's some of the best DLC in the industry and while it's easy to overlook it because we're just so used to it I cannot stress how incredible this is from a consumer perspective iceborn especially really impressed me because I thought it was just going to be a couple of small additions but instead it essentially doubled my play time and fixed everything I disliked about the base game but not all G expansions are created equal in the old games they would be full-on re-releases of the base game with the new content added in while ever since the world the expansions have come out as massive DLC add-ons a system I vastly prefer is the same concept as with the old deluxe version of Pokemon games I think it's much more reasonable to just sell stuff as DLC instead of releasing it as a full new game because the latter approach actually punishes people who buy the game at launch across these two distinct eras of expansions and five generations of games quality has generally been high across the board but subtle differences in quality still arise between each G release well lucky for us and for me sunbreak Rises G expansion is in my opinion one of the best we have ever gotten when the DLC roster was first revealed many people seemed pretty skeptical after all it was only 17 new additions compared to iceborn's 27 at launch however those worries were unfounded as the smaller roster was pretty much an All-Star cast with many returning fan favorites new bangers and more I've already discussed the overall roster of rise in a previous section but overall with the combination of the sunbreak monster ryze's roster is in my opinion incredibly strong with good variety and a lot of monsters I've been wanting to see on the HD consoles for a long long time but besides the monsters themselves some break added and fixed so much more if you have previously watched my segment on story and setting then you may know that base rise's story really helped the game's appeal back according to myself the extreme backseat the actual contacts and story took undermined the setting of Kamura significantly failing to sell the stakes of your rivalry with magnamalo every step of the way well in comes sunbreak and immediately fixes most of these issues the basic story setup is extremely similar to the base game The Citadel of an unnamed Kingdom has fallen and monsters around it are becoming more aggressive and invading other lands an outpost is established to investigate these rampaging monsters and bring peace to the kingdom this Outpost requests help of the player Hunter who soon travels to his new place a military encampment called Elgato while this is superficially very reminiscent of the Kimura crisis of the base game what makes Elgato Stand Out is how it presents the whole situation instead of a quirky peaceful village where everyone sits on their asses all day and asks you to solve their every problem Elgato is the base of operations for an actual Battalion of hunters and a sense of shared responsibility is palpable various other Hunters come and go they comment on the current events in the story and they all seem to know what they're doing while Kamura made you feel like you were everyone's errant boy but also everyone's hero Elgato makes you feel like part of a larger organization through nothing but environmental design and dialogue just through the slight change in setting and tone all the stuff you are already doing in Kamura side quests challenges Dango quests feels more important than it actually is because the context of a ramshackle military base needing everyone to pull their weights transforms these tasks into something meaningful Elgato emphasizes this through its visual design being a rickety wooden Port built around a crumbling Castle again putting the devastation of the royal monsters going berserk front and center most of the hunters either wear uniforms or master rank armor really selling the skill and seniority of the armaments if this were all sunbreak did to improve The Narrative of ryze it would already be a very strong upgrade but of course the story of sunbreak exists and while it doesn't reinvent the wheel whatsoever it produces a much more coherent narrative thread than what base rise achieved for one there is just more story to be told every other urgent Quest comes with a cutscene that actually illustrates interesting and useful information to you going from hunting a weird crab invades your home to being attacked by a werewolf and saved by a waifu is a really strong story hook that you can't achieve just through text boxes so the added cinematics give the story a grander and more relevant presence and would you look at that these cutscenes do not feel intrusive and annoying because raw you can skip them if you like and just re-watch them whenever I wonder what other game could have benefited from that cutscenes are not just abundant however but also filled with great content and story simple at heart sunbreak story follows a thrilling investigation into the beasts of Elgato and every step of the way feels earned and meaningful because of the additional Fanfare the game gives many of its urgent quests this extends into non-cut scene content as well every urgent is now followed by a round table discussion where all the relevant characters progress the story through dialogue while many players will undoubtedly skip through this its inclusion does make the story feel more important and present giving the game a more focused vibe funnily enough this was something that iceborn and World already did and I am actually pretty glad to see it back while again I'm pretty sure most people find these a little Annoying and probably skip through them and I cannot fault you for that I do think that they give it just a little bit more Fanfare that a little bit more importance that makes it feel like the game takes its own story actually seriously base rise often had this insecurity with its story where it felt like it wanted you to skip through most of its dialogue and wanted you to never quite care about the story and no surprise no one did by comparison some break is so much more confident it knows that it can actually tell a pretty cool story and it does so with the Cockiness That I Want from these games and again if you don't care despite all of this it's not like the game forces itself on you you can skip anything from cutscene to dialogue so ultimately I think this really is a win-win approach the best of iceborn Storytelling combined with the breeziness of Rises more back seed approach sunbreak even tries to rectify the Magnum allo problem in its new flagship malzino while you still never encounter him in gameplay before the bespoke hunt which still sucks he shows up numerous times for the story in cutscenes and is ever present in dialogue but what's more is what he does with his limited screen time in Magnum Arlo's one and only story appearance he walks up up an arzeros and leaves it's a fine moment but ultimately doesn't tell you much about the monster nor does it really serve to intimidate you why are you so proud of killing arzeros dude I can do that in like two minutes remember this is all you get on magnamalo before you're asked to hunt him by comparison malzino's actions in the story are much more interesting and intimidating not only does he have a much sleeker design but the way he moves and is constantly encircled by the mysterious curio makes him threatening and scary and instead of just showing up to say hi malzino actually attacks not just a quick scuffle like Magda Malo but full-on assaulting your hunting party in a cutscene and in doing that sunbreak allows malzino to break an unspoken Rule of Monster Hunter while these games often speak of the brutality and danger of monsters they rarely ever show it especially not targeted at humans well malzino disarms and actually wounds your companion fioraine on screen both being thirsts for the entire franchise instead of a vague bad boy malzino is established as not just a threat but a personal rival someone whom the player can hold a grudge towards for hurting the most likable character in the game and this moment isn't just an isolated cool thing either fiorian being heard has actual consequences narratively the game's story shifts to having you collect the knowledge and the ingredients to cure furane from the wound and resulting infection which is a nice reframing of the story that alleviates the repetitiveness of Hunter we have to figure out why these monsters are being goofy and as for gameplay this moment ties into what is maybe sunbreak's best addition the follower