Monster Hunter Rise was first released on Switch in early 2021, and arrived on PC in January this year. More in the lineage of the older portable titles than the all-singing all-dancing Monster Hunter World, Rise is absolutely crammed with weapons to try out, monsters to hunt, and loot to stuff away in boxes (and occasionally wear). It also greatly improved the player’s movement, made area transitions seamless, and was a more gentle singleplayer experience than what had come before.
Introduction
Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak sees your intrepid hunter leave Kamura Village behind to venture across the sea to the outpost of Elgado. Sunbreak is essentially structured like a brand new game, introducing the functionally identical hub town of Elgado to operate out of and a fresh storyline to follow there. That story is typically mundane – a largely ignorable and entirely predictable tale about how something is making the local monsters all aggro and distressed, all set in the European-themed Kingdom. Its characters are at least slightly more interesting and defined this time around, but plot has never been the draw of Monster Hunter and that certainly doesn’t change here.
Your first hunt is against a variant of the Hermitaur, a large crab-like enemy that has appeared in the series numerous times before. It has some new moves, and it’s a new encounter for Rise, but for long-time players, it’s not the most thrilling way to open an expansion. There are other subspecies of different Rise monsters sprinkled throughout, such as the Blood Orange Bishaten, which trades the poisonous persimmons of Rise’s normal Bishaten for explosive pinecones. For the most part, though, you’ll be hunting a familiar rogue’s gallery with slightly expanded movesets.
What’s new?
As has become a time-honored tradition, the expansion immediately makes all of your gear irrelevant by introducing Master Rank: a higher tier of hunts full of more difficult versions of the base game’s monsters, as well as an assortment of new and returning monsters to take on. That’s not a complaint, though, as it is legitimately fun to have the bar reset so drastically, with plenty of powerful armor pieces and weapon upgrades to gleefully chase all over again. And while it’s by no means a new trick in Monster Hunter’s bag, one of Master Rank’s greatest strengths has always been that it gives monsters altered behaviors and fresh moves to make them a renewed challenge without just raising their stats.
This is par for the course when it comes to Monster Hunter’s endgame–which Master Rank usually represents–but considering this is a paid expansion, it would’ve been nice if it were frontloaded with a few new monsters to avoid the feeling that you’re simply revisiting well-trodden ground. As it is, the first time you’ll face off against a new threat isn’t until a dozen or so hours into Sunbreak, when you reach Master Rank 3.
The Switch Skill Swap
One change Sunbreak does introduce right away is the Switch Skill Swap. This lets you take two different Switch Skill loadouts into battle, letting you alternate between them on the fly. Doing so puts you into a custom-made animation that can also transition into a rangy dodge that’s much more effective than the standard one, and being able to utilize double the number of Switch Skills adds more variety and dynamism to your offensive arsenal. It allows you to identify what might be really helpful against a given monster and deploy it. That’s kind of what this expansion is about: perfecting an already great hunting experience.
While it can be frustrating that so many of this expansion’s new additions are withheld for so long, they’re almost worth the wait. The new monsters in particular are all fantastic additions that offer unique challenges, and they’re just as fun to look at as they are to fight. While Rise’s aesthetic was inspired by Feudal Japanese culture and folklore, Sunbreak is influenced by Western and European mythology. The Three Lords–an infamous trio of rampaging beasts–are the standout monsters and the ones that tap into this new influence, introducing nasties inspired by both werewolves and vampires.
The Monsters
Garangolm’s rocky ape-like appearance disguises its explosive mobility and surprising elemental effects; Lunagaron puts a fun twist on a traditional werewolf theme; and Malzeno’s vampire-inspired moveset genuinely shocked me the first time I saw it blink around the battlefield. Older returning foes like Astalos and Gore Magala fit right in as well, looking better than ever while providing an excitingly fresh challenge for anyone who hasn’t had a chance to face them before.
Over and over and over again, you will watch hunters fall to the ground.
It’s one of the cute aspects of Monster Hunter that, in a game built around brutal moves and nature red in tooth and claw, the hunters still ‘faint’ when a giant raging monster KO’s them. Don’t worry, everything will be fine. The real twist of the knife is the limited continues on each mission, such that ‘carting’ three times (you’re taken back to base on a cat-propelled stretcher) means a restart. It is a strange thing in 2022 to have an old feeling — that sense you’ve just wasted 40 minutes up the wall on a fight and, because you went for an extra hit or screwed up a dodge, have to do it all over again.
