![]() The headline addition might be the wirebugs that let you fling from point to point, though they're just one part of a whole cohort of new colleagues that open Monster Hunter's maps like never before. It initially feels like something of a backwards step, though Rise is smart enough to let you skip through multiplayer ranks with special tests should you soar ahead in the single player and want a headstart when heading online. ![]() Single-player and multiplayer progress is separated, having been melded together in World. Is that a problem for a series where endurance and hard-edged challenge has often been part of the make-up? Maybe for some but most certainly not for me - and anyway, the reason these things go down so much quicker is because you the player are so much more dynamic than ever before, with so much more in your arsenal. Hunts are quicker, too - even the later enemies unlocked after the credits roll, itself done after some 20 hours, can be felled in just over 10 minutes if you've half an idea what you're doing. It's not so much that the monsters here are a pushover, and more that Rise is willing to push you through it all with a bit more pep and pace than seen in previous games - here you'll be going head to head with new signature beast Magnamalo when an earlier entry would still have you ferrying eggs from one end of the map to another. In Monster Hunter Rise, however, you are OP AF, and I am 100 per cent for it. Traditionally in this series, you're the whipping boy - for the first few dozen hours at least - as you get knocked this way and that by all number of beautiful beasts. Before running through them all, though, there's one underlying change worth noting that's seismic in nature, and that informs everything that's new this time out. This is as significant a step forward for Monster Hunter as World was before it, with a generous suite of new features making hunting more palatable, more action packed and much, much more pleasurable. How the post-launch support lines up remains to be seen, but we've already got some free monsters due in the near future. The monster count - I believe there's around 33 of the big boys - and map count - around five - might seem slim compared to something like the fully expanded Generations, though it is in line with other base games. It's as if all that money made through Monster Hunter World's success somehow made it into Rise' production. This is as lavish and opulent a thing as Monster Hunter's ever seen, Capcom's inhouse RE Engine excelling in its debut for the series while its soundtrack is fully orchestrated and accompanied by full vocals (every single monster gets its own unique introductory song complete with shamisen and hyoshigi in keeping with Rise's traditional Japanese theming). Monster Hunter had finally gone mainstream.įorgive me for making crass assumptions, but I'd presumed the series' return to Nintendo, and to more modest hardware - Monster Hunter Rise is a Switch timed exclusive, with the PC version not arriving until early 2022 - might mean a more modest outing for the series. Here was Monster Hunter at its most accessible - and, with expansion Iceborne, at its most brutal - and for the first time it no longer felt like a niche pursuit. The core loop remains unchanged but Capcom's series has evolved an awful lot since its inception way back in 2004, and after a long run on Nintendo's console that peaked with the exceptional Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate it was only after 2018's multi-platform Monster Hunter World that the series found a proper foothold in the west. ![]() Availability: Out March 26th on Switch, early 2022 on PC.Bring this big bastard down and I can fashion a hat out of his hide to complete my Besarios outfit and grant myself an attack boost, so that I might be able to go out and do it again only with more flair, and more efficiency. In mid-air I pull out a sword fashioned from the remains of a bony Besarios and drive it straight down into the skull of another. I've just drifted my dog into battle, his hindlegs tilting out in a glorious arc at the press of a button for that precious extra boost of speed, before dismounting with the flick of a wirebug that sends a silken line up into the sky, allowing me to grapple onto it and swing towards my prey. With smart additions that move the series forward, this is the most accessible, deepest and simply very best Monster Hunter to date.
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