system a big thorn in the fantasy of Monster Hunter has always been how the games portray other Hunters specifically the newer games tended to feel like you were the chosen one the only bloke capable of doing anything some games try to remedy this either by having NPC Hunters talk about the stuff they've been up to or by presenting some excuse as to why no other Hunters are around either way most of the time it makes the world of Monster Hunter feel a little Hollow like nothing happens without your involvement because the world revolves around you sunbreak setting attempts to alleviate that by the memes we mentioned before but the way it truly solves this issue is not through a narrative device but through a new gameplay mechanic the follower system on the face of it the follower system is nothing crazy you can now bring certain NPCs with you on certain quests so what it's not even the first time Monster Hunter has done this monster hunter Frontier had erastas which were NPCs you could bring on quests with you but what sets sunbreak's follower system apart is character rastas were mostly empty husks NPCs in the truest sense who only fulfilled a mechanical role as an extra meat bag in sunbreak all followers are pre-established characters who bring the unique personalities into each hunt they will comment on you the map the monsters even other followers tons of unique dialogue to discover but that's not even all they also react radiantly to whatever you're doing blow them a kiss and watch them reciprocate or reject you do a gesture and see who joins in there is so much interactivity with them and this is somehow still not all each follower also has different combat Behavior depending on what makes sense as a character fioraine is an all-rounder someone who will attack and support equally meanwhile luchika is an unhinged Queen who will never heal you and simply unload magazine after magazine on the target regardless of if you're in the way and the absolute Giga chat gallius won't go out of his way to heal you generally but because he has a maxed out wide range skill anytime he heals himself you get healed too making him extremely useful and that's maybe the most impressive part of this all sunbreak's followers are actually useful while they do less damage than a player would the sheer utility of having an NPC that heals Buffs traps and even wyvern rides cannot be overstated and I think this is just such an elegant feature because it solves multiple problems at once it serves as the single player master rank mode which in previous games had be tacked onto the single-player village quests in a more or less jarring manner depending on the game follow requests offer single-player gameplay without having to split the game across two separate progressions seamlessly integrating it into the regular Quest system as you pick up follow requests naturally throughout the game they also give you an incentive to actually engage with the game's characters as they are not just filler anymore but mechanically relevant gameplay additions that can be extremely useful to you but most of all follow requests properly submerge you into the world and community of Monster Hunter as you are now seeing your fellow Hunters not fellow players pull their weight this works wonders in endearing you to a cast of characters in a game series where those characters often fall flat they are not just NPCs you talk to anymore these are your buddies that saved you from an angry Luna Garen the system even manages to tie into the narrative when furane is hurt by malzino she actually becomes unavailable for a long time leaving a distinct hole in your follower list of course comparing this to more story-driven games some break story and integration of the followers system are nothing revolutionary but what you need to keep in mind is that we're talking about Monster Hunter a franchise that has historically just ignored its own story aspect what all the time and often to its own detriment in my opinion so for it to go this hard suddenly out of nowhere is extremely welcome to me because I've always thought that one of the most interesting parts of monster hunter is the core fantasy of this world being part of this Hunter's Guild and Elgato is I believe the first time this has truly been explored the only other time I can think of that I have not personally experienced however is look like City in Montana try another big feature of sunbreak is the switch skill swap while it is a mouthful the actual mechanic is really simple you can now set up two loadouts of switch skills and then swap between them freely the swap animation can also be chained into a Dodge allowing for mobile fast-paced and skillful gameplay for as much as this feature was heavily pushed into marketing it actually isn't that impactful by itself some weapons like the dual blades do genuinely benefit from being able to switch between two movesets but the bitter pill to swallow is that most weapons don't have that many skills good enough to be worth switching to the real utility with switch skill swap is how it allows for Unique interactions with sunbreak's assortment of armor skills Furious allows you to go Super Saiyan when you switch while quick breath heals you every time you switch so ironically this feature is at its most interesting when you don't use it for what was designed for its actual design purpose is fairly situational and not even across the board which considering that the last gimmick of the last expansion the clutch Claw from iceborn was wildly panned and criticized maybe this is an upgrade if you watch the other segments of this video then you have surely noticed the general pattern criticizing base rise while praising sunbreak and while this wasn't on purpose it does reveal just how good of an expansion sunbreak is as it upgrades and transforms the base game across the board while sunbreak doesn't look as massive on paper as something like iceborn the quality of the additions make up for it in Spades letting rise finally live up to its own potential thank you a big plus that most Monster fans will praise about the franchise is his commitment to delivering full and complete packages of game content even the most meager games in the franchise felt like they had loads to offer content carried by immense amount of armors and weapons the high quality monster monsters the details of the world and loads of quests to undertake generally if you buy a monster in the game you will have plenty to dig your teeth into well most of the games enjoy this reputation monster rise seems to often be looked at as the exception a game that many consider fairly thin in content even to this day one need only take a casual look at the subreddit to find people lamenting ryze's lack of content even after sunbreak hoping for title updates to fix the supposed drought of stuff to do this sentiment crops up repeatedly so I my obsession decided to actually try and quantify this sentiment I wanted to rise and world and decided to count how much content there actually is and the numbers may surprise you as they surprised me Monson arise and sunbreak have as of Title Update 3 73 large monsters this includes apexes which some might say doesn't qualify but they have a unique game ID so I'm gonna count them sue me also keep in mind this number is definitely still gonna get bigger we still have at least two more title updates to go and all of them will probably add at least one new monster months of the world and iceborn include after all of their title updates getting no new content 71 large monsters monster counts are maybe the most direct way to look at content amount since they generally constitute the main appeal of said content so to see that not only is Rise not pitiful in comparison to world but actually comparable and most likely on the way to surpassing it is pretty odd it's an inconsistency between the facts and the public opinion one that I shared as well before I looked this stuff up but okay that's just monsters maybe ryze just has less to do with them fewer quests that you can do before you need to start repeating once you've already done maybe that's where the issue lies maybe that's where people get this sentiment from excluding Arena and challenge quests if you count all available quests in mounts on the world iceborn all assignments special assignments event quests and low high and mastering optionals you arrive at a total of 347 quests this is not counting investigations as those are randomly generated and you could very much argue that they constitute an infinite number of possible