Monster Hunter Rise
Switch
Any Rise normally comes after a fall. But while we’ve no doubt a few purists would disagree, Monster Hunter: World was not just the biggest commercial hit of this storied series, but the best it’s ever been. Just as a new player gradually acclimatises to the rhythms of a hunt, learning to be watchful and working out when to back off, forging and upgrading weapons and gear to stay in the fight longer against incrementally tougher opponents, so too has Capcom grown attuned to the needs of its players. Leaner yet smarter than previous entries, World successfully shed some of the series’ legacy baggage without ever losing the essence of Monster Hunter.
It’s no surprise, then, that Rise should feel so light on its feet. Yet Capcom had plenty to lose here. Most longterm players will admit (in some cases grudgingly) that once you’ve played a new Monster Hunter, it’s hard to go back. We recall returning to Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate
and feeling a big Insect-Glaive-shaped hole in our lives, just as Generations felt clumsy and ugly after World’s
thoughtful refinements and big-screen grandeur. Those who’ve always seen this as a handheld series will doubtless welcome a return to its portable roots. But those accustomed to the spectacle and scale of World
would surely have anticipated a severe downgrade, given Switch’s horsepower compares unfavourably to prior-gen hardware, let alone Sony and Microsoft’s new consoles.
Granted, it’s hard not to look at Rise and picture the PC version we know is coming. But that it’s such a mouthwatering prospect says much for what Capcom has achieved here. Employing its RE Engine, Capcom has delivered what might be the console’s crowning technical achievement, certainly outside the firstparty blockbusters. On the TV, a few rough edges are visible – cross-hatch shading, ragged foliage – yet in handheld mode it looks sensational. With its pixels packed tighter, those few wrinkles are smoothed out, and you’ll wonder if Capcom is somehow streaming a Triple-A PC game on medium-to-high settings to your Switch. There are moments where it pushes the hardware a little too far, but the occasional performance dips are worth it for the many moments where you can’t quite believe a Nintendo console – a Nintendo handheld – is capable of this.
Having recognised it’s back working on portable hardware, Capcom’s delivered the most upwardly mobile Monster Hunter to date. It’s done it via a videogame staple: the grappling hook. Only this time the grapple is an insect, spinning a silken wire with the tensile strength to take a hunter’s weight. You start each quest with two, both bound to a cooldown timer, and you can pick up a temporary third in the wild.
The flatlands of Monster Hunters of old have been steadily growing more topographically varied, but the Wirebug allows Capcom’s level designers to push verticality even further. Now exploration has its own equivalent of Breath Of The Wild’s climbing minigame, with some high points only reachable through Wirebug use. It’s just awkward enough to feel challenging: it’s easy to overshoot, or fall shy of the edge of a cliff, though if you’re close to the lip, your hunter will scamper the rest of the way. Ancient scrolls and other secrets are waiting to be found at the highest peaks and across the widest chasms, though sometimes there’s nothing but a patch of lilies. Yet into these you can drop a Great Wirebug: these fling you huge distances, allowing you to scale mountainous areas or cross huge gaps in a hair-raising, arm-windmilling leap. Place enough of these down (they persist across hunts) and you’ll have something akin to Death Stranding’s zipline networks, allowing you to get to the trickiest harvesting spots much quicker.
It also becomes a key tool in your battle arsenal: learning when to use them takes some mastering, but the weapon-specific Silkbind attacks provide vital offensive options. The Longsword (our new main for the first 25 hours, until we rekindle our love affair with the Hammer) has two of the best: a powerful jump-kick followed by a plunging downthrust, and a counter-attack that sets up a web of wires behind which you wait, preparing to strike back as soon as the beast launches its next assault. Land enough of these attacks and you’ll be able to mount and ride your quarry, letting you launch them into walls and rocks to leave them sprawling, or even steer them into fights with other beasts. Sometimes it’ll happen automatically: you’ll find monsters regularly wandering into each other’s territory, letting you mount the weaker of the two without much effort. This way, you can knock spots off your target by clawing, pouncing and biting, leaving them vulnerable for when you dismount to attack them on foot. As simplistic as these kaiju fights feel – and the zoomed-out camera angle means you never quite enjoy the spectacle as much as watching a Rathian and a Rathalos tearing chunks out of one another in World – you get the bonus of extra drops: we return from a Basarios fight with enough Volvidon parts to forge a bright-red helmet and greaves.
