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03-28-24 05:56 PM

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09-25-21 09:08 AM
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09-25-21 09:08 AM
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09-25-21 09:08 AM
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zanderlex
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Monster Hunter is one of my four most favorite game franchises of all time so when it was announced that there was going to be a new game that was originally designed with the Switch in mind, I was really happy. I was also kind of happy for Monster Hunter Stories 2, but I was really excited for Rise and what a Switch Native Monster Hunter game would bring to the table. I've been a big fan of the series ever since I started playing the games on the PSP many years ago so I knew I had to get my hands on this one.

I pre ordered the game from Best Buy because it was supposed to come with a free steelbook. But, I remember going to pick it up and they wouldn't give me the steelbook. I was so disappointed that I ended up getting a refund and going to a different store to buy just the game by itself. I honestly don't even remember why I even got into the series in the first place, but I'm glad I did, especially after what the franchise has been putting out these last few years with Rise being one of the great ones.

GRAPHICS: 9/10

Monster Hunter Rise has definitely had its far share of graphical improvements over the years, and I am all for them. When I first played Monster Hunter, it was on the PSP and I fell in love with the games very quickly, but the graphics were very different back then. With Rise, the visuals are easily ten times better because the environments are all better, as are the character models, animations, and the amount of color and detail.

When it comes to the graphics, the one thing that I can’t seem to give enough praise too is the seamless transitions between worlds. Even the older games were a bit ambitious when it came to their designs, level designs, and the large scale of their worlds. As a result, it took forever to load into different parts of each world. That was the only aspect of the old games that I didn’t really like but the games were so good in all the other aspects that I had to give them a pass for these issues.

In the older games, each quest world was usually broken down into like seven to nine smaller areas for you to roam and explore while collecting items and fighting off monsters. The areas had so much going on that every time you entered into a new area, you would enter a load screen until the new area could be rendered in. IF I remember correctly, the loading on the older games was only around 10 to 15 seconds but it would happen a lot.

Every time you went to a new area, you had to let that area render in. If you chased a monster and they ran into a new area, you had to run after them and fight them there. Sometimes they would turn around and run back and you just lost even more time since you’d have to follow them back to the old area. Those seconds really started to add up. The older games were so graphical and big in some areas that a single one hour quest could have resulted in a couple minutes worth of just loading because of how much the game was trying to show at once.

But you don’t get that at all with Monster Hunter Rise. Instead of having large worlds that are broken into a bunch of small areas that were separated by load screens, the developers were able to build a massive open world map for each area that has all the areas connected as one with no load screens and a seamless transition between each one. This is a feature that the series only added recently in Monster Hunter World but it’s something that really helps the game look much better for a couple reasons.

For starters, having a seamless transition between areas of a world looks a lot better than running into invisible walls. Not only that, but it basically forced the developers to put more effort into world designing, which in turn caused the game to be more beautiful than it already is. For instance, in some of the older games, when you hit the invisible wall or the trigger that sends you to the next world, there’s always more space in front of you. You’re still able to see where your path goes further ahead and what’s there since it’s still an open space but developers don’t have to put as much detail into what’s behind the playable area.

If the player can’t reach those areas and it’s basically static background images at this point, so the developers don’t have to make full 3D detailed images in that part of the environment. But with a seamless, open world environment where the player can reach so much more, the developers need to put in a lot more detail to the surrounding area since they can now see more. This allowed for the games to be way more beautiful than in older games, and it does in fact show, with worlds being full of even more detail, color, and life than they would have been in the past.

It’s also a great testament to how powerful of a console the Switch is. Other than that, the next big aspect of graphics to talk about would be the animations. Movement and animation is obviously a lot more smooth and fluid than in previous games and that was honestly something that surprised me a little bit. I was just a little bit taken aback when I was running around the map at how good the controls were. Back in the day, some aspects of movement felt a little clunky and less responsive. Now, your hunter responds even quicker which allows for more fluid combat and the animations of those around you are great too.

For instance, you have two companions that follow you around everywhere. They’re called Palamutes and Palicos, but I’ll get into them more later. They follow you around, assist you in battle, and can even be ridden, and the animations for them are also really good. I remember just running around the world and watching them to see what they did and how they looked, and it wasn’t bad. From a visual standpoint, their movement and action animations looked pretty good and their AI in terms of doing different actions wasn’t bad either.

The animations of other characters was pretty good too. The design and movement of monsters was overall really good. Many of the monsters looked terrifying and had a crazy amount of detail. But beyond that, their movement looked good for the most part and like the companions, their AI wasn’t bad either.In game cutscenes aren’t bad either. There aren’t fully animated ones like in most other games but in these cutscenes, characters do a lot more movement and there’s a lot of animating happening, which make some of them really come to life.

Other than that, the visuals of just the world itself are amazing as well. There’s so much more detail put into the ground, water, cliffs, tree, and sky that make each world look really good. There’s a great amount of color and detail that make each are stand out. Each world looks beautiful and when you couple that with all the different aspects that I just mentioned, it makes for one really good looking game that was a perfect fir for the Switch. My grade for graphics is going to be a 9 out of 10.

SOUND: 8/10

Monster Hunter Rise does have a decent does have a decent amount of content when it comes to sound, and for the most part, it sounds like any other Monster Hunter game, with a bunch of tweaks here and there. The weakest link in my opinion would be the generic game sounds.

To be fair, it wouldn’t be a Monster Hunter game if it didn’t have those Monster Hunter sounds that are engraved into your brain if you’ve played before. All the games have very similar or identical sounds that play in places like menus or when you’re doing certain actions and those kind of become iconic after a while if you play long enough. It’s not amazing though and if you’re new to the series, then you won’t care for it too much either. The combat sounds are good too and the standard Palamute and Palico noises are a nice addition to the games feel.

The only thing that I personally didn’t care for when it came to sound was the selection of voice actors. Don’t get me wrong, the voice actors that were used all did a great job, but I didn’t have the same level of immersion or excitement that I had with other games. Usually sound ends up being my most favorite aspect of a game because there’s either a big and epic soundtrack or a voice team that I get excited by. For instance, I was never even going to play Scarlet Nexus if one of my favorite voice actors wasn’t the lead because I wouldn’t have even known about how good the game was if it wasn’t for them talking about it.

But also if I don’t recognize any of the voices or people behind them, it feels less personal in a way and hearing them doesn’t hype you up as much as it would have. There’s lots of games where I get excited because of certain voices and 90 percent of the time they aren’t even big actors. But, most of the time I end up being very immersed in the dialogue and focusing on every word and the emotion if I already know what that actor is capable of doing.

If it’s just a random voice cast, even if they might be big actors, I usually just casually listen and just focus on the text and what’s being said rather than the energy and emotion. But for the most part, the actors still did a great job and there were three names that I did recognize, but I would have been way more immersed in the dialogue if there was more from the voice team or if was already a fan of the actors. Giving the hunter their own voice lines is a nice touch though too and the return of the Monster Hunter language and ability to listen to the Japanese voices is always welcome too.

Lastly you have the music, which I would say is the best aspect of Monster Hunter Rise’s sound department. The overall soundtrack is pretty massive with more than 100 total tracks that add up to more than four hours of tunes. I’m a really big fan of when games have a lot of music and a four hour soundtrack is definitely on the hefty side of things. There are lots of songs with lyrics too and a bunch of really good themes. There weren’t that many that really stood out to me but many of the songs were full of energy and very heavily Japanese inspired, much like the rest of the game, which hasn’t always been a big theme in the games.

The main composer for the game was Red Uratani, who’s been doing the music for Monster Hunter for a decade. He did the soundtrack for Monster Hunter 3 and 4 along with Atelier Ryza 2 and some other Monster Hunter projects. A couple other series veterans have also worked on the soundtrack and together made this massive soundtrack. It’s also possible to get more music (and voices) through DLC. There was one DLC pack released back in May that added a couple new voices and a handful of tracks.

Monster Hunter Rise also has the most comprehensive sound options that I have ever seen in a game, and I really mean it. In my opinion, if a game uses voices, there is a correct way to do sound options. There should be three sliders to change the volumes, one for music, one for voices, and one for regular game and menu sounds. Obviously if a game doesn’t have voices, then there should realistically be two options. If a voiced game has less than three options, then I usually think it has bad sound design because sometimes a game like that will put music and sounds together into one slider. That does not work, and it makes the game sound really bad at times.

Monster Hunter Rise is a voiced game but it does not have three volume options. It has FIVE. I had no idea that this much detail in sound design was even possible. The music option is normal but the voice option and sound option were wach broken down into two separate sub options. For voices, there’s one slider to control the volume of your character’s voice while there’s another to control the volume of all NPC voices. For sound, there’s one that controls sound effects while there’s one that controls menus. This is a brilliant level of detail that I’ve never seen in a game before and it literally gives you full control over what you can and can’t hear and how loud or quiet every little thing is.

For the most part, the sound aspect is pretty big but most of my value for this area comes from the music section. The soundtrack is massive and has a bunch of good songs, plus lots of singing too. If you don’t care about who’s voicing the characters then you also won’t be judging the same way that I do. But overall, I still really liked the sound and it gets an 8 out of 10 from me.

ADDICTIVENESS: 8/10

There’s so much fun stuff to do in Monster Hunter Rise that it’s going to take a while before you get bored. The obvious thing that you’re going to want to do is slay monsters. Many of the quests and missions are going to take you quite some time to complete and will find you exploring all over the given map either fighting monsters, gathering items, or doing other stuff.

The gameplay is fun and there are so many quests for you take on. For instance you have village quests which is where you would find quests that have a difficulty rank attached to them. Once you complete certain key quests, you will be able to undertake special urgent quests that are much harder and completing those quests will upgrade your rank and will progress the story and allow you to take on harder quests and visit new areas.

There’s also a bunch of optional side quests that you can take on and you can complete these as many times as you like if you want to battle monsters or gather ingredients and resources. My favorite quest is the Expedition Tour, which is under the Village quests. This is basically a free play quest where you can just visit an area and explore it freely. You don’t get any rewards for completing certain things but there’s no time limit and you can collect and battle as much as you like.