quests which is a worthless number for our comparison here but even without the investigations 347 is a very respectable number of quests it is a massive amount of content in rice some break if you add up Village quests Hub low high and master end quests follower and Survey quests the static anomaly quests and the event quests again excluding investigations and Arena challenge quests and excluding Rampages you arrive at a whopping 526 total quests what in gog's name is going on here with the lack of content being such a common impression about ryze you would think that the numbers would at least somewhat indicate and explain this sentiment but instead the objective observable truth is that on a purely mathematical level rise is in fact not devoid of content it has more content than world and while I didn't go out of my way to count how many armors and weapons the two games have because I actually wanted to get this video out in time the fact that we have similarly sized monster rosters could very well indicate that the amount of gear is also fairly similar since roster size is a massive influence over gear variety due to the fact that most armors and weapons are directly tied to a monster so if we have two games that have 71 and 73 monsters respectively they will probably also produce a roughly equal amount of armors and weapons so what happened here did people just Gaslight themselves into believing that Rice had no content in order to confirm their pre-existing biases about the game maybe I mean that's always possible we have definitely seen that this community is willing to Gaslight themselves devil Joe but I think I can come up with two explanations that also could be possibly explaining this phenomenon without calling people dumb or dishonest because I don't feel comfortable just leaving it at that even though it is sometimes tempting explanation one is that it is based on first impressions rise famously launched in a pretty sorry state with the entire final fourth of the game essentially missing launch rise had no ending no Hunter Rank uncap and note real end game to speak of these features as well as some monsters that were planned but couldn't be included in time were added over the next two or so months in the form of title updates this left a sour taste in many people's mouths title updates are supposed to be additions true additive content to the game that comes after full game has come out so to take the content that you didn't manage to put in in time into the main game and it was objectively speaking missing from it and repackaging it as title updates just felt inappropriate and a little dishonest what is you more frustrating about this is that Capcom to this day insists that ryze came out the way it should have been and that there was no such thing as any trouble developing it and no problem with the delivery in the end which is something that basically No One Believes them anymore it is pretty evident that the game suffered a delayed and troubled development cycle which was really understandable because there was an ongoing pandemic first impressions are immensely powerful especially in a shared social Consciousness like in a community or a fandom to many rise is the game that launched without an ending and even though the game has since improved that's still what many people think of it this sentiment then spreads through repeated discourse until even players who were not at all affected by the launch because they played the game on PC or months after truly believe that rise is a game that came out incomplete despite them never having to deal with the consequences of that this sort of inherited community Grudge is not something that's unique to rise at all think of how many people still refuse to play No Man's sky and still consider a disaster despite it having over the last six years transformed itself into one of the best games on the market and having surpassed any and all of the promises they had made and broken at launch no man's sky is currently something that is worth playing for everyone and people avoid it because in their minds it is still lodged as the game that came out a mess this phenomenon might also explain the negativity surrounding some breaks title updates where many people still seem to think that this is content that we should have gotten on day one despite that simply not being true some break title updates have so far been true additions to the game while some break itself was a full product I want to really stress here that I don't want this to come across as me saying that this is a failure on the player's end life is full of you need to pay attention to your mind is constantly buzzing with things that you care about out and so it is perfectly normal two for things like video games which again don't matter that much in a grand scheme of things take one look at them and decide this is what I think of it and then just move on with your life you do not owe everything and everyone a constant and reasonable update to what you think of something life is just too big to do that it's just a facet of how the human mind works and how conceptualizes reality a facet the companies who make entertainment products need to account for in modern gaming it is very easy to patch a problem on day one it's easy to run bug fixes but it is impossible to patch away someone's first impression of your game explanation 2 is a little more tangible and that is pacing For Better or For Worse rise is a faster paced and generally easier game than the rest of the franchise whether you like it or not I believe that this is an arguable this is also expressed through its structure you do your designated amount of key quests and then bust out an urgent rinse and repeat because this flow is not as staggered with storytelling as it was in World and because the content is not as challenging enough to Warrant special preparation for specific Monsters the way the old games did you end up flying through the game at a much faster Pace if you just really focus on progress the fact that you will most likely never actually have to grind out a specific weapon to beat a specific monster with its unique weakness makes the game of monster under eyes some break a lot shorter and a lot breezier to get through and it cuts down on the journey significantly just by itself add to it to the fact that each Quest is generally shorter and it makes for a game experience that is generally extremely fast and it doesn't really force you to engage in all the content the game has to offer so while ryze may have 500 quests the game doesn't give you much reason to really do most of them because if you just fly through key quests and the urgents you are going to be fine the content is there you're just not led to it in an effective way rise is not a game without content it is objectively speaking a game with loads of content and despite that people keep walking away from it thinking that the opposite is true it could be because of either or both of the explanations I've just laid out or it could be something else I haven't even considered but either way this discrepancy is odd and further pushes rise into a very bizarre position of franchise it has the Hallmarks and the content of a monster under game but because of factors that we cannot exactly pin down it doesn't feel like it Monster Hunter rise is objectively speaking not a failed game it has as of writing this video well surpassed 10 million copies sold becoming capcom's third best-selling game of all time and is enjoying a consistent and passionate player base it would be a straight up lie to call the game anything but a resounding success on any quantifiable level and no matter how much you agree with any of the praise I've given here or agree with any of the criticisms I've given here or even beyond that this is an arguable the numbers are there some break and mirai's were a success but what about the content within rise can specific parts of a successful game still fail can there be failed content when I named this segment failed content I mean a very specific phenomenon failed content for the purposes of this video is content which was used once and then discarded as soon as possible upon realization that it just wasn't working this is common in game franchises with regular releases as we get to see developers scrapping features and mechanics in real time the term failed content is not to be taken as a qualitative judgment on the developers here by the way these developers aren't doing anything wrong per se when ideas and mechanics fail that's just how games and art