This all adds up to a game with a much brisker pace. Recognising that people tend to play portable games in shorter sessions (and perhaps acknowledging that this is a serious battery drain), Capcom seems keen to get a move on. Our first Tobi-Kadachi is down within 11 minutes, and we aren’t in a particular rush. You don’t even need to locate prints or tracks this time: the beasts’ positions are automatically marked on your mini-map. Having two allies alongside you certainly helps speed things up. Your Palico offers the usual support, but your Palamute will attack more aggressively, often providing a handy distraction while you sneak away to reload, resharpen or recover. Mount it and it’ll hurry you to the frontline, too – or back into the fray should you get
It might be Switch’s crowning technical achievement, certainly outside the firstparty blockbusters
carted. Riding at full tilt before leaping off and striking a vicious blow with your weapon is easily one of the most satisfying ways to introduce yourself to a new monster.
You can gather items en route, too, with any craftable ingredients instantly combining into a recipe: grab a fistful of herbs while riding along and you’ve got yourself another couple of potions, for example. Mining and harvesting are quicker than ever – you don’t even have to climb off your Palamute when passing honey, ivy or dung – with indigenous flora and smaller fauna giving off a telltale glow so you can make a beeline for them. Endemic life is more rife even than in World. Paddle through the shallows of the Frost Islands and you’ll see stat-boosting fish racing through the water; Spiribirds flutter into view, attracted by your necklace, the pollen on their chests increasing your stamina, health or attack power; find a Clothfly and you’ll receive a defensive buff.
If Rise fails to meaningfully address the cruelty at its heart – “nothin’ personal, buddy” your hunter chirrups while carving up a monster corpse, as if that excuses it – a further bit of intelligent downsizing recontextualises it. Your home isn’t a bustling port, but a village. It’s under threat from rampaging beasts, provoked by the arrival of signature wyvern Magnamalo. Every so often (albeit only once before the first credit roll) you take part in tower-defence-style quests where you position traps and lures, while manning cannons and ballistae to take down the horde. On paper, it’s a little more involving and tense than the first battle against Zorah Magdaros in World, as you fight to keep them from breaching the village gates. In practice, it’s a bit of a muddle. Still, there’s a certain chaotic tension when monsters attack en masse, and you find yourself running around, replacing broken installations before launching another barrage.
It’s a distraction, ultimately, from the hunts. There’s a strong selection of yokai-inspired additions to the menagerie, and it doesn’t hold back all the best ones until you’re 40-plus hours in, though a couple you’ll encounter in the late game are worth the wait. Among the early highlights are the frog-like Tetranadon with its bloated belly, and the crested Aksonom, a crane that can perform graceful, sweeping kung-fu attacks. Not long after, you’ll encounter the tengu-like Bishaten, which hurls a seemingly endless supply of poisonous and explosive fruit at you, and the serpentine mermaid Somnacanth, whose breath can lull you to sleep.
Some players may complain that Rise is excessively streamlined. Though if so, they’d be ignoring the stillarcane process of setting up a multiplayer game, which involves us taking several minutes to talk a friend through the various steps – and they’ve played Monster Hunter before. And they’d also be overlooking the exhilaration that comes with that bump in pace: it could be our advancing years, but we don’t remember Nargacuga being quite this quick. That particular squeaky win is a reminder of the need to prepare more carefully, to think about equipping gear and weapons with the right resistances, and perhaps tweak our Buddies’ abilities and loadout. Monster Hunter hasn’t changed too much, in other words: it simply carves through to the endgame meat more efficiently. We’ll need some more time to judge whether this is a true World-conquerer. But with Capcom’s technicians helping Nintendo’s console punch well above its weight, Rise has made it a thrilling contest between two majestic beasts.