The combat is lots of fun too, even if it can be very hard at times. The only problem is that it can be slow at times and aiming can be hard too. There’s been plenty of times where I would swing my sword and miss, and then I would be facing the wrong direction and have to spend a few seconds lining up my attack again and if that one missed too, it would just create a chain reaction of pain. But once you get the hang of it, it becomes just so much fun. Just exploring each area is lots of fun, even if it might only take you like five to ten minutes to fully explore the whole place while riding.

You also have a wirebug mechanic that’s a new feature added to this game that kind of let’s you fly/grapple across the air for short distances. It’s a fun mechanic that can make exploring and travelling more fun.

You also have a bunch of reasons to keep playing over and over. Maybe you need certain materials and resources, so you keep doing the free mode over and over to fight for monster parts or together herbs and other stuff. Maybe you need a lot of money or Nakura points, so you keep going back to do some of the side quests. Or maybe you just need to let off some steam and you want to fight monster after monster, so you keep going in to destroy the little guys or to try to take down the big guys. In the single player mode, there’s so many reasons for you to keep entering each world and play for hours.

But on top of that, you have the online mode, which has been a staple of the Monster Hunter series for years. You can take on quests with some friends or with a bunch of random strangers around the world. Most of the time this is going to make each quest a lot easier and it can make it more fun as well. I’m not personally a fan of the slow combat speed and kind of unresponsive controls when battling. If the combat was a lot more fluid, I would have had even more fun, but I still think the game is tons of fun and will keep you busy for many hours, so my grade for addictiveness is going to be an 8 out of 10.

STORY: 8/10

Monster Hunter Rise begins like any other game in the series. You’re a hunter, and you’re in a village. Well, technically you’re not a hunter yet. When you first start playing you’re notified that you were just accepted as a hunter and you’re given the tour of your village as if you just moved there when you were probably there all your life.

The story is honestly no different than any other in the series. You’re just given a bunch of context and missions to complete to progress the story but all of the main ones will either be to find stuff or to kill certain monsters. One thing that happens is that right when you start, you’re told by the village leader of a big event that nearly wiped out the village fifty years ago and that they think the same event is going to happen again shortly. Many of the quests that you take is in an effort to strengthen yourself so that you would be prepared to fight and save the village if that day ever comes.

Eventually you learn that this calamity isn’t only a real thing that happened in the past, but it is in fact going to happen again and a large chunk of the game is about protecting the village from hordes of monsters that are trying to enter the village. This is the kind of game where you focus on the gameplay and the actual RPG elements and monsters, not the story, but the story is pretty good and a decent size too. Gets an 8 out of 10 from me.

DEPTH: 10/10

Monster Hunter is just one of those games that has a ton of things going on. People wouldn’t have been able to play Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate for 700 hours if there wasn’t a lot to do. First of all, the maps themselves have a ton to offer you. There’s a decent number of levels to explore, each with a lot of ground to cover. Across each map there’s a large number of monsters to discover and kill, both large and small. There’s also so many things for you to find across each map. There’s stuff that you can harvest off of the monsters after you kill them, there’s tons of resources that you can find lying on the ground, and there’s even a bunch of resources that you can mind. Beyond that, there’s also lots of stuff that you can buy and craft.

But it’s all light in comparison to all of the options that you have to customize. Monster Hunter Rise is easily one of the biggest games that I have ever seen when it comes to customizing your character or customizing your weapons and other gear. It’s just insane.

CUSTOMIZATION

Oh boy, when it comes to customization, there sure is a lot to offer in Monster Hunter Rise. The first big aspect of customization is the ability to create your own character, and by big, I mean massive. It’s one of the biggest character creation systems that I’ve ever seen. But there’s also a small issue that I found with the creation section.

Don’t get me wrong, I really like the amount of ways that you can customize your character, but it seems like it’s just way too confusing of a system. I ended up spending close to an hour messing around in the customization page because it was mostly a lot of trial and error and going back to previous pages to try something new.

Take my experience for example. I chose male and then I was met with 10 options for a character type. Ten didn’t seem like that great of a variety but I found three that I liked and I narrowed it down to the one that I ended up choosing. Once you pick the base, you’re given a bunch of options to choose from including Basic Settings. But once you choose basic settings, it gave me another five face types which would drastically change the face and hair of the character that I picked.

Oh boy do I mean drastic too, these were changes that I thought would have been on the previous page. At first you’d think that since you already picked the character type, the face would only change things like the expression, but no, it further changed everything about the character. The new options would change the entire look of their face, their hairstyle, and even the color of their skin.

So, I realized that I had to go back and manually check the basic options for each of the ten base character designs and I just thought that was a lot of work. This meant there were at the time fifty different character designs to choose from but you had to choose one of ten options in order to see the remaining 40. I personally think it would have been a lot easier to just have all the possible options on one page instead of having to go back and forth between pages.

But then there’s also an option to change the hairstyle individually, but not really. The only option for hairstyle is to randomly get one, so you aren’t allowed to just pick the one you like. You have to keep pressing the random button until the one you like appears. But this also kind of defeats the purpose of having the hairstyle change with each of the 50 base character designs if you were going to eventually be given the option to change your hairstyle. This originally means you probably spent some time investing in character design based on hair only to find out that it didn’t matter because you could have chosen a body type you wanted and then mess with the hair later.

The customization option really tricks you. The first page gives you only ten body types to choose from and then the Basic settings page multiplies that to 50, then allows you to change your hairstyle, and then lets you pick any age you want between 0 and 100. I spent a lot of time picking the character that was closest to the one that I wanted and then when I realized how customizable it is, I completely gave up on that character to start building my own. But even then, I had to keep going back and forth between the two pages until I was able to find one that I really wanted.

I must have spent 30 minutes or more just getting the face right. In total just between character design, hairstyle, and age grouping, I think there must be at least 2,000 different base character designs per gender. Then once you get past Basic settings, you’re introduced to the advanced settings which can let you throw everything you’ve just done out the window because you basically just picked one out of 2,000 possible options and yet the next page lets you change everything else.

The Advanced Settings page has 11 options for you to work with including face shape, skin, hairstyle, eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth, facial hair, three types of makeup. When I read hairstyle for the first time, I nearly facepalmed. I clicked on it and sure enough there were 23 different hairstyles to choose from. Can you tell me what’s the point in picking pre determined character designs based on hairstyles, then allowing you to randomly cycle through hairstyles, and then giving you the option to manually change your hairstyle? That just seems way too excessive don’t you think?

Not only that but you can also change the color of your hair too. Here I was thinking thinking some of the random hairstyles looked good but I wouldn’t pick them because I didn’t like the color. So after half an hour of going through hundreds of possible options, I literally started from scratch all over again trying to create the perfect character. Also, when it comes to hair color, there’s a ton of options. There’s 50 color presets to choose from but there’s also the ability to change the color manually using a hue slider which technically gives 360 different options but many are unnoticeable from the next.

Many games give that kind of color variety with RGB sliders, but Monster Hunter Rise also allows you to directly change the saturation and contrast of the chosen hue which give you so many more hair colors. That’s all great and all but if you find out about all the customization options after going through hundreds of random presets, it might turn out to be just a giant waste of time.

Honestly you should probably just entirely skip the base presets and the Basic Settings. Just pick a random base one and then go straight to the Advanced Settings to create your own character however you want. I wish I knew that before I invested so much time looking at hundreds of preset characters.

When it comes to the Advanced Settings, those 11 things that you can change quickly become literally millions of options. For instance, the first thing that you can customize is face shape and that alone has so many different things to choose from. Within the face shape page you can change aspects of your cheek size, chin length, chin position, chin width, and jaw width. Each of these options has a slider that you can change between 0 and 100 which means 101 possible options for each one.

Like I said before, many of the changes are so different from the next one that many would be unnoticeable. So, I grouped each slider into about ten different sections that are different enough from each other. This means that in just the face shape section, there are 100,000 different possible faces that you can create that use different enough features. (Technically it’s more than 10 billion if you’re very picky with each individual number along the slider.

Then you can pick your skin color. There are four presets but you can manually pick a spot on the color palette which uses a grid of 256 by 256 spots which means there are 65,536 unique skin colors to choose from which is insane and many of them actually look different from each other. Just imagine choosing between 10 billion data options for face shape and then multiplying that by 65,000 skin color options. There might only be a couple million options that actually look different from one another but the fact that you are technologically allowed to pick between trillions and trillions of data is insane.

But color isn’t the only thing when it comes to skin. You then pick your age and muscle definition which are both between 0 and 100. Then you have eyes and eyebrows. There’s 17 eyebrow and a million eyebrow colors to choose from and then you get to pick brow depth, width, and position with more than 100 options for each. For eyes, you get to choose upper eyelids, lower eyelids, outer eye position, eye depth, eye width, eye position, and eye size. Oh and you guessed it, each uses a slider between 0 and 100 so just eyes alone gives you millions of possible looks.

But that’s not all because you can change your eye color to one of thousands of options and you can even have one eye be a different color than the other to added even more possibilities. Then, on top of that you can change your eyelash length and color. Then, you start the whole thing over again with your nose. You get to change everything for nose height, position, bridge height, tip position, bridge width, nostril width, and nostril position. This alone gives gives you millions more customization options.

Then the mouth section let’s you change your mouth protrusion, width, position, corners position, and lip thickness. That’s pretty much it for the structure of your face. It’s literally trillions of possible options and that’s on the simpler side of the scale. Once you’re done with the structure, you can work on facial hair. In total there’s 19 options for facial hair and then of course a ton of color options.

Between all those options, there’s a ton of choices and so many possibilities but that’s not There are three different makeup options and they are all layered. Makeup 1 is for the lower layer, Makeup 2 is for the middle layers dn Makeup 3 is for the upper layer. So for instance if there was one markup design that you like, you can put that on one layer and then put another makeup layer on top of it so that it stacks and creates a super unique design.