New areas to explore!
While you’ll regularly revisit each of the locales from Rise throughout Sunbreak’s campaign, the expansion does add two new biomes: Jungle and Citadel. If you’ve ever played Monster Hunter 2 before, you’ll probably recognize the tropical island of Jungle with its palm trees and sandy beaches. It’s been masterfully recreated here, making use of Rise’s seamless maps and increased verticality to update the 16-year-old location. Citadel, on the other hand, is brand new, offering an eclectic mix of different environments for you to traverse in a single hunt. You can go from fighting in a murky, poisoned swamp to finishing the job on a frozen mountain peak, all against the backdrop of a crumbling castle. Both locales are denser than those in the base game, although every single map has been updated with new forms of endemic life to enhance the world’s vivacity.
Follower Quest
The one place it does do something truly interesting is in its Follower quests. As you progress up Master Rank, townsfolk in both Elgado and Kamura will ask to accompany you on specific single-player quests as AI-controlled hunters. Doing their quests will unlock those people as options in Support Survey quests (also limited to single-player) where you can pick two as your party members. The hunts themselves aren’t exactly challenging or unique, but the AI is surprisingly sophisticated, using items, mounting monsters, and even placing traps before standing behind them and emoting for you to come and wait with them.
Having a helping hand is greatly appreciated since Sunbreak rips the training wheels off from the get-go. Rise was by no means an easy game, but its approachability made for a more gentle introduction to the Monster Hunter franchise, saving the real threats for its post-campaign hunts. In order to access Sunbreak, you first need to complete the Hunter Rank 7 quests in Rise, thus ensuring that you’re ready to tackle its new challenges. Once you begin the expansion and arrive in Elgado, you’re quickly promoted to Master Rank and sent off to defeat some particularly tough foes – albeit ones you’ve mostly fought before. It makes sense to throw some familiar foes your way at the beginning, just in case you’re returning to the game after a number of months, but Sunbreak falls into the trap of dragging this process out for far too long.
Fiorayne, the best companion ever!
Fiorayne is heaven-sent, and one of the best companions Capcom has introduced to the series, because she fights like another player; using lifepowder at the right moment, drawing the monster’s attention for extended periods, disappearing to find another monster to drag back. She adds a whole new element to the series, and may indicate where Capcom will go in the future as regards the singleplayer side of the game.
Wirebugs
New Wirebugs are focused on wyvern-riding, either making punisher attacks more lethal or increasing the drop rate when two monsters clash. You’ll also find small critters known as Starburst Bugs latched onto various surfaces. These little buggers will explode if a monster collides with them, giving you another way to inflict significant damage when riding on the back of a monster. The new Marionette Spider offers an alternative and much more satisfying tactic, though, letting you wrap your target in silk before yanking them full pelt into an explosion. These new forms of endemic life may only represent a small change, but much like the Switch Skill Swap, their impact becomes more apparent over time for how much they improve each hunt.
Almost every other system in Sunbreak has been touched in a small yet meaningful way. Bunny Dango, the pre-fight meal you scorf down before embarking on a quest, now lets you alter the effectiveness of each Dango ability by changing the order in which you select them, adding some purposeful decision-making to the process. Traversal has also been improved by removing the requirement to perform a Wiredash before being able to wall run, which not only makes navigating each map much faster, but it also makes it easier to utilize their verticality. There are also new weapons and armor sets, Master Rank layered armor, decorations you can socket into your gear to activate various buffs, and so on. You can min-max your hunter to your heart’s delight.
In Summary
Monster Hunter Rise represents the series at its very best, and the subtle improvements made by Sunbreak meaningfully improve upon its compelling gameplay loop, even if they’re not apparent until a few hours in. The lack of fresh ideas is disappointing, and this feels more like the challenging endgame Rise was initially missing than an entirely new experience. The new and returning monsters are fantastic, though, as are the two new locales, and it’s still relatively easy to lose yourself in Monster Hunter Rise’s exhilarating world. Sunbreak might not be as substantial as some of the franchise’s previous expansions, like Iceborne was for Monster Hunter World, but it improves upon Rise’s foundations with another thrilling selection of hunts. It’s just a shame most of them are overly familiar.