innovate they poke around and try stuff out and then scrap what doesn't work and sometimes figuring out what works and what doesn't only happens when a game is already out and has the feedback of a million players due to monster hunter's release cycle of game expansion game expansion we get to watch design philosophy evolve at an even more intimate Pace as just going from a base game to an expansion or side game gives us glimpses into what features were deemed worth keeping for example underwater combat was canned almost immediately introduced in try not reused in portable third and returning one last time in three ultimate due to it being an expanded release of Tri but already in three ultimate you can see a de-emphasization of underwater combat with no new areas added to it and with many skills that make it easier and less of a hassle we can thus consider it a failed feature as its notoriously harsh impact on development and generally negative Reception made it not worth iterating on as far as the devs were concerned but we don't have to go all the way back to third gen to find failed content in base world the end game revolved around two things tempered elder dragons and stream stones stream Stones were upgrade materials that were obtained by fighting tempered elder dragons through event quests base World added arch-tempered monsters reworked elder dragons with more challenging move sets and a higher chance for stream stones both streamstones and Arch tempered monsters were generally extremely unpopular stream Stones were hyper-specific drops where you needed the exact right stone for the exact right weapon to drop making the grind both long and needlessly artificial and while arch-tempered Elders did change their attacks slightly they were little more than massive damage sponges with very little new content or value additionally these two systems combined made it so that you were basically always fighting the same five monsters over and over again since the stream Stones only dropped from elder dragons and there were only about five freestanding elder dragons in world and so both of these were dropped as soon as iceborn came around stream Stones were made entirely worthless in Obsolete and arch-tempered monsters were not included at launch then announced to make a triumphant return only to be unceremoniously scrapped after just two additions thus we can Define these as failed content features that were unsuccessful and thus thrown out of the game at the earliest possible opportunity so let's talk about ryze's failed content which in my opinion encompasses two distinct features and yes it's exactly the ones you've been thinking of ever since you read the name of this segment Rampages and Rampage apexes Rampages were ryza's big new game mode all over the marketing forget those stinky small scale hunts you real men fight 18 monsters at once while looking at the worst UI known to man the basic gist of it was that Rampages were a replacement for Siege quests where instead of fighting one giant super powerful monster with the help of Canon's a mounted Weaponry you are now fighting off a horde of regular monsters that were hell-bent on destroying the gate to the Village this was to be done by a building and maintaining multiple automated and manual weapons and fortifications in a sort of hectic tower defense mode conceptually it was a pretty cool idea it brought new life into a type of quest that world had generally failed at while also tying the narrative hook of Defending Kamura into actual gameplay the reality however was much less cool for one the game doesn't effectively tell players how to even approach Rampages this game mode is very different from normal hunts and has to be played differently in order to be enjoyed ryze tells players of the existence of various shot types and different mounted Weaponry they can install in the battlefield but fails to actually explain their importance and specific utility if you try to play Rampages like normal hunts or even like sieges in old games you will have an extremely frustrating time which is exactly what happened to many players due to the lackluster introduction of the game mode but even after you look up a guide on what exactly you need to do even after you learn how to play Rampages correctly they just aren't that fun Rampages ask players who forego the usual battle dance with the monsters and instead hop around the field frantically Manning different flavors of ballista and building new ones on the Fly until the counter gong is wrong in the final few minutes which is when players get to actually fight the monsters properly since the damage boost they receive actually makes the creatures killable while there is fun to be had in this Rhythm for sure most of the time it feels hectic unintuitive and chaotic in all the wrong ways as it forces you to unlearn much of what is core to Monster Hunter there is nothing fundamentally wrong with changing up your core gameplay Loop deliberately and at their best Rampages could provide a break from the usual grind just something different to do for you but that is not what the game mode was like most of the time often it felt less like a tight intense defense as much it felt like a very exhausting game of whack-a-mole Beyond just that however it further pushed the game into an arcade-like structure where monsters really just goons you shot with cannons over and over again to then jump on and hit twice for 4 000 damage the gameplay of Monster Hunter has always revolved around the interplay of monster versus player and Rampage has completely subvert this for the worse in my opinion they even included a different damage formula to achieve the massive numbers at the end of The Hunt if you're new gameplay mode requires you to rewrite the basic math at the heart of your game maybe it's worth reconsidering whether or not that game mode really needs to exist in that fashion but maybe most damningly Rampages failed to uphold the One Promise they absolutely had to ties to narrative and character in a game set during a cataclysm where a village is threatened with Annihilation a game mode centering on protecting that Village promised to be an intersection of story and gameplay but instead the characters you are supposed to protect and bond with are little more than temporary power-ups during the Rampages as replaceable as any Canon or baluster they are useful but there is no progression tied to these companions no story beats that allow you to make muda more effective recruit more of them or otherwise express your bond through Rampage gameplay I know I know asking Monster Hunter to have cool story integration is supposedly a losing game but old games managed sunbreak managed so Rye's not utilizing this link between story and gameplay almost at all is extremely disappointing and further alienated Rampages from the rest of the game in addition to all of this there was little reason to actually do Rampages aside from two mandatory ones they mostly awarded Rampage tickets used for ramping up weapons which was a mechanic in base rise that allowed players to give weapons one of a limited number of bonuses which of these bonuses were available was specific for each weapon but generally they were not an attractive endgame grind as the benefits of ramp up skills were fairly middling across the board not worth grinding out the long and tedious Rampages this game mode did give out a various assortments of monster Parts depending on the specific horde but again why bother with this weird and unintuitive mode when you can just get them through the gameplay you are actually used to the only real use for Rampages was to level up your Hunter Rank which is in of itself one of the least interesting grinds in a franchise also at least initially there were monsters that were exclusive to Rampages only ever appearing as the final bosses in this game mode however perhaps in response to Fan feedback all Rampage exclusive monsters were made available through regular hunts soon after release this included the second piece of failed content in base rise Rampage apexes if Rampages were a cool but poorly integrated idea then Rampage apexes are a complete mess of design decisions that are hard to understand even now over a year after the game's original release a translation oversight makes them share a name with an entirely different class of monsters from Monster 4 ultimate while their design and combat abilities are straight copies of deviants yet another monster class this time from Generations remixing content is not a new thing in Monster Hunter in fact you