The number of options for each layer is also really insane. There are 30 different makeup designs to choose from and for each one, you can choose the vertical position, horizontal position, vertical size, and horizontal size. That alone gives each of the 30 makeup designs 100 million different combinations of size and position. On top of that, you can change the color of the makeup and you can also change the level of glossiness, metalicness, luminosity, and transparency.

So after you pick one of 3 billion design, position, size combinations, you can further compound that by another 50 billion color, shade, and brightness levels. But wait, that’s just for one design. If you want to add another makeup or even two more, you can further stack on top of the one that you just created and make something that’s literally one of a kind. AND THAT’S JUST ADVANCED SETTINGS. You still have to do clothing and voice.

Fortunately clothing doesn’t have that many options to choose from. There’s only four clothing options to choose from and then millions of color combinations. For voice, there’s 20 different options to choose from. The game even acknowledges how many choices there are so there’s a page called All Settings where you can see every single option and what data value you chose.

After I spent like 40 minutes in total trying to pick a character based on the presets, I started working on character from scratch and probably spent nearly two hours working on somebody I liked. It was probably the most time that I ever spent creating a character. One cool thing is that you’re allowed to save the character design that you just created as a preset and there’s five save spots for character design. So, for all future endeavors, if you wanted to use the same character and not have to spend hours trying to recreate them, you can just pick the preset that you saved. Or you can also create a bunch of other characters and have them all saved for future use.

All in all, that was literally quadrillions upon quadrillions of different customization options and that was only in the character creation stage before you even start the game. There’s still so much more to customization, after all, this is a Monster Hunter game.I actually had a little sense of dread after I clicked the confirm button and was sent to a brand new character creation page for your pet companion.

COMPANION CREATION

In Monster Hunter Rise, you get a pet companion called a Palamute, which is basically Monster Hunters equivalent of a dog. Before playing the game, I knew that Palamutes were in the game but I had no idea that you got the chance to create yours from scratch. After spending two hours creating my character and then realizing that I also had to create my sidekick made me quit. I could have just chose one of the presets but I didn’t want to and set that aside for another day because of how much effort creating my hunter was.

In some areas, customizing my Palamute took even more effort and there were more options. The six main options for Palamute customization are Coat, Eyes, Ears, Tail, Clothing, and Voice. Coat alone has so many different options to choose from. Coat has five different fur patterns to choose from and the option to change the base fur color to one of thousands of colors. But on top of that, you can change the colors of each pattern area.

There are three different sections that you can change the color of, not including the base fur. So in theory your Palamutes coat can have different patterns that are four different colors with a wild combination of designs. The eyes section gives you six different types to choose from and the ability to choose from thousands of eye colors. Just like with the hunter, you can make it so that the eyes of your Palamute are two different colors. I didn’t like the way it looked on the hunter but I liked it way more with the Palamute designs.

The rest are pretty simple and straightforward options. There are five ear designs and four tail designs to choose from. Mix those nine options with the billions of fur, pattern, eye, and color combinations and you have trillions of more ways to customize your Palamute. At the time, I was a bit disappointed with the clothing and voice options for your Palamute.

For clothing, the only thing that you could customize was the color. Each Palamute has a bandana like clothing item around their necks. You can’t choose to remove it, you can’t swap it out for a different piece of clothing, and you can’t even change the design that’s on it. The only thing you could do is change the color and I thought it would have been cool with more items for them to wear but more on that later.

For voice, there was only three options to choose from but you could also change the pitch between low, normal, and high which allowed for nine different voice possibilities.i spent a lot less time creating my Palamute than I did with my hunter but I had a lot more fun creating an adorable puppy.

It took me nearly three hours but I was able to create a hunter and Palamute that I was extremely happy with and I was ready to start playing the game. But I guess the game wasn’t ready for me to because of course there’s more. I had to create a Palico too. Palicos are the Monster Hunter equivalents of cats and have been around forever while Palamutes were just introduced in this game.

Fortunately I didn’t really care for the Palico’s as much as I cared for the Palamutes so I didn’t spend too much time on creating mine. Creating a Palico is pretty much the same as creating a Palamute. There’s a fur pattern, fur color, and then changing the color of three additional patterns. Then, you move on to eyes, ears, tails, clothing, and voices. The Palico’s had actual clothing versus just a bandana around their neck and the exact same number of options to choose from for eyes, ears, tails, and voices.

The only different thing for Palico’s is that you also get to choose a support type for them. There’s five to choose from which include Healer, Gathering, Assisting, Fighting, and Bombarding. The only issue is that since I just started the game and hadn’t even gotten to play yet, I had no way to tell which one I would really want yet. At the time I thought gathering would be pretty useful since collecting items is a huge part of Monster Hunter games but some of the others felt like they could be very useful like fighting and assisting.

But it was finally over after I finished creating my Palico. Three and a half hours of customization and I was finally ready to play the game. But of course, all that was just customization within the character creation stage, there was still much more later on.

Roughly an hour into the game, you’re given a Cahoot as a pet, which is just an owl. At the start, all you can do is change the color of them but later on you unlock more clothing options for them to wear which is a nice touch.

YOU ARE WHAT YOU LIVE IN

I don’t remember if the older Monster Hunter games had a ton of customization options when it came to changing up the look of your room/house. There are a lot of customization options that you can do to the inside of your room but they are very limited to the location of what’s being used and what can be placed there.

In total you have one spot for a hanging scroll, nine spots for little trinkets on what looks like a bookshelf, three spots for alcoves, and three spots where there are photo frames. Trinkets are kind of like little trophies or medals for accomplishments. It’s a shame though that there aren’t that many trinkets to acquire to begin with. The main way is by collecting relic records in each map. If you collect five in a map, you can trade them in for one trinket to put on display and if you collect all that are in a map, you can trade them in for a second one.

You can also win them in the lottery. In total, there’s only around 20 or so, so there isn’t that much variety that can be had when you have nine spots to fill up. If there were more, say 50 or 100, it would be a lot more fun to be able to pick and choose which ones you put on display and your room would feel way more personalized.

Scrolls on the other hand are plentiful, though unlike trinkets, there’s only one spot to hang a scroll. The main way to get scrolls is by hunting certain monsters a certain number of times and there’s more than 40 in total, making it pretty hard to decide which one you want to have on display.

I don’t really care much for the three alcove spots and out of all the ways to decorate your room, my favorite by far is the photo frames. Not only do I think is this the most fun of all four options, this is definitely the one that offers the most personal touch and no two people will have the same rooms because of this.

Monster Hunter Rise has a photo mode. It’s not as amazing as games like Horizon Zero Dawn though because all you can change while taking a photo and the camera placement and the zoom and after you take the photo, the only thing you can edit is one one of four filters. That’s all there is to it. It’s a bit lackluster but if you take a cool photo, you can put it up on display in your room so that you can always keep looking at the photo. There’s three frames in your room too so you can set up a nice little photo studio and that’s a really nice touch in my opinion.

While you’re in your room, you can also customize the music that plays while you’re in the village. You can specifically change which song plays in each part of the village and you unlock more songs to choose from the more that you play though when the game first begins, you only have four options to choose from.

Finally, when you get into the area of things like equipment, armor, skills, and weapons, customization takes on a whole new meaning with Monster Hunter because there’s just so many ways to customize your hunter and your companions. Weapons alone have a huge amount of customization options to choose from. In total there are 14 different weapons and each one can be upgraded and customized in multiple ways. The number of armor and skills then adds dozens of more customization options.

On top of that, there are also so many more ways to customize your Palamute and Palico, but I’m going to talk more about their customization in this next section.

IT’S RAINING CATS AND DOGS

I already talked about the creation of your own Palamutes and Palicos earlier in the review, but creating your own is just the beginning of this massive game mechanic. First of all, the two that you start out with are incredibly useful for a number of reasons. Palicos have been around forever and have always been able to help you fight in battle, heal you, and a bunch of other helpful tasks.

They still do that in Monster Hunter Rise, but now with Palamutes added into the mix, there’s so much more that your team can accomplish. Palamutes can do many of the things that Palicos can do, such as fighting and healing, but because of how big they are, you can also ride them as an amazing form of transportation. Not only is riding a Palamute faster than traveling on foot, but they can also run, resulting in much faster travel, which is so useful.

Getting around across large maps in a short amount of time is one thing but riding a Palamute is also a great way to dodge and evade enemy attacks or just straight up avoid enemies altogether. One thing that’s really cool is the fact that you can also ride your Palamute inside of the main village, not only out in the maps while you’re on quests. There aren’t that many games that let you ride, bike, or even run in your home area, so this is a nice touch.

Another really cool thing is that you can interact with them. On Twitter there’s this one account that I’m kind of fascinated by called CanYouPetTheDog. It’s literally an account that just talks about whether or not you can pet dogs in video games. That wasn’t really something that I thought about often in gaming before finding that account and afterwards, it became a detail in gaming that I would be happy to see. But in most games, if you can pet the dot, it’s usually a very simple animation.

But Monster Hunter Rise takes it to the next level with a full petting animation that lasts like 6 to 12 seconds and I’ve noticed three very different petting animations that also include different voice acting lines. You can also do other dog stuff like shaking their paw and feeding them, which also have their own unique and lengthy animations. I don’t often see games that put this much effort into companions and it’s an aspect of Monster Hunter Rise that I really enjoyed.

The hunting and petting aspects of Palamutes and Palicos aren’t even the biggest aspects of having a companion. There’s this massive system that allows you to acquire and use new Palamutes and Palicos. This eventually leads to a party system and you can even swap out which ones you want in your party. So you know how you spent an hour creating a Palamute from scratch at the start of the game? Well maybe after a few hours of playing you’ll find an even better one that can be recruited so you’ll have them joining you on your quests and leaving your best friend at home.

It’s a pretty cool party system because you can have up to 14 Palamutes and 14 Palicos in your roster. But when you’re out and about you can only have two travel with you so you get to pick very carefully. But what makes one Palamute or Palico better than another? It can’t just be based on looks right?

