Monster Hunter Rise Review

The wirebug reframes the whole thing. Being able to launch off a cliff, correct a bad commitment mid animation or ride a monster into a wall gives every weapon a vertical dimension the series never had, and silkbind attacks let players tune a moveset toward their own bad habits. Combat has never been more expressive. Everything around it is lighter. The maps are smaller and flatter than World's ecosystems, closer to arenas with scenery than to living places, and the Kamura setting is charming but the campaign is a sequence of village errands with a rampage tower defense mode nobody wanted bolted to it.

The base game's endgame was genuinely thin at launch, a short climb to Rajang and then nothing until Sunbreak turned up a year later and fixed it properly. Visually it is a Switch game first, and the later ports never quite disguised the texture budget. Pure hunting feel, it is competitive with anything in the series.