could say its core to the franchise subspecies were introduced as early as Monster Hunter G but even before that in the original first game monsters were frequently reused efficiently wrathion Rathalos Diablos and monobloss Jan kutku and youngaruga Monster Hunter has in a way always been about reusing its own content in clever and tactful ways in doing so the games must try to find balance making sure that any reuse is transformative enough to not feel like a space filler for the vast majority of cases I would say the game succeeded this balance and the cases in which they don't succeed are almost always called ryzes Apex monsters with lore two nebulas to hold a candle to for you apexes and their story relevance and designs and movesets evocative of but ultimately inferior to gu's deviance Rampage apexes feel hollow and derivative in a way no other monster under content has ever felt before or since as initially Rampage only boss fights their inclusion seemed bizarre and kind of uncanny almost as if rice was trying to invoke features of past games but couldn't quite remember them resulting in an insecure mishmash of sorts as mentioned before all Rampage exclusive monsters were eventually made available in regular hunts wind serpent ibushi seemed quite comfortable in this setting as his fight had clearly been tweaked and designed to accommodate for a non-rampage setting apexes however did not fare as well once released from the confines of Rampages they were subject to full hunts and the more detailed scrutiny these intimate encounters allow for apexes have no passive behaviors on any map even less than regular monsters they don't retain any turf wars they can't be wyvern ridden or trapped and their theme song doesn't play during their own hunts these aspects make the apexes feel like they were never intended to be fought normally further cementing the idea that they were only added to normal hunts as a sort of post-launch Band-Aid so these weird amalgamations of previous content have been intended as boss fights exclusive to an unintuitive new game mode that alienates the regular appeal of the franchise weird but hey now they were available in normal quests and for what it's worth these are great fights they may be derivative of deviance but in copying some of the coolest fights of the 4th gen apexes themselves offer a great experience after all copying a cool thing just means you're also being kind of cool and ultimately these fights were some of the highlights of the game mechanically and maybe just maybe this would have been enough to redeem this initially baffling inclusion in a perfect world but then came what really doomed this feature something that if you've played the game you've probably been screaming at the screen for the last several minutes about apexes are the only monsters in rise that do not give any armors or weapons whatsoever their unique materials can only be used to craft and upgrade Rampage weapons a single line of weapons that are themselves just color swaps of the basic starter weapons besides that apexes do not give any gear to put it as nicely as I can what the the entire gameplay Loop of monster hunter is based on the cycle of fight monster get gear fight bigger monster get better gear this Loop is not just a fun machine but it also trains the player to expect its continuance by playing the player learns that every challenge is worth it because it Awards new armors and weapons new tools for fun gameplay and self-expression breaking the cycle is on the face of itself a terrible idea after years of teaching fans that this is how the games work suddenly ripping out one part of this Loop will inevitably lead to disappointment and discouragement and that is exactly what happened with the apexes these fun and tough fights which could have helped alleviate the perceived lack of difficulty and the end game Rye suffered in the base game were made worthless complete wastes of time because they broke the one sacred Rule of Monster Hunter it's Ironclad an addictive gameplay Loop as post-launch content Apex hunt situated themselves as endgame challenges but because they did not actually give any meaningful rewards they were essentially dead weight the fact that hunting a low rank acnosome is more valuable than hunting an apex zenogor is a complete and mind-boggling oversight the end point of a feature I still struggle to understand and so both Rampages and apexes were scrapped Rampages straight up do not exist in master rank because quote the celestial serpents which were causing them are gone and thus it makes no sense for Rampages to reappear this is of course complete nonsense if they wanted to they could have easily made a master rank equivalent a rampage induced by the curio or whatever not to mention that the celestial serpents aren't gone you can fight them in master rank and they even get a little story explanation for it no the real reason there are no master and Rampages is because the feature was a flop and the devs didn't want to sink money in time into maintaining and iterating on it which yeah probably was the right choice ramp up skills were reworked into Rampage decorations which allowed all skills to be put on any weapon providing the Rampage Deco slot was big enough a definitive upgrade over the arbitrary limitations of the base game system apexes are a little different they made no appearance in some breaks initial release but were sneakily without any announcement reintroduced in the first title update kind of Apex wrathion and Apex arzeros can appear as secondary Targets on anomaly investigations and only those two they do however come with buffed master rank stats and while they still don't give any new gear they do drop increased amounts of melding materials which is kinda nice this seems to however be as far as it goes as no title update since has further introduced them into the game ultimately failed content like the Rampages and apexes gives us an intimate look at the back and forth of Designing a game like Monster Hunter sometimes you think wow what if the hunter can swim and one extremely difficult development cycle and multiple cut weapons and features later you think hmm maybe that wasn't worth it but while underwater combat has been somewhat redeemed in a community with many fans revisiting the feature amicably I do not see that happening with Rampages and apexes features that truly fail to appeal to well anyone end game is a weird concept it didn't always exist in gaming looking back most games just ended the credits rolled and you moved on satisfied with the experience but ready to do something else and then at some point a new type of game took over the market the forever game these games want you to play them for as long as possible hook you in and keep you engaged forever we now live in a gaming industry that values replayability and Longevity overall else we don't finish games anymore we eventually just burn out and get bored there is a larger potential discussion here about how healthy this Outlook really is but for the purposes of this video in this segment I want to Simply ask why does any game need an end game why do we expect games to have a nion bottomless pit of repeatable content tacked onto their ends and why does it feel like this is a requirement for a game to be good the term end game is often associated with MMOs where it makes a lot of sense those games tend to run on a subscription service so having a constant flow of content is a natural expectation that the devs have to meet in order to justify The Continuous expense of the players but what about a single time purchase game like Monster Hunter if you finish the game satisfied with the time you had is that experience harmed by the game not having some sort of in-game loop to try and keep you going for another 10 20 50 100 hours I honestly don't know I am genuinely asking leave a comment if you got this far but I think that while no game truly needs an end game it can be kind of disheartening to finish a game you really enjoyed only to realize there is nothing left to do this used to be the normal experience for games but I do understand the desire to change that so more content for a game that I already like is a plus and I do like Monster Hunter if you couldn't tell so their end games tend to be very attractive proposals to me at least in theory however end games are still fairly new to the franchise prior to Monster Hunter 4 none of the games really had anything you could call an end game Loop unless you count just the grind to finish up all available quests 4 and 4u added special