Well, each Palamute and Palico has a level and a number of stats and skills that can make some of them extremely overpowered or super useful. Once you have the one you really want to work with (Or 5, I won’t judge), you can also customize them in so many ways to make them way more overpowered or better looking.

For instance you can change what they’re wearing in a way. Earlier I mentioned how I thought it would be better if you could customize other clothing items when creating the Palamute. You kind of get that option later on in the form of equipment but it isn’t really what I was hoping for. There are three pieces of equipment that you can change. There’s a scarf that actually covers the bandana you spent so much time picking a color for, and you can also change their weapon and saddle.

For the Palamute, changing these three pieces of equipment serve both as a stat boost and a fashion statement, Changing their weapon can give them a bunch of different bonuses. For instance, it can increase the attack of melee attacks or even ranged attacks, give an elemental bonus, or even boost their defense. The scarf and saddle are both defensive pieces of equipment and not only do they provide a boost to their defense stat but also resistance to certain elements such as fire and ice.

For Palicos, the three pieces of equipment give the exact same boosts, but they are weapons, hoods, and garbs for the most part. For both Palamutes and Palicos, you also have the option of hiding the equipment. You can completely remove the equipment so they just look naked or you can have them completely covered in gear.

When it comes to acquiring new sets of equipment for your companion, there are so many that you can get your hands on. There are a bunch of equipment sets that each come with their own versions of each of the three pieces of equipment and there are so many to choose from. For instance, one of the equipment sets that you can give to a Palamute is called the Canyne Bone Set. In this set, the weapon is called Bone Hammer while the two pieces of armor are called Bone Helm and Bone Mail. Wearing the entire set would significantly increase all the stats of the Palamute that’s wearing it.

You basically have unlimited options of what sets you can use because of how many there are. Heck, you can only have 14 Palamutes or Palicos on your roster but there’s way more than that many equipment sets, so you’re going to end up skipping over many of the sets. In total there’s nearly 50 different equipment sets. There are 38 different equipment sets that a Palamute can wear. All 38 equipment sets can also be worn by Palicos, but they also have an additional 10 equipment sets that can’t be worn by Palamutes, which brings their total up to 48.

Another big aspect is the use of skills. Each Palamute has a bunch of skills that you can equip or unequal to make the perfect hunting machine. For instance, when I first started the game, my Palamute named Oscar had eight skills assigned. They were mostly basic ones, the first two were called Health Up and Attack Up, and those are self explanatory but there was one that prevented flinching and another prevented paralysis.

Palicos on the other hand have a similar set of skills but also a set of moves. My starter Palico named Zeus had a couple of the same skills as Oscar but had one that negated poison and another that increased the amount of health recovered when healing. In addition to the eight skills, Zeus also had five moves that were all support moves. The only one that was unlocked when the game started was called Felyne Silkbind, which fires projectiles at monsters to slow them down.

The only downside to their skills and moves is that they’re hindered by their levels. For instance, when I first started playing the game, none of the Palamutes skills were unlocked. The three entry level skills were Health Up, Attack Up, and negate Paralysis and they all required the Palamute to be level five to unlock. The rest of the skills required level 10, 15, or 20.

The same thing went for the Palicos skills too, though it was a bit easier with moves. The requirement for the Felyne Silkbind move was level one so that was already unlocked but the remaining four all required level 5 to 20.

You can also give your Palamute gear to hold. When I first started, Oscar was holding a chain and fang used for attacking but in addition to weapons, they can hold other kinds of gears such as scrolls that have different effects. For instance, there’s a Ghille Scroll that would temporarily hide the Palamute and there’s a Healing Scroll that slowly heals the Palamute.

One other big aspect of Palamutes and Palicos is that you can change their behavior so that they act differently when battling monsters. Palamutes only have three behavior options, which are Basic, Pincer, and Follow. For instance, Pincer would tell the Palamute to attack a monster from the other side that you’re attacking from, but Follow would keep him by your side while attacking.

Palicos on the other hand have five behaviors but all they do it change which monsters they target. For instance, you can have your Palico attack large mothers first and then small ones after those are taken care of, or have them attack only large monsters so once they finish attacking, they won’t even attack small ones. Or you can make them balanced so they just attack everyone.

The act of actually acquiring and getting your Palamutes and Palicos stronger is lots of fun too. When you’re in the buddy area, you have the option to hire to your hearts content. There are two people in the area for hiring, one for Palamutes and one for Palicos, and every time you start a new quest, a new batch will become available. This is a great way to build the perfect team because not only are you allowed to hire new friends, but you can scout them too.

If you scout, you can request certain characteristics and they’ll find one that meets your needs and bring them to you to hire. This basically brings you back to the character creation page. So you can create a brand new Palamute our Palico from scratch and the next time you visit this person, they will have brought them to you to hire. I’ve heard some people say this is a waste because if you wanted a very specific Palamute or Palico with very specific fur, pattern, eyes, and tail, that they would have just used that design when creating their first one.

But I don’t agree with that logic. Maybe when you were creating your first, there was another design that you were thinking of doing but chose a different one. Now you can acquire a Palamute or Palico with that design too. Or maybe you wanted one with one of the presets. Maybe you just wanted another version of the exact same one you already created, just with a different voice or name.

But doing normal hiring is the best way to get new friends. When you look to hire, there will be a wildly diverse selection of seven Palamutes or Palicos to choose from. Not only will they all have very different looks, but some will also be higher levels than others, and they will all have different skills too. In the case of Palicos, they will all have different moves too and different support types. Hiring is a great way to create the perfect and most balanced team, that you can get your hands on.

Maybe some monsters require different skills, so when you go to do one certain quest, you will swap out your favorite Palamute for one that has the required skills. Maybe you’re doing a quest that has a really tough boss battle, and for that specific quest, you need a Palico that is a healer instead of an Assistant. There are so many different aspects of a quest that can dictate what Palamute or Palico you should bring with you.

So the more you have in your roster, the more options you have to create the best team for each quest. The only downside is that higher level Palamutes and Palicos are going to cost you more money, but if you want to start with better stats right away, it’s worth it. Of course, you can also hire new friends purely based on the way they look or sound and that’s perfectly fine too. There might be one available for sale one day and it could be the weakest of them all but it just looks adorable to the point where you have to have it.

It might not serve you any purpose other than being a cool part of your collection, but since you are allowed to have up to 14 Palamutes and 14 Palicos at any one time in your roster, it’s very possible to have a few that are just there for their designs and nothing else. I have like five on my team that are just for show because I haven’t even gotten to the point yet where I have a ton that are strictly for battle.

The Buddy Area also has a place to train called the Dojo. Here, you can leave your Palamutes and Palicos to train and they will gain experience to boost up their levels and stats. The only thing is that it costs points to train them, and you can’t train the ones that are in your active party, but it’s very much like a Pokemon Day Care. You leave them there, you leave for a while, and they’re stronger when you get back.

There’s also a ton of small details that pertain to depth that I’m just not even going to talk about because we’d be here all day. There’s literally dozens of other features, techniques, and gameplay mechanics that make the game more fun or easier and you’ll have to find the rest out on your own.

This is Monster Hunter that we’re talking about, a series that’s known for insane amount of depth. According to howlongtobeat, it took people more than 500 hours to do everything there is to do in Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate, so you know you’re going to get a lot of content out of Monster Hunter Rise. As a result, depth gets a perfect 10 out of 10 from me.

DIFFICULTY: 7

The Monster Hunter series has never been easy honestly. If you’re a professional Monster Hunter player, then you know what you’re doing and you won’t find the game to be too difficult. But if you’re a newcomer, a casual player, or even a good player, the game is going to be a challenge for you at times because you’re going to have lots of trouble at least half the time. Heck, the first time I played, I think I fainted twice the first time that I did the free exploration quest, and they were both to small monsters. It was a small monster that resembled a boar and I got like three hits in and then it hit me once and took out like 30 percent of my health.

In the end I got like 10 to 12 hits in that barely did anything and yet I fainted after being hit like three or four times. The monsters have lots of health, lots of defense, and definitely lots of attack so no matter how little of a monster you’re facing, you need to be very careful. Even if there’s a small monster that doesn’t do that much damage, you might have to hit them a handful of times to kill them. If you have to get a lot of hits in, that’s going to take a few extra seconds than you would think a small monster would require. But not only is that a few extra seconds wasted, that’s also a few extra seconds of needing to defend.

So not only is it taking a while to kill them, but you’ll be more susceptible to taking damage the longer you’re battling, even if they’re weak monsters. Not only that, but monsters can be a pain if they knock you down. There were so many times where a monster would knock me down, but it would take so long to get back up that before I was even up, the monster would attack me again and send me flying and I would be sprawled out on the ground again. It’s probably rare, but there was one time where I was knocked down four times in a row without being able to stand up and that was a very infuriating 40 or so seconds.

Oh, and don’t even get me started on the big monsters. Those are going to take a long time to kill, you might have to hit them dozens of times and that’s all while evading as much as you possibly can because one of the really big monsters can probably kill you in two or three hits easily, especially if they knock you down and it takes a few seconds to get back up. As a result, the game is going to take a lot of patience. You’re going to get knocked down a lot and you’re going to faint dozens, if not hundreds of times. But you’re going to keep getting back up and fighting until you kill them. Yes, it’s very very hard, but if you’re a fan of the series then the reward is worth it.

OVERALL: 8.6/10

Monster Hunter Rise is a classic Monster Hunter game at its core with lots of cool new features that make it better than ever. I’ve been a big fan of the series for a very long time and I’m very excited with how the series has turned out these last few years, with Rise having played a big role in my excitement. I 100 percent think that the game is well worth the full price, especially if you’re a fan of the series, and I’ve already seen it go on sale for as low as $45 over the summer, which turned the game into a huge deal.

