For impatient fans unable to play it before, Monster Hunter Rise on the PlayStation 5 is a beautiful port that is well worth the wait.
Monster Hunter Rise is now available on PlayStation and Xbox systems, around two years after its first release. The most recent mainline game in Cap com’s enormously well-liked series was initially launched on Switch in 2021 and on PC the following year. It is now, at last, coming to PlayStation and Xbox Series consoles with a rich selection of visual options that appeal to a wide range of players. The result is a superb port that functions flawlessly regardless of the settings.
The plot of Monster Hunter Rise is relatively thin, similar to other games in the series. The players control a hunter from Kamura Village as they pursue creatures. With each successful hunt, the Hunter moves closer to advancing in rank, allowing them to face more difficult adversaries. This is for the small village that has been under siege from monsters for years.
Although the cutscenes are few and frequently used to introduce the creatures, the present ones are effectively told. A little poem, akin to an old story that exposes dangers lurking in the wilderness, introduces each new animal. It’s an excellent approach to set the mood for the game and highlight the difficulties ahead. The same can be said of the overarching story because it primarily serves as a way to set up combat with the most formidable enemies while also providing the characters the player frequently interacts with in Kamura Village with more personality. Because Rise’s story aims to guide players into the crucial portions of the game, Monster Hunter has never attempted to have a genuinely complex storyline with complicated characters.
The basis of Monster Hunter Rise is monster hunting, and it does a fantastic job of expanding upon the advancements established by Monster Hunter World. Players choose from 14 different weapon kinds to engage in hunts while controlling their weapons’ health, stamina, sharpness, and ammunition. This game retains many of the essential elements of its predecessors. In this game, a Switch Axe was mainly employed. This bladed weapon can switch between an axe mode for more agile movement, a sword mode for movement restriction, and a barrage of physical and elemental damage. Nevertheless, the potency of each weapon and the movement affected by its weight is superbly balanced in Monster Hunter Rise.
Rise rewards good use of tactics and resources with easier hunts or more things, although brute force may be beneficial against some opponents. Experimenting is what ultimately leads to success in rising. There are numerous methods to approach every particular hunt with the sole objective of killing the monster, including setting traps to capture monsters, using exploding barrels to deal tremendous damage, and using various load-outs to take advantage of weak points in the opponent. These options have been included in earlier games, but Monster Hunter Rise makes them feel the most sophisticated.
The firebug, a remarkably flexible tool that completely alters the Monster Hunter experience, distinguishes Rise from its predecessors. The firebug drastically speeds up fighting and navigation, changing everything from how to mount foes to swinging about the battlefield. It isn’t easy to picture the franchise continuing without it. Although it may seem insignificant, it is the best new addition to the series, given its variety of uses.
Rise separates its hunts into low-rank and high-rank ones, with the latter being available after a certain amount of narrative advancement. This is similar to previous games in the series. However, players have access to two companions when playing alone: a dog-like Palamute and a cat-like Palico. They can all be defeated alone or with a team of up to four people. The player can get support from these two AI-controlled companions in the form of boosts to themselves, debuffs to enemies, monster attacks, and, in the case of the Palamute, an additional way of traversal because they can carry the player throughout the landscape. While the high-rank hunts are the actual tests of player skill, the low-rank searches give players a good number of hours to get comfortable with the controls and get used to the flow of fighting. High-rank monsters have more complicated movesets with more powerful attacks than those that have just been introduced, which are easier to memorize but much trickier to avoid when players are in a tight spot.
The part of the game that can make players feel frustrated is high-rank hunts. Deflating situations include losing half a health bar due to grazing attacks or becoming stunned owing to poor positioning, but after that, a desire to try again sets in. This oddly isn’t a criticism of the game because, while those times do occur, they add to the addicting adrenaline and motivate players to keep trying and rethinking strategies to find the one that works.
The game’s performance is one aspect players can never fault for failing because it plays like a dream on the PS5, with targets ranging from 1080p at 120 FPS to 4K at 60 FPS. The game plays wonderfully smoothly with no discernible performance decreases in either display preset, regardless of the settings used. The game offers a wide range of visual options for players to pick from if they want to fiddle with the settings to find their perfect place. This is a part of giving consumers a chance to change settings for things like image sharpness, texture quality, lighting, and shadows. They are a great feature on consoles, even though the same settings are frequently seen in PC releases.
The game’s graphics can be significantly questioned; while they appeared good when released on the Switch in 2021, they may have lagged behind comparable high-end titles when released on the PS5 and Xbox Series in 2023. Although Rise does not lag behind World even at maximum settings, some players may be disappointed by the lesser texture quality and lighting throughout the game. Fans hoping for a graphical improvement for the series on par with what World achieved will have to wait until at least the next mainstream game, even though the graphics choices assist in minimizing this, and the 120 FPS support is a huge bonus.
Monster Hunter Rise is a fantastic blast to play, no matter the platform. Console users who have been eagerly expecting this port and do not own a Switch may now celebrate since they can play this fantastic game. While it may have a different overall graphical quality than that game, the gameplay changes discovered here can make it difficult to return to World. This most recent edition is a blast to play and was well worth the wait.
On January 20, Monster Hunter: Rise will be released for the PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series platforms. It is currently available for PC and Switch.
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