State monsters and special end game weapon crafting two factors that have since been a staple of all Monster Hunter end games gu had hyper monsters and deviant sets world had stream Stones iceborn had the guiding lands base rise had nothing and sunbreak sunbreak has the best one now I do know that this is a controversial statement but luckily I don't care the end game of sunbreak revolves around the curio the parasitic creatures that infect monsters and leech off their life force at the end of the game The Guild discovers that this process Turns The Afflicted monsters into rampaging beasts overly aggressive and ready to explode with accumulated life force the end game Loop thus as players hunt increasingly more powerful Afflicted monsters to use their mutated parts for various end game weapon upgrades in my opinion an end game is good when it encourages players to revisit old content organically and transformatively most games do eventually run out of stuff as it's not financially justifiable to continuously update a game for free so a solid in-game Loop will intelligently recycle as much content as possible and use it in a new and interesting way that prevents it from being tedious and that is exactly what sunbreak does afflicted monsters are essentially special versions of existing monsters buffed with more Health more damage and with changed up attack patterns but most crucially they are infected by the Kurio which manifests as two gameplay wrinkles for one they are covered in glowing orbs that can be struck and destroyed for additional damage fun fact these orbs always do a fixed amount of damage namely they always do 1.2 percent of the Monster's full health meaning that you can actually use them to roughly calculate how much health you need to plow through shout out to Peppo for finding this out destroying enough of these cores will topple the monster for an extended time and tire it out giving players a juicy opportunity should this topple not be achieved in time however the course can grow and eventually explode in a massive Nova that can do serious damage parallel to this runs the second gameplay wrinkle of Afflicted hunts namely that all Afflicted monsters can cause blood blight malzino's signature ailment bloodblite gradually depletes the player's health and weakens all potions and health items in return however healing the player anytime they land a hit on a monster this combination of having to destroy the cores and healing through attacking makes Afflicted hunts some of the most aggressive and proactive quests in the game where every part of the game design pushes players to break out of the overly defensive and passive playstyle many newcomers clutch to and approach these fights with confidence and intuitive Grit after a long journey through low high and master rank this new class which is sometimes called anomaly rank fully tests how well the player has adapted to rise's faster paced combat as a rework monsters require both experience and Mastery to overcome they are not per se gruelingly difficult as much as they are selectively rewarding for playing aggressively and snappily while in tandem punishing you for being too passive a very fitting final challenge for a game like rise in my experience monster hunter is a game that you only truly Master once you get out of that mentality of always having to sit there in a corner and wait for your opportunity a real master hunter makes their own openings and that's what these Afflicted hunts seek to teach you Afflicted hunts also come in an immense variety on one hand there are anomaly quests which are static fixed quests much like regular quests they are then supplemented with the anomaly investigation system in many ways the love child of world's investigations and four use guild quests a normal investigations are randomly generated quests that task the player would slaying one or more monsters one of which will always be afflicted these quests have immensely variable parameters from maps to monster combinations to even time faint and party size limits those latter three factors also influence the amount of rewards the quest gives each of these quests come with a level which can be increased by repeated victories a higher level means higher tier rewards but also much stronger monsters during the quests players can gather from curio spots to generate new quests and everything they do in anomaly investigations grants experience points towards their anomaly rank which similar to Hunter Rank and master rank determines which anomaly quests and investigations they can embark on but how does this end game actually encourage and reward the player for tackling these quests in a fantastic move Afflicted materials allow the player to push every weapon in the game to the maximum level of upgrades Rarity 10 meaning that every weapon gets to be viable in the end game iceborn as much as I enjoyed its end game had a huge problem where by the end half of the weapons were objectively just not worth using with many upgrade trees stopping well before reaching the highest possible Rarity this narrowed down the selection and gameplay Freedom significantly which the following title updates further compounded by the time the final update was set to release there was basically no reason to use anything other than Safi Cove latrion and raging brachy weapons this wasn't even exclusive to people who simply played meta the visual design of the Weaponry told even the most casual player that many of these options were simply not worth using by comparison some breaks weapon end game is extremely liberating while some weapons still have an overall more generally useful combination of stats those differences are largely subtle because every weapon can get to the highest Rarity now they all end up being in the same ballpark of power giving you as much Choice as possible they're not all the same they have different and distinct advantages and disadvantages but they're not objectively Superior or inferior to one another and once you choose a weapon you enjoy playing and you push that weapon to its final upgrade you can then further customize and enhance it thanks to curious crafting regular anomaly quests and anomaly investigations give out various Afflicted rewards from low tier red rewards to high tier Blue rewards while the lowest tier the red materials are used to merely finalize your favorite weapon into its Rarity 10 version the higher tier rewards will be given Purpose By The First Title Update which added curious crafting a new upgrade system that allows players to customize armor pieces and weapons curious armor crafting centers around granting an armor piece a random bonus or negative in exchange for essences another reward for Afflicted quests while the other Afflicted materials function as a currency to make armor pieces available to be randomized in the first place This is the End game's most contentious feature and we'll get to it later for now curious weapon crafting is where it's at it is in many ways a direct copy of iceborn's weapon augmenting with every weapon having augment slots that can be filled with various upgrades of various sizes for example the attack boost upgrade may be one or two slots big and you need to slot it in and make it fit with the other upgrades you would like the player can enhance sharpness attack Affinity they can even enlarge Rampage decoration slot as well as increase the number of upgrade slots available with these similarities to iceborn system the real appeal and Genius of this system is how it differs from iceborn's iteration in iceborn augmenting a weapon was somewhat tedious due to a few factors because each upgrade required specific materials dropped by specific monsters only in The Guiding lands with tempered and non-tempered monsters dropping entirely different stuff it could be a lot of bureaucracy to just get a single material you needed since it required leveling up the guiding lands to the appropriate level first and because the materials you needed were specific to certain Monsters the augment system made you hyper focus on a handful of monsters which was especially painful when it involved someone you'd rather not fight with the final update to Monster Hunter world you could actually exchange these materials between each other but even that was somewhat Limited this was definitely better than base World's End Game which saw you fighting the same five monsters ad nauseum by comparison I spawn relied on a wider variety of creatures in the end game however because of the specificity and the road to actually getting to fight