If you like Monster Hunter and you have a switch, then you really should be checking this game out. You can easily get 100 hours out of the game and you’ll have so much fun with all of the different customization options. I just love the game and my grade for it will be an 8.6 out of 10.
Monster Hunter is one of my four most favorite game franchises of all time so when it was announced that there was going to be a new game that was originally designed with the Switch in mind, I was really happy. I was also kind of happy for Monster Hunter Stories 2, but I was really excited for Rise and what a Switch Native Monster Hunter game would bring to the table. I've been a big fan of the series ever since I started playing the games on the PSP many years ago so I knew I had to get my hands on this one.

I pre ordered the game from Best Buy because it was supposed to come with a free steelbook. But, I remember going to pick it up and they wouldn't give me the steelbook. I was so disappointed that I ended up getting a refund and going to a different store to buy just the game by itself. I honestly don't even remember why I even got into the series in the first place, but I'm glad I did, especially after what the franchise has been putting out these last few years with Rise being one of the great ones.

GRAPHICS: 9/10

Monster Hunter Rise has definitely had its far share of graphical improvements over the years, and I am all for them. When I first played Monster Hunter, it was on the PSP and I fell in love with the games very quickly, but the graphics were very different back then. With Rise, the visuals are easily ten times better because the environments are all better, as are the character models, animations, and the amount of color and detail.

When it comes to the graphics, the one thing that I can’t seem to give enough praise too is the seamless transitions between worlds. Even the older games were a bit ambitious when it came to their designs, level designs, and the large scale of their worlds. As a result, it took forever to load into different parts of each world. That was the only aspect of the old games that I didn’t really like but the games were so good in all the other aspects that I had to give them a pass for these issues.

In the older games, each quest world was usually broken down into like seven to nine smaller areas for you to roam and explore while collecting items and fighting off monsters. The areas had so much going on that every time you entered into a new area, you would enter a load screen until the new area could be rendered in. IF I remember correctly, the loading on the older games was only around 10 to 15 seconds but it would happen a lot.

Every time you went to a new area, you had to let that area render in. If you chased a monster and they ran into a new area, you had to run after them and fight them there. Sometimes they would turn around and run back and you just lost even more time since you’d have to follow them back to the old area. Those seconds really started to add up. The older games were so graphical and big in some areas that a single one hour quest could have resulted in a couple minutes worth of just loading because of how much the game was trying to show at once.

But you don’t get that at all with Monster Hunter Rise. Instead of having large worlds that are broken into a bunch of small areas that were separated by load screens, the developers were able to build a massive open world map for each area that has all the areas connected as one with no load screens and a seamless transition between each one. This is a feature that the series only added recently in Monster Hunter World but it’s something that really helps the game look much better for a couple reasons.

For starters, having a seamless transition between areas of a world looks a lot better than running into invisible walls. Not only that, but it basically forced the developers to put more effort into world designing, which in turn caused the game to be more beautiful than it already is. For instance, in some of the older games, when you hit the invisible wall or the trigger that sends you to the next world, there’s always more space in front of you. You’re still able to see where your path goes further ahead and what’s there since it’s still an open space but developers don’t have to put as much detail into what’s behind the playable area.

If the player can’t reach those areas and it’s basically static background images at this point, so the developers don’t have to make full 3D detailed images in that part of the environment. But with a seamless, open world environment where the player can reach so much more, the developers need to put in a lot more detail to the surrounding area since they can now see more. This allowed for the games to be way more beautiful than in older games, and it does in fact show, with worlds being full of even more detail, color, and life than they would have been in the past.

It’s also a great testament to how powerful of a console the Switch is. Other than that, the next big aspect of graphics to talk about would be the animations. Movement and animation is obviously a lot more smooth and fluid than in previous games and that was honestly something that surprised me a little bit. I was just a little bit taken aback when I was running around the map at how good the controls were. Back in the day, some aspects of movement felt a little clunky and less responsive. Now, your hunter responds even quicker which allows for more fluid combat and the animations of those around you are great too.

For instance, you have two companions that follow you around everywhere. They’re called Palamutes and Palicos, but I’ll get into them more later. They follow you around, assist you in battle, and can even be ridden, and the animations for them are also really good. I remember just running around the world and watching them to see what they did and how they looked, and it wasn’t bad. From a visual standpoint, their movement and action animations looked pretty good and their AI in terms of doing different actions wasn’t bad either.

The animations of other characters was pretty good too. The design and movement of monsters was overall really good. Many of the monsters looked terrifying and had a crazy amount of detail. But beyond that, their movement looked good for the most part and like the companions, their AI wasn’t bad either.In game cutscenes aren’t bad either. There aren’t fully animated ones like in most other games but in these cutscenes, characters do a lot more movement and there’s a lot of animating happening, which make some of them really come to life.

Other than that, the visuals of just the world itself are amazing as well. There’s so much more detail put into the ground, water, cliffs, tree, and sky that make each world look really good. There’s a great amount of color and detail that make each are stand out. Each world looks beautiful and when you couple that with all the different aspects that I just mentioned, it makes for one really good looking game that was a perfect fir for the Switch. My grade for graphics is going to be a 9 out of 10.

SOUND: 8/10

Monster Hunter Rise does have a decent does have a decent amount of content when it comes to sound, and for the most part, it sounds like any other Monster Hunter game, with a bunch of tweaks here and there. The weakest link in my opinion would be the generic game sounds.

To be fair, it wouldn’t be a Monster Hunter game if it didn’t have those Monster Hunter sounds that are engraved into your brain if you’ve played before. All the games have very similar or identical sounds that play in places like menus or when you’re doing certain actions and those kind of become iconic after a while if you play long enough. It’s not amazing though and if you’re new to the series, then you won’t care for it too much either. The combat sounds are good too and the standard Palamute and Palico noises are a nice addition to the games feel.

The only thing that I personally didn’t care for when it came to sound was the selection of voice actors. Don’t get me wrong, the voice actors that were used all did a great job, but I didn’t have the same level of immersion or excitement that I had with other games. Usually sound ends up being my most favorite aspect of a game because there’s either a big and epic soundtrack or a voice team that I get excited by. For instance, I was never even going to play Scarlet Nexus if one of my favorite voice actors wasn’t the lead because I wouldn’t have even known about how good the game was if it wasn’t for them talking about it.

But also if I don’t recognize any of the voices or people behind them, it feels less personal in a way and hearing them doesn’t hype you up as much as it would have. There’s lots of games where I get excited because of certain voices and 90 percent of the time they aren’t even big actors. But, most of the time I end up being very immersed in the dialogue and focusing on every word and the emotion if I already know what that actor is capable of doing.

If it’s just a random voice cast, even if they might be big actors, I usually just casually listen and just focus on the text and what’s being said rather than the energy and emotion. But for the most part, the actors still did a great job and there were three names that I did recognize, but I would have been way more immersed in the dialogue if there was more from the voice team or if was already a fan of the actors. Giving the hunter their own voice lines is a nice touch though too and the return of the Monster Hunter language and ability to listen to the Japanese voices is always welcome too.

Lastly you have the music, which I would say is the best aspect of Monster Hunter Rise’s sound department. The overall soundtrack is pretty massive with more than 100 total tracks that add up to more than four hours of tunes. I’m a really big fan of when games have a lot of music and a four hour soundtrack is definitely on the hefty side of things. There are lots of songs with lyrics too and a bunch of really good themes. There weren’t that many that really stood out to me but many of the songs were full of energy and very heavily Japanese inspired, much like the rest of the game, which hasn’t always been a big theme in the games.

The main composer for the game was Red Uratani, who’s been doing the music for Monster Hunter for a decade. He did the soundtrack for Monster Hunter 3 and 4 along with Atelier Ryza 2 and some other Monster Hunter projects. A couple other series veterans have also worked on the soundtrack and together made this massive soundtrack. It’s also possible to get more music (and voices) through DLC. There was one DLC pack released back in May that added a couple new voices and a handful of tracks.

Monster Hunter Rise also has the most comprehensive sound options that I have ever seen in a game, and I really mean it. In my opinion, if a game uses voices, there is a correct way to do sound options. There should be three sliders to change the volumes, one for music, one for voices, and one for regular game and menu sounds. Obviously if a game doesn’t have voices, then there should realistically be two options. If a voiced game has less than three options, then I usually think it has bad sound design because sometimes a game like that will put music and sounds together into one slider. That does not work, and it makes the game sound really bad at times.

Monster Hunter Rise is a voiced game but it does not have three volume options. It has FIVE. I had no idea that this much detail in sound design was even possible. The music option is normal but the voice option and sound option were wach broken down into two separate sub options. For voices, there’s one slider to control the volume of your character’s voice while there’s another to control the volume of all NPC voices. For sound, there’s one that controls sound effects while there’s one that controls menus. This is a brilliant level of detail that I’ve never seen in a game before and it literally gives you full control over what you can and can’t hear and how loud or quiet every little thing is.

For the most part, the sound aspect is pretty big but most of my value for this area comes from the music section. The soundtrack is massive and has a bunch of good songs, plus lots of singing too. If you don’t care about who’s voicing the characters then you also won’t be judging the same way that I do. But overall, I still really liked the sound and it gets an 8 out of 10 from me.

ADDICTIVENESS: 8/10

There’s so much fun stuff to do in Monster Hunter Rise that it’s going to take a while before you get bored. The obvious thing that you’re going to want to do is slay monsters. Many of the quests and missions are going to take you quite some time to complete and will find you exploring all over the given map either fighting monsters, gathering items, or doing other stuff.

The gameplay is fun and there are so many quests for you take on. For instance you have village quests which is where you would find quests that have a difficulty rank attached to them. Once you complete certain key quests, you will be able to undertake special urgent quests that are much harder and completing those quests will upgrade your rank and will progress the story and allow you to take on harder quests and visit new areas.

There’s also a bunch of optional side quests that you can take on and you can complete these as many times as you like if you want to battle monsters or gather ingredients and resources. My favorite quest is the Expedition Tour, which is under the Village quests. This is basically a free play quest where you can just visit an area and explore it freely. You don’t get any rewards for completing certain things but there’s no time limit and you can collect and battle as much as you like.

