monster hunter rise - 5/10
what a fall-off. oh i see what you did there
tried to bring old-gen elements back alongside all of the worst parts of new-gen and ended up pleasing neither audience. i have not seen anybody talk about this game in a long while, least of all in a positive light, and for pretty fair reason. it is a short, hollow game devoid of anything memorable that isn't a pastiche of something from either another monster hunter game, or another game entirely that simply doesn't belong within monster hunter. looking at you, rampages!
everything that this game boasts as unique within this franchise is a fucking pain to deal with, or scales your hunter against the monsters so obscenely high to where virtually every fight is an exercise in attempting to stay awake or not click off to your other window of runescape.
i have certainly played worse games, yes, but considering the otherwise flawless pedigree of monster hunter, where i genuinely feel as though i can enjoy each game on their merits... rise has no merits it can call truly its own, only downsides. it's gameplay is boring, it's new mechanics only enhance that, and the constraints on quite literally everything because they wanted to ship on switch and not go back to using the old engine are blatant and plentiful throughout the woefully anaemic time you'll get out of it.
want a mark of how utterly forgettable this game is? monster hunter world received an update 2 days ago as of my writing this review to add an advertisement for the soon-releasing monster hunter wilds to the title screen. rise received no such update.
rise is so nothing-burger that it's not even worth using as an advertisement space. save yourself the time and play quite literally any other game in this otherwise stellar franchise for an infinitely superior experience.