that exact non-tempered or tempered monster you needed this system could often feel daunting and suffocating to only get marginal upgrades to your weapons the key change that some breaks iteration makes is to not link the needed materials to specific monsters but instead two monster groups every Afflicted material is given by multiple monsters in groups of three or four so when you need for example an Afflicted bone hard bone or slog bone you can either fight acnasam Royal ludroth or baroth at various levels depending on the tier of material you need this design change has numerous benefits for one while it still encourages you to fight early game monsters again thus remixing content it gives you the choice of which specific content you'd like to repeat I will for example always avoid fighting al-mudran if I can that weasel little with this system if I ever need his afflicted materials I have three other monsters I can get them from this way I while I don't get the materials for free gets to customize my endgame experience in a way that minimizes frustrations and maximizes enjoyment because I get what I need by doing what I want additionally while some of these materials are gated behind quest levels this rarely ends up being a problem since the level ranges are fairly wide and the groups have enough monsters to ensure that you will probably have at least one Quest at the right level for the right monsters most of the time as the player upgrades their weapons and armor they eventually become ready for the final few challenges sunbreak has to offer the Risen risen monsters were added via title updates and represent the final Milestones of game progression lock behind increasingly High master rank Gates these monsters are elder dragons that were Afflicted and nearly killed by the curio but triumphed over the parasite at the last minute and regained control making them more powerful than ever before they present the hardest content in some break and all of ryze a grueling final Gauntlet to work towards first of all just quickly bringing the title of the game rise into the end game as the title of the final threats is really cool and a great way to bring the game full circle besides that risen monsters borrow a lot from both Rampage apexes and Arch tempered monsters like apexes they are monsters empowered by hardship although they are even more similar to 4u's frenzy apexes who also overcame a deadly infection and like arch-tempered Monsters they are an elder Dragon exclusive class that boasts modified moves and increase difficulty but there isn't improve on both of their inspirations unlike our tempered monsters risen monsters are considered as entirely new monsters by the game whereas the at status was basically just a special state that the game could layer on top of existing monsters this makes the reason much more different to the normal counterpart with change or re-timed animations and new moves altogether as well as a unique new rage mode and unlike apex's the Risen give out unique gear in the form of armor which isn't just a slight recolor of existing armor but completely new models that look drastically different from the regular ones these armors are well worth the difficulty of getting them as they come with unique and Powerful new armor skills overall sunbreak's end game is fantastic in theory the anomaly Quest system encourages players to repeat content in a transformative way while giving them enough control to avoid stuff they really don't want to do it gives players the freedom to turn any weapon they want into a Powerhouse with no one choice being an objective no-brainer and it pushes players to do both of these things to prepare for their encounter with the Risen which Elevate the existing elder dragons into dangerous and exhilarating fights but an end game Loop this intricate is bound to have some issues that crop up and song breaks end game suffers from a few key flaws that still hold it back overall the biggest one is almost inarguably curious armor crafting while weapon crafting consists of a set list of upgrades and materials you can work towards armor crafting is entirely RNG dependent you throw in some Essences and boom see what you get maybe you gain a new skill level up an existing one or increase your defenses and resistances but maybe you lose a skill or get reduced defenses it's entirely random there is a sophisticated back end to it as behind the scenes the system runs on a budget getting beneficial changes to an armor piece reduces its budget while getting hit with a negative change increases it and each possible upgrade comes with an Associated budget cost thus if you get a bad roll one at one point you have a higher chance of getting a good roll next time this in theory balances the RNG into a middle ground where you can't make any armor piece busted or useless the problem is however that this is all hidden from the player who only gets to spin the slot machine and not see how it actually works this makes this feature feel like throwing your mats into a fountain and asking a higher power for a critical boost level 2. while the rest of the end game Revels in giving players more control and more freedom curious armor crafting assures all of that and instead becomes a lottery with no real player input Title Update 3 added the ability to Target the RNG towards either skills or defense but even with that the system doesn't feel nearly as satisfying as the rest of the end game this is especially frustrating because of where the system comes from it very clearly takes strong Inspirations from the Safi Jiva Awakening mechanic in iceborn in this system the player could throw selfie materials into their weapon to roll for randomized upgrades be it attack boost Affinity up or even skills but while curious armor crafting copied this idea it neglected to copy its best aspect in iceborn's Awakening when you didn't like a rolled upgrade you could reject it but unlike in sunbreak here that rejection would not set you back to zero instead that rejected upgrade will be stored in the form of potential and to hire the potential the higher the chance of rolling rare and Powerful upgrades this allowed players to gradually skew the RNG towards better rewards in exchange for more materials while this did not alleviate the inherent loss of control associated with RNG completely it gave the player a modicum of control that made all the difference a different sunbreaks curious armor crafting could definitely benefit from another issue this end game runs into are the insanely low drop rates for Afflicted materials Afflicted hunts can be pretty tough and you might need half a dozen pieces of a certain material at any given time so it can be quite disheartening to then after a brutal hunt realize you only got a single Afflicted material a realization which can really dampen the enjoyment of this end game depending on how well you can stomach The Grind these drop rates get much better at higher levels but the early anomaly hunts suffer from the stinginess quite a bit there are mods out there for PC with which you can influence how high this chance actually is and just tweaking it a little bit upwards so that each hunt guarantees you between 2 and 5 instead of between 1 and 3 Afflicted materials already makes this entire system feel so much better and I really hope that they actually officially address this another problem is the anomaly research lab in theory this works as additional motivation to do investigations as the lab will essentially set a bounty for a specific monster for a period of time and hunting said monster will advance a stamp sheet which when full Awards anomaly coins which you also get from regular anomaly investigations with these coins the player can purchase various things at the labs from rare monster drops to outfit vouchers the problem is that anomaly coins are also way too hard to effectively accumulate just like Afflicted materials anomaly coins yield only very sparse Rewards this is a time so extreme that if you were to grind coins in order to buy say a rare monster material like a mantle it would probably be more efficient to just grind that material directly the research Bounty is supposed to alleviate this with its stamps and rewards but this fails due to poor balancing the monster's lab requests are also requested at specific level thresholds which means that more often than not you will simply be unable to hunt what Bahari asks of you let alone doing it 10 times in order to fill out a stamp sheet this makes the anomaly research lab in anomaly coins ultimately useless