The combat is lots of fun too, even if it can be very hard at times. The only problem is that it can be slow at times and aiming can be hard too. There’s been plenty of times where I would swing my sword and miss, and then I would be facing the wrong direction and have to spend a few seconds lining up my attack again and if that one missed too, it would just create a chain reaction of pain. But once you get the hang of it, it becomes just so much fun. Just exploring each area is lots of fun, even if it might only take you like five to ten minutes to fully explore the whole place while riding.

You also have a wirebug mechanic that’s a new feature added to this game that kind of let’s you fly/grapple across the air for short distances. It’s a fun mechanic that can make exploring and travelling more fun.

You also have a bunch of reasons to keep playing over and over. Maybe you need certain materials and resources, so you keep doing the free mode over and over to fight for monster parts or together herbs and other stuff. Maybe you need a lot of money or Nakura points, so you keep going back to do some of the side quests. Or maybe you just need to let off some steam and you want to fight monster after monster, so you keep going in to destroy the little guys or to try to take down the big guys. In the single player mode, there’s so many reasons for you to keep entering each world and play for hours.

But on top of that, you have the online mode, which has been a staple of the Monster Hunter series for years. You can take on quests with some friends or with a bunch of random strangers around the world. Most of the time this is going to make each quest a lot easier and it can make it more fun as well. I’m not personally a fan of the slow combat speed and kind of unresponsive controls when battling. If the combat was a lot more fluid, I would have had even more fun, but I still think the game is tons of fun and will keep you busy for many hours, so my grade for addictiveness is going to be an 8 out of 10.

STORY: 8/10

Monster Hunter Rise begins like any other game in the series. You’re a hunter, and you’re in a village. Well, technically you’re not a hunter yet. When you first start playing you’re notified that you were just accepted as a hunter and you’re given the tour of your village as if you just moved there when you were probably there all your life.

The story is honestly no different than any other in the series. You’re just given a bunch of context and missions to complete to progress the story but all of the main ones will either be to find stuff or to kill certain monsters. One thing that happens is that right when you start, you’re told by the village leader of a big event that nearly wiped out the village fifty years ago and that they think the same event is going to happen again shortly. Many of the quests that you take is in an effort to strengthen yourself so that you would be prepared to fight and save the village if that day ever comes.

Eventually you learn that this calamity isn’t only a real thing that happened in the past, but it is in fact going to happen again and a large chunk of the game is about protecting the village from hordes of monsters that are trying to enter the village. This is the kind of game where you focus on the gameplay and the actual RPG elements and monsters, not the story, but the story is pretty good and a decent size too. Gets an 8 out of 10 from me.

DEPTH: 10/10

Monster Hunter is just one of those games that has a ton of things going on. People wouldn’t have been able to play Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate for 700 hours if there wasn’t a lot to do. First of all, the maps themselves have a ton to offer you. There’s a decent number of levels to explore, each with a lot of ground to cover. Across each map there’s a large number of monsters to discover and kill, both large and small. There’s also so many things for you to find across each map. There’s stuff that you can harvest off of the monsters after you kill them, there’s tons of resources that you can find lying on the ground, and there’s even a bunch of resources that you can mind. Beyond that, there’s also lots of stuff that you can buy and craft.

But it’s all light in comparison to all of the options that you have to customize. Monster Hunter Rise is easily one of the biggest games that I have ever seen when it comes to customizing your character or customizing your weapons and other gear. It’s just insane.

CUSTOMIZATION

Oh boy, when it comes to customization, there sure is a lot to offer in Monster Hunter Rise. The first big aspect of customization is the ability to create your own character, and by big, I mean massive. It’s one of the biggest character creation systems that I’ve ever seen. But there’s also a small issue that I found with the creation section.

Don’t get me wrong, I really like the amount of ways that you can customize your character, but it seems like it’s just way too confusing of a system. I ended up spending close to an hour messing around in the customization page because it was mostly a lot of trial and error and going back to previous pages to try something new.

Take my experience for example. I chose male and then I was met with 10 options for a character type. Ten didn’t seem like that great of a variety but I found three that I liked and I narrowed it down to the one that I ended up choosing. Once you pick the base, you’re given a bunch of options to choose from including Basic Settings. But once you choose basic settings, it gave me another five face types which would drastically change the face and hair of the character that I picked.

Oh boy do I mean drastic too, these were changes that I thought would have been on the previous page. At first you’d think that since you already picked the character type, the face would only change things like the expression, but no, it further changed everything about the character. The new options would change the entire look of their face, their hairstyle, and even the color of their skin.

So, I realized that I had to go back and manually check the basic options for each of the ten base character designs and I just thought that was a lot of work. This meant there were at the time fifty different character designs to choose from but you had to choose one of ten options in order to see the remaining 40. I personally think it would have been a lot easier to just have all the possible options on one page instead of having to go back and forth between pages.

But then there’s also an option to change the hairstyle individually, but not really. The only option for hairstyle is to randomly get one, so you aren’t allowed to just pick the one you like. You have to keep pressing the random button until the one you like appears. But this also kind of defeats the purpose of having the hairstyle change with each of the 50 base character designs if you were going to eventually be given the option to change your hairstyle. This originally means you probably spent some time investing in character design based on hair only to find out that it didn’t matter because you could have chosen a body type you wanted and then mess with the hair later.

The customization option really tricks you. The first page gives you only ten body types to choose from and then the Basic settings page multiplies that to 50, then allows you to change your hairstyle, and then lets you pick any age you want between 0 and 100. I spent a lot of time picking the character that was closest to the one that I wanted and then when I realized how customizable it is, I completely gave up on that character to start building my own. But even then, I had to keep going back and forth between the two pages until I was able to find one that I really wanted.

I must have spent 30 minutes or more just getting the face right. In total just between character design, hairstyle, and age grouping, I think there must be at least 2,000 different base character designs per gender. Then once you get past Basic settings, you’re introduced to the advanced settings which can let you throw everything you’ve just done out the window because you basically just picked one out of 2,000 possible options and yet the next page lets you change everything else.

The Advanced Settings page has 11 options for you to work with including face shape, skin, hairstyle, eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth, facial hair, three types of makeup. When I read hairstyle for the first time, I nearly facepalmed. I clicked on it and sure enough there were 23 different hairstyles to choose from. Can you tell me what’s the point in picking pre determined character designs based on hairstyles, then allowing you to randomly cycle through hairstyles, and then giving you the option to manually change your hairstyle? That just seems way too excessive don’t you think?

Not only that but you can also change the color of your hair too. Here I was thinking thinking some of the random hairstyles looked good but I wouldn’t pick them because I didn’t like the color. So after half an hour of going through hundreds of possible options, I literally started from scratch all over again trying to create the perfect character. Also, when it comes to hair color, there’s a ton of options. There’s 50 color presets to choose from but there’s also the ability to change the color manually using a hue slider which technically gives 360 different options but many are unnoticeable from the next.

Many games give that kind of color variety with RGB sliders, but Monster Hunter Rise also allows you to directly change the saturation and contrast of the chosen hue which give you so many more hair colors. That’s all great and all but if you find out about all the customization options after going through hundreds of random presets, it might turn out to be just a giant waste of time.

Honestly you should probably just entirely skip the base presets and the Basic Settings. Just pick a random base one and then go straight to the Advanced Settings to create your own character however you want. I wish I knew that before I invested so much time looking at hundreds of preset characters.

When it comes to the Advanced Settings, those 11 things that you can change quickly become literally millions of options. For instance, the first thing that you can customize is face shape and that alone has so many different things to choose from. Within the face shape page you can change aspects of your cheek size, chin length, chin position, chin width, and jaw width. Each of these options has a slider that you can change between 0 and 100 which means 101 possible options for each one.

Like I said before, many of the changes are so different from the next one that many would be unnoticeable. So, I grouped each slider into about ten different sections that are different enough from each other. This means that in just the face shape section, there are 100,000 different possible faces that you can create that use different enough features. (Technically it’s more than 10 billion if you’re very picky with each individual number along the slider.

Then you can pick your skin color. There are four presets but you can manually pick a spot on the color palette which uses a grid of 256 by 256 spots which means there are 65,536 unique skin colors to choose from which is insane and many of them actually look different from each other. Just imagine choosing between 10 billion data options for face shape and then multiplying that by 65,000 skin color options. There might only be a couple million options that actually look different from one another but the fact that you are technologically allowed to pick between trillions and trillions of data is insane.

But color isn’t the only thing when it comes to skin. You then pick your age and muscle definition which are both between 0 and 100. Then you have eyes and eyebrows. There’s 17 eyebrow and a million eyebrow colors to choose from and then you get to pick brow depth, width, and position with more than 100 options for each. For eyes, you get to choose upper eyelids, lower eyelids, outer eye position, eye depth, eye width, eye position, and eye size. Oh and you guessed it, each uses a slider between 0 and 100 so just eyes alone gives you millions of possible looks.

But that’s not all because you can change your eye color to one of thousands of options and you can even have one eye be a different color than the other to added even more possibilities. Then, on top of that you can change your eyelash length and color. Then, you start the whole thing over again with your nose. You get to change everything for nose height, position, bridge height, tip position, bridge width, nostril width, and nostril position. This alone gives gives you millions more customization options.

Then the mouth section let’s you change your mouth protrusion, width, position, corners position, and lip thickness. That’s pretty much it for the structure of your face. It’s literally trillions of possible options and that’s on the simpler side of the scale. Once you’re done with the structure, you can work on facial hair. In total there’s 19 options for facial hair and then of course a ton of color options.

Between all those options, there’s a ton of choices and so many possibilities but that’s not There are three different makeup options and they are all layered. Makeup 1 is for the lower layer, Makeup 2 is for the middle layers dn Makeup 3 is for the upper layer. So for instance if there was one markup design that you like, you can put that on one layer and then put another makeup layer on top of it so that it stacks and creates a super unique design.

The number of options for each layer is also really insane. There are 30 different makeup designs to choose from and for each one, you can choose the vertical position, horizontal position, vertical size, and horizontal size. That alone gives each of the 30 makeup designs 100 million different combinations of size and position. On top of that, you can change the color of the makeup and you can also change the level of glossiness, metalicness, luminosity, and transparency.

So after you pick one of 3 billion design, position, size combinations, you can further compound that by another 50 billion color, shade, and brightness levels. But wait, that’s just for one design. If you want to add another makeup or even two more, you can further stack on top of the one that you just created and make something that’s literally one of a kind. AND THAT’S JUST ADVANCED SETTINGS. You still have to do clothing and voice.

Fortunately clothing doesn’t have that many options to choose from. There’s only four clothing options to choose from and then millions of color combinations. For voice, there’s 20 different options to choose from. The game even acknowledges how many choices there are so there’s a page called All Settings where you can see every single option and what data value you chose.

After I spent like 40 minutes in total trying to pick a character based on the presets, I started working on character from scratch and probably spent nearly two hours working on somebody I liked. It was probably the most time that I ever spent creating a character. One cool thing is that you’re allowed to save the character design that you just created as a preset and there’s five save spots for character design. So, for all future endeavors, if you wanted to use the same character and not have to spend hours trying to recreate them, you can just pick the preset that you saved. Or you can also create a bunch of other characters and have them all saved for future use.

All in all, that was literally quadrillions upon quadrillions of different customization options and that was only in the character creation stage before you even start the game. There’s still so much more to customization, after all, this is a Monster Hunter game.I actually had a little sense of dread after I clicked the confirm button and was sent to a brand new character creation page for your pet companion.

COMPANION CREATION

In Monster Hunter Rise, you get a pet companion called a Palamute, which is basically Monster Hunters equivalent of a dog. Before playing the game, I knew that Palamutes were in the game but I had no idea that you got the chance to create yours from scratch. After spending two hours creating my character and then realizing that I also had to create my sidekick made me quit. I could have just chose one of the presets but I didn’t want to and set that aside for another day because of how much effort creating my hunter was.

In some areas, customizing my Palamute took even more effort and there were more options. The six main options for Palamute customization are Coat, Eyes, Ears, Tail, Clothing, and Voice. Coat alone has so many different options to choose from. Coat has five different fur patterns to choose from and the option to change the base fur color to one of thousands of colors. But on top of that, you can change the colors of each pattern area.

There are three different sections that you can change the color of, not including the base fur. So in theory your Palamutes coat can have different patterns that are four different colors with a wild combination of designs. The eyes section gives you six different types to choose from and the ability to choose from thousands of eye colors. Just like with the hunter, you can make it so that the eyes of your Palamute are two different colors. I didn’t like the way it looked on the hunter but I liked it way more with the Palamute designs.

The rest are pretty simple and straightforward options. There are five ear designs and four tail designs to choose from. Mix those nine options with the billions of fur, pattern, eye, and color combinations and you have trillions of more ways to customize your Palamute. At the time, I was a bit disappointed with the clothing and voice options for your Palamute.

For clothing, the only thing that you could customize was the color. Each Palamute has a bandana like clothing item around their necks. You can’t choose to remove it, you can’t swap it out for a different piece of clothing, and you can’t even change the design that’s on it. The only thing you could do is change the color and I thought it would have been cool with more items for them to wear but more on that later.

For voice, there was only three options to choose from but you could also change the pitch between low, normal, and high which allowed for nine different voice possibilities.i spent a lot less time creating my Palamute than I did with my hunter but I had a lot more fun creating an adorable puppy.

It took me nearly three hours but I was able to create a hunter and Palamute that I was extremely happy with and I was ready to start playing the game. But I guess the game wasn’t ready for me to because of course there’s more. I had to create a Palico too. Palicos are the Monster Hunter equivalents of cats and have been around forever while Palamutes were just introduced in this game.

Fortunately I didn’t really care for the Palico’s as much as I cared for the Palamutes so I didn’t spend too much time on creating mine. Creating a Palico is pretty much the same as creating a Palamute. There’s a fur pattern, fur color, and then changing the color of three additional patterns. Then, you move on to eyes, ears, tails, clothing, and voices. The Palico’s had actual clothing versus just a bandana around their neck and the exact same number of options to choose from for eyes, ears, tails, and voices.

The only different thing for Palico’s is that you also get to choose a support type for them. There’s five to choose from which include Healer, Gathering, Assisting, Fighting, and Bombarding. The only issue is that since I just started the game and hadn’t even gotten to play yet, I had no way to tell which one I would really want yet. At the time I thought gathering would be pretty useful since collecting items is a huge part of Monster Hunter games but some of the others felt like they could be very useful like fighting and assisting.

But it was finally over after I finished creating my Palico. Three and a half hours of customization and I was finally ready to play the game. But of course, all that was just customization within the character creation stage, there was still much more later on.

Roughly an hour into the game, you’re given a Cahoot as a pet, which is just an owl. At the start, all you can do is change the color of them but later on you unlock more clothing options for them to wear which is a nice touch.

YOU ARE WHAT YOU LIVE IN

I don’t remember if the older Monster Hunter games had a ton of customization options when it came to changing up the look of your room/house. There are a lot of customization options that you can do to the inside of your room but they are very limited to the location of what’s being used and what can be placed there.

In total you have one spot for a hanging scroll, nine spots for little trinkets on what looks like a bookshelf, three spots for alcoves, and three spots where there are photo frames. Trinkets are kind of like little trophies or medals for accomplishments. It’s a shame though that there aren’t that many trinkets to acquire to begin with. The main way is by collecting relic records in each map. If you collect five in a map, you can trade them in for one trinket to put on display and if you collect all that are in a map, you can trade them in for a second one.

You can also win them in the lottery. In total, there’s only around 20 or so, so there isn’t that much variety that can be had when you have nine spots to fill up. If there were more, say 50 or 100, it would be a lot more fun to be able to pick and choose which ones you put on display and your room would feel way more personalized.

Scrolls on the other hand are plentiful, though unlike trinkets, there’s only one spot to hang a scroll. The main way to get scrolls is by hunting certain monsters a certain number of times and there’s more than 40 in total, making it pretty hard to decide which one you want to have on display.

I don’t really care much for the three alcove spots and out of all the ways to decorate your room, my favorite by far is the photo frames. Not only do I think is this the most fun of all four options, this is definitely the one that offers the most personal touch and no two people will have the same rooms because of this.

Monster Hunter Rise has a photo mode. It’s not as amazing as games like Horizon Zero Dawn though because all you can change while taking a photo and the camera placement and the zoom and after you take the photo, the only thing you can edit is one one of four filters. That’s all there is to it. It’s a bit lackluster but if you take a cool photo, you can put it up on display in your room so that you can always keep looking at the photo. There’s three frames in your room too so you can set up a nice little photo studio and that’s a really nice touch in my opinion.

While you’re in your room, you can also customize the music that plays while you’re in the village. You can specifically change which song plays in each part of the village and you unlock more songs to choose from the more that you play though when the game first begins, you only have four options to choose from.

Finally, when you get into the area of things like equipment, armor, skills, and weapons, customization takes on a whole new meaning with Monster Hunter because there’s just so many ways to customize your hunter and your companions. Weapons alone have a huge amount of customization options to choose from. In total there are 14 different weapons and each one can be upgraded and customized in multiple ways. The number of armor and skills then adds dozens of more customization options.

On top of that, there are also so many more ways to customize your Palamute and Palico, but I’m going to talk more about their customization in this next section.

IT’S RAINING CATS AND DOGS

I already talked about the creation of your own Palamutes and Palicos earlier in the review, but creating your own is just the beginning of this massive game mechanic. First of all, the two that you start out with are incredibly useful for a number of reasons. Palicos have been around forever and have always been able to help you fight in battle, heal you, and a bunch of other helpful tasks.

They still do that in Monster Hunter Rise, but now with Palamutes added into the mix, there’s so much more that your team can accomplish. Palamutes can do many of the things that Palicos can do, such as fighting and healing, but because of how big they are, you can also ride them as an amazing form of transportation. Not only is riding a Palamute faster than traveling on foot, but they can also run, resulting in much faster travel, which is so useful.

Getting around across large maps in a short amount of time is one thing but riding a Palamute is also a great way to dodge and evade enemy attacks or just straight up avoid enemies altogether. One thing that’s really cool is the fact that you can also ride your Palamute inside of the main village, not only out in the maps while you’re on quests. There aren’t that many games that let you ride, bike, or even run in your home area, so this is a nice touch.

Another really cool thing is that you can interact with them. On Twitter there’s this one account that I’m kind of fascinated by called CanYouPetTheDog. It’s literally an account that just talks about whether or not you can pet dogs in video games. That wasn’t really something that I thought about often in gaming before finding that account and afterwards, it became a detail in gaming that I would be happy to see. But in most games, if you can pet the dot, it’s usually a very simple animation.

But Monster Hunter Rise takes it to the next level with a full petting animation that lasts like 6 to 12 seconds and I’ve noticed three very different petting animations that also include different voice acting lines. You can also do other dog stuff like shaking their paw and feeding them, which also have their own unique and lengthy animations. I don’t often see games that put this much effort into companions and it’s an aspect of Monster Hunter Rise that I really enjoyed.

The hunting and petting aspects of Palamutes and Palicos aren’t even the biggest aspects of having a companion. There’s this massive system that allows you to acquire and use new Palamutes and Palicos. This eventually leads to a party system and you can even swap out which ones you want in your party. So you know how you spent an hour creating a Palamute from scratch at the start of the game? Well maybe after a few hours of playing you’ll find an even better one that can be recruited so you’ll have them joining you on your quests and leaving your best friend at home.

It’s a pretty cool party system because you can have up to 14 Palamutes and 14 Palicos in your roster. But when you’re out and about you can only have two travel with you so you get to pick very carefully. But what makes one Palamute or Palico better than another? It can’t just be based on looks right?

Well, each Palamute and Palico has a level and a number of stats and skills that can make some of them extremely overpowered or super useful. Once you have the one you really want to work with (Or 5, I won’t judge), you can also customize them in so many ways to make them way more overpowered or better looking.