until very late into the end game where you already have a massive library of anomaly investigations to choose from but at that point will you really need anything the lab can sell you if you have an anomaly rank of 100 or 120 do you really still need to waste anomaly coins on mantles and outfit vouchers overall Sun brakes endgame is despite a few granular issues one of the best end game Loops in any monster in the game in my opinion it as mentioned at the start of the segment remixes old content intelligently pushing passionate players to truly conquer the game while granting them a choice and freedom to do it in their own way and while it clearly falls short in some aspects what excites me is how all of these problems are entirely numbers based meaning that they are extremely easy to fix in fact as I said you can mod most of these problems I mentioned already on PC which gives me hope that they will actually be properly patched in the future before the game is ultimately terminated thank you is Monster Hunter rise good enough this is the question a catapulted this video into existence in a franchise that for the longest time felt like a Hallmark of consistency that even in the face of odd and idiosyncratic features found a common ground to always return to Rye sticks out as a determined step away from the roots just as world did this beckons comparison and bickering which the internet often amplifies and further encourages but in the end all that matters to me is this is rise on its own merits good enough of a game to carry the torch of the iconic franchise it represents does it evolve the series and does its Evolution constitute a worthy progression for the series okay let's not be too dramatic yes yes to all of that rice suffers from distinct issues technical hiccups bad story progression and an overall more arcadey feel to the game make it far from a perfect package and even when everything works as intended the New Direction focused on drawing in newcomers can absolutely be alienating to core fans but this new direction is not an objective misstep it is different for sure but it rings with it benefits and improvements that the series genuinely enjoys rise is more casual feel trades in the hard-earned victories in exchange for gameplay that is snappier and more responsive than ever while older monster under games made Quest completion the climactic point of relief and instilled fun through that completion rise focuses on moment-to-moment action creating fun through the control and style the player now has every second along the way old school monster hunter is demanding and expects commitment and as such appeals to players with regular Windows of extended free time whereas the newer games especially rise appeal to those with more restricted time Windows who nevertheless crave The Addictive dopamine hit that only Monster Hunter can provide I cannot in good faith claim either of these approaches to be vastly superior they set out to do different things and Achieve them with variable success rise includes many changes I am not fond of spirit Birds the castration of part breaks magnamalo but none of that changes the fact that after 300 hours of it I am still having fun I think the best way to put it is that I could sit here all day describing the various ways in which I think rise falls short its various missteps its various mistakes and its various shortcomings but the truth is and this truth I cannot Escape that I would rather spend that day playing Monster Hunter rise no matter how much I talk about my criticisms about the game it cannot erase the fact that I had a ton of fun with it and I don't think I am the kind of critic that can just ignore that once you accept what ryze is trying to do and stop expecting it to suddenly go back to the design decisions of old the game becomes truly enjoyable as it hyper focuses on a power fantasy that is as enjoyable as it is accessible and this power fantasy does in my opinion not conflict with the core identity of Monster Hunter the slow pace and deliberate action of the old games was certainly attractive and fun in its own right but to me that's never been what made Monster Hunter special it was a byproduct but not the real meat Monster's genius is a trifecta of fun gameplay monster designs still unmatched in the industry and gear earned from those fights rise does not break any of these tenants the gameplay Loop this core wheel that powers the fun engine known as Monster Hunter is entirely preserved while its auxiliary elements are reimagined for an era of global success under a player base that is older busier and more impatient than ever while some of the depth has absolutely an inarguably been sanded off it has been compensated by new gameplay nuances and challenges which coalesce into an experience unlike the old games but every bit as fun in my opinion Monster Hunter rise commits to this new Direction and succeeds in fulfilling its core promise consistently naturally if you already dislike that core promise all of its triumphs will read his failures to you that is how I feel with as I said the de-emphasize part breaks which I think are a regression from the juicy and mechanically interesting part breaks of old but they do what the game wants them to do streamline the combat into a dance of DPS with body parts being loot pinatas whether or like it or not this change that I don't like serves the central design philosophy that rise lays out a philosophy that I did end up enjoying overall even when some of its granular elements irritated me at times and this was the case for old school Monster Hunter as well well I would absolutely play on any of the old games again except Monster Hunter 1. I cannot say that I liked every single part of them they had decisions and ideas that I thought were pretty lacking and pretty unenjoyable but the overall experience was still great and that's how I feel with ryze singular decisions end up making me feel a little weird about the game but overall I have fun and in this era where we try to decouple criticism from the subjective enjoyment of any product even when enjoyment is the point of that product I think I couldn't be honest here with you if I didn't acknowledge that all my acidic criticism of the game has to be put in the context of me thinking hours and hours into this game of my own free will I had 300 hours in this game before I started writing this review and I cannot write this review without considering that fact monster hunter rise suffered a very unfortunate life cycle crushed by the expectations of a post iceborn World stunted by a global cataclysm we still deal with today and locked onto a console that should reasonably have died years ago it arrived into the world confused lacking as much as an ending and facing a legacy that is at the best of times Herculean to live up to but as the game has sat with me and as the excellent sunbreak expansion is fixed and bandaged many of my issues I sit here now with rise being in my top three monster hunter games a definitive break away from the franchise's roots for sure but one that capitalizes on its new identity continuously and admirably at the end of the day I get to hunt monsters and make hats out of their spines and as long as the monsters are fun to fight and the hats are cool and silly I will always enjoy being a monster hunter regardless of what title is on the game thank you for watching thank you all so much for watching I am so sorry that this took so long but I mean you you do see the length of the video so yeah uh I'm gonna have to take some time some days to rest but I'll be back before long and uh look forward to that but for now a very special thank you to all of my patrons including fictionape cine Eric Nelson Ethan Miller Geo Jameson Tate karthai Oakwood tree makote O2 Mr pyramid Mr Meander paracha pire Fuego Perros Coco project Iceman Muslim manari iron camel and courage I will see you again soon so stay safe and be well my friends goodbye

Channel: Oceaniz

Views: 313,188

Keywords: Oceaniz, Video Games, Monster Hunter, MHR, Sunbreak, Monster Hunter Rise, MHRise, MonHun, Review, Gameplay, Long, Title Update, Amatsu

Id: jfAx_ITNdqY

Length: 230min 26sec (13826 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 08 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/CaptainHamSandwich]

The reviewer spends 20 minutes to explain that Rise looks worse than World because it was developed for Switch. This is one of this least concise and meandering critiques I've viewed. Some of the other points might be better but I couldn't make it past that section.