For instance you can change what they’re wearing in a way. Earlier I mentioned how I thought it would be better if you could customize other clothing items when creating the Palamute. You kind of get that option later on in the form of equipment but it isn’t really what I was hoping for. There are three pieces of equipment that you can change. There’s a scarf that actually covers the bandana you spent so much time picking a color for, and you can also change their weapon and saddle.

For the Palamute, changing these three pieces of equipment serve both as a stat boost and a fashion statement, Changing their weapon can give them a bunch of different bonuses. For instance, it can increase the attack of melee attacks or even ranged attacks, give an elemental bonus, or even boost their defense. The scarf and saddle are both defensive pieces of equipment and not only do they provide a boost to their defense stat but also resistance to certain elements such as fire and ice.

For Palicos, the three pieces of equipment give the exact same boosts, but they are weapons, hoods, and garbs for the most part. For both Palamutes and Palicos, you also have the option of hiding the equipment. You can completely remove the equipment so they just look naked or you can have them completely covered in gear.

When it comes to acquiring new sets of equipment for your companion, there are so many that you can get your hands on. There are a bunch of equipment sets that each come with their own versions of each of the three pieces of equipment and there are so many to choose from. For instance, one of the equipment sets that you can give to a Palamute is called the Canyne Bone Set. In this set, the weapon is called Bone Hammer while the two pieces of armor are called Bone Helm and Bone Mail. Wearing the entire set would significantly increase all the stats of the Palamute that’s wearing it.

You basically have unlimited options of what sets you can use because of how many there are. Heck, you can only have 14 Palamutes or Palicos on your roster but there’s way more than that many equipment sets, so you’re going to end up skipping over many of the sets. In total there’s nearly 50 different equipment sets. There are 38 different equipment sets that a Palamute can wear. All 38 equipment sets can also be worn by Palicos, but they also have an additional 10 equipment sets that can’t be worn by Palamutes, which brings their total up to 48.

Another big aspect is the use of skills. Each Palamute has a bunch of skills that you can equip or unequal to make the perfect hunting machine. For instance, when I first started the game, my Palamute named Oscar had eight skills assigned. They were mostly basic ones, the first two were called Health Up and Attack Up, and those are self explanatory but there was one that prevented flinching and another prevented paralysis.

Palicos on the other hand have a similar set of skills but also a set of moves. My starter Palico named Zeus had a couple of the same skills as Oscar but had one that negated poison and another that increased the amount of health recovered when healing. In addition to the eight skills, Zeus also had five moves that were all support moves. The only one that was unlocked when the game started was called Felyne Silkbind, which fires projectiles at monsters to slow them down.

The only downside to their skills and moves is that they’re hindered by their levels. For instance, when I first started playing the game, none of the Palamutes skills were unlocked. The three entry level skills were Health Up, Attack Up, and negate Paralysis and they all required the Palamute to be level five to unlock. The rest of the skills required level 10, 15, or 20.

The same thing went for the Palicos skills too, though it was a bit easier with moves. The requirement for the Felyne Silkbind move was level one so that was already unlocked but the remaining four all required level 5 to 20.

You can also give your Palamute gear to hold. When I first started, Oscar was holding a chain and fang used for attacking but in addition to weapons, they can hold other kinds of gears such as scrolls that have different effects. For instance, there’s a Ghille Scroll that would temporarily hide the Palamute and there’s a Healing Scroll that slowly heals the Palamute.

One other big aspect of Palamutes and Palicos is that you can change their behavior so that they act differently when battling monsters. Palamutes only have three behavior options, which are Basic, Pincer, and Follow. For instance, Pincer would tell the Palamute to attack a monster from the other side that you’re attacking from, but Follow would keep him by your side while attacking.

Palicos on the other hand have five behaviors but all they do it change which monsters they target. For instance, you can have your Palico attack large mothers first and then small ones after those are taken care of, or have them attack only large monsters so once they finish attacking, they won’t even attack small ones. Or you can make them balanced so they just attack everyone.

The act of actually acquiring and getting your Palamutes and Palicos stronger is lots of fun too. When you’re in the buddy area, you have the option to hire to your hearts content. There are two people in the area for hiring, one for Palamutes and one for Palicos, and every time you start a new quest, a new batch will become available. This is a great way to build the perfect team because not only are you allowed to hire new friends, but you can scout them too.

If you scout, you can request certain characteristics and they’ll find one that meets your needs and bring them to you to hire. This basically brings you back to the character creation page. So you can create a brand new Palamute our Palico from scratch and the next time you visit this person, they will have brought them to you to hire. I’ve heard some people say this is a waste because if you wanted a very specific Palamute or Palico with very specific fur, pattern, eyes, and tail, that they would have just used that design when creating their first one.

But I don’t agree with that logic. Maybe when you were creating your first, there was another design that you were thinking of doing but chose a different one. Now you can acquire a Palamute or Palico with that design too. Or maybe you wanted one with one of the presets. Maybe you just wanted another version of the exact same one you already created, just with a different voice or name.

But doing normal hiring is the best way to get new friends. When you look to hire, there will be a wildly diverse selection of seven Palamutes or Palicos to choose from. Not only will they all have very different looks, but some will also be higher levels than others, and they will all have different skills too. In the case of Palicos, they will all have different moves too and different support types. Hiring is a great way to create the perfect and most balanced team, that you can get your hands on.

Maybe some monsters require different skills, so when you go to do one certain quest, you will swap out your favorite Palamute for one that has the required skills. Maybe you’re doing a quest that has a really tough boss battle, and for that specific quest, you need a Palico that is a healer instead of an Assistant. There are so many different aspects of a quest that can dictate what Palamute or Palico you should bring with you.

So the more you have in your roster, the more options you have to create the best team for each quest. The only downside is that higher level Palamutes and Palicos are going to cost you more money, but if you want to start with better stats right away, it’s worth it. Of course, you can also hire new friends purely based on the way they look or sound and that’s perfectly fine too. There might be one available for sale one day and it could be the weakest of them all but it just looks adorable to the point where you have to have it.

It might not serve you any purpose other than being a cool part of your collection, but since you are allowed to have up to 14 Palamutes and 14 Palicos at any one time in your roster, it’s very possible to have a few that are just there for their designs and nothing else. I have like five on my team that are just for show because I haven’t even gotten to the point yet where I have a ton that are strictly for battle.

The Buddy Area also has a place to train called the Dojo. Here, you can leave your Palamutes and Palicos to train and they will gain experience to boost up their levels and stats. The only thing is that it costs points to train them, and you can’t train the ones that are in your active party, but it’s very much like a Pokemon Day Care. You leave them there, you leave for a while, and they’re stronger when you get back.

There’s also a ton of small details that pertain to depth that I’m just not even going to talk about because we’d be here all day. There’s literally dozens of other features, techniques, and gameplay mechanics that make the game more fun or easier and you’ll have to find the rest out on your own.

This is Monster Hunter that we’re talking about, a series that’s known for insane amount of depth. According to howlongtobeat, it took people more than 500 hours to do everything there is to do in Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate, so you know you’re going to get a lot of content out of Monster Hunter Rise. As a result, depth gets a perfect 10 out of 10 from me.

DIFFICULTY: 7

The Monster Hunter series has never been easy honestly. If you’re a professional Monster Hunter player, then you know what you’re doing and you won’t find the game to be too difficult. But if you’re a newcomer, a casual player, or even a good player, the game is going to be a challenge for you at times because you’re going to have lots of trouble at least half the time. Heck, the first time I played, I think I fainted twice the first time that I did the free exploration quest, and they were both to small monsters. It was a small monster that resembled a boar and I got like three hits in and then it hit me once and took out like 30 percent of my health.

In the end I got like 10 to 12 hits in that barely did anything and yet I fainted after being hit like three or four times. The monsters have lots of health, lots of defense, and definitely lots of attack so no matter how little of a monster you’re facing, you need to be very careful. Even if there’s a small monster that doesn’t do that much damage, you might have to hit them a handful of times to kill them. If you have to get a lot of hits in, that’s going to take a few extra seconds than you would think a small monster would require. But not only is that a few extra seconds wasted, that’s also a few extra seconds of needing to defend.

So not only is it taking a while to kill them, but you’ll be more susceptible to taking damage the longer you’re battling, even if they’re weak monsters. Not only that, but monsters can be a pain if they knock you down. There were so many times where a monster would knock me down, but it would take so long to get back up that before I was even up, the monster would attack me again and send me flying and I would be sprawled out on the ground again. It’s probably rare, but there was one time where I was knocked down four times in a row without being able to stand up and that was a very infuriating 40 or so seconds.

Oh, and don’t even get me started on the big monsters. Those are going to take a long time to kill, you might have to hit them dozens of times and that’s all while evading as much as you possibly can because one of the really big monsters can probably kill you in two or three hits easily, especially if they knock you down and it takes a few seconds to get back up. As a result, the game is going to take a lot of patience. You’re going to get knocked down a lot and you’re going to faint dozens, if not hundreds of times. But you’re going to keep getting back up and fighting until you kill them. Yes, it’s very very hard, but if you’re a fan of the series then the reward is worth it.

OVERALL: 8.6/10

Monster Hunter Rise is a classic Monster Hunter game at its core with lots of cool new features that make it better than ever. I’ve been a big fan of the series for a very long time and I’m very excited with how the series has turned out these last few years, with Rise having played a big role in my excitement. I 100 percent think that the game is well worth the full price, especially if you’re a fan of the series, and I’ve already seen it go on sale for as low as $45 over the summer, which turned the game into a huge deal.

If you like Monster Hunter and you have a switch, then you really should be checking this game out. You can easily get 100 hours out of the game and you’ll have so much fun with all of the different customization options. I just love the game and my grade for it will be an 8.6 out of 10.
Vizzed Elite
Sergei's Mustache


Affected by 'Laziness Syndrome'

Registered: 09-25-13
Location: Inaba
Last Post: 72 days
Last Active: 4 days

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