The DLC is a substantial amount of content, but also note that it is not actually completely “complete” - there’s probably still a couple more updates coming this year adding more stuff. I got to the endgame but am currently mostly waiting on them to finish working on those systems before getting back into it.
While I did say that it is sparse, it is on the order of I enjoyed it it for 160+ hours of content sparse, which is less than MHW+DLC which is at 800+ hours. Rise remains my most played game of 2022 (by a large margin), so while it’s pretty clear I don’t love it the same way, I would consider it my game of the year and if you enjoyed Rise, the DLC a must with more moves for all the weapons and more monsters. If you didn’t like Rise, the DLC likely won’t change that.
I’ll just say this: Rise was kind of a disappointment for me, but Sunbreak not only made it a great MH game, but also likely my favorite MH game ever in terms of gameplay. With recent updates it also has a very solid endgame, so lots of hours and plenty of challenge for those looking for it.
I certainly recommend it. It is in fact my Game of the Year 2022. ;)
You’re correct, he only played single player - he didn’t want to bother with multi. Sounds like that’s why it was way too easy for him.
Similar to his situation - he has hundreds of hours on MHW (but a lot of that was him re-playing a bunch of the game to carry me). 160h sure as heck beats the 10h he got out of Rise thus far though.
Okay, that’s quite a turn around. He just needed to justify double-dipping (he’d rather go with Steam Deck than Switch) and was afraid of ending up with just a meager amount of playtime again.
It’s probably better to think of the multiplayer quests as “multiplayer-enabled” - I’ve maybe played a couple of times in Rise/Sunbreak with other people, but you can totally play the entire game solo - “multiplayer” but with nobody else in your party - and the experience is scaled to the number of players. The second half of the Rise story is in those quests, and there are monsters (including the “real” final boss for Rise) that only turn up there. Sunbreak adds the ability to take along NPCs on special quests, and the last update expanded that to also include many other quest types too.
Edit: In base MHW you might recall there was low rank and then high rank with more monsters and all the really strong monsters. All of “High Rank” is only in the multiplayer quests for Rise. In some sense you could also think of it as MHW only had the multiplayer quests.
I can’t promise Sunbreak will do for anyone what it did for me, but yeah, I love it. I really want to play it more but I need to play other stuff before I come back. ;)
Very much this, @Daagar. I’d suggest to your kid to do the non-village hunts, even if he runs them solo. That’s the core game, the village stuff is just intro/tutorial.
Oh dear lord… I would hope he knew this, but if not that is huge. Running off to tell him this ASAP.
EDIT: Weep for our future. Turns out he didn’t have an active Switch online account active at the time, so when he hit the multiplayer part it basically offered him “local play” (which made the issue even worse) and he never realized that it was an option, not a requirement. Apparently he was disappointed as well because all the monsters/armor/whatever are seen in that first 10 hours or whatever so he also concluded ‘what’s the point’.
The DLC adds what is essentially an entire game and a half with a full end game grind. this one in particular adds one of the longest and deepest end games in MH history, albeit somewhat controversial in some places because of the rng nature of augments. I personally love it. You can easily spend hundreds of hours on sunbreak.
That is excellent to hear. He did jump in during the Steam sale, so here’s hoping he ultimately agrees. If not, time for me to dive into his shared library and play it for myself!
I’ve done a 360 on Rise after knocking it for not being World 2. Honestly, the maps are really nice to explore, even if they feel really similar (maybe redesigns?) of the maps in Portable 3rd. I’m in Sunbreak now and I actually don’t mind doing the little town fetch quests because I like exploring without having a large monster to hunt. I wish the camera mechanics were a little better - it’s just slightly too clunky to go on wildlife photography expeditions to fill out my Hunter notebook with custom pics.
I really want to like this franchise. I have MHGU on Switch and it’s clearly a polished adventure that I could get into, but I’ve dug into it twice and it trips me out that they aren’t really monsters in deed, they’re just wild animals out there grazing and foraging, raising kids, etc. I don’t see any terrorizing villages going on, for example.
lol I know it’s weird but it turns me off to jump on the back of basically a peaceful moose and start stabbing away.
To be fair, this is what real hunting basically is. I always got annoyed at how little stuff you get from the monster after killing it (I guess the village takes it?).
Played this a bit on Switch and have recently started again on Xbox. Game still plays great, especially at 60 FPS. It’s kind of a bummer than it doesn’t have cross-platform multiplayer though.
This is why some of us have an always put to sleep policy instead.
If it helps you, the background the previous series hinted at is that the annoying little apes doing the hunting are the near extinct remains of their kind, as civilization was destroyed. so they won’t annoy the fauna much longer, hopefully !
I guess you wouldn’t like the cooking in the wild mini games of the previous games ;0
If any of you are playing this on xbox or pc gamepass I’d be up for some grouping. Already up to 131 hours. I made a Hunter Connect called HHr with the easy to remember Connect ID of 6067b69d-ab6e-41e1-a8c2-ad17a88c2d9e
wtf is up with Nintendo, Capcom, etc always having these old style convoluted friend and connect codes? Reminds me of Metroid save codes and the like. Was a necessity back then but just tedious now.
I’ve made the same observation. I mean, it’s just a cartoony video game so it doesn’t bother me, but I feel they should play the monster aspect of it more. Having one occasionally terrorize the camp and having to defend it could be fun (and make more sense of the title).
So I play online with 3 buddies. We finished Raft then this last weekend we completed Grounded. MHR is one we are looking at to get into next. The biggest concern is the combat. We are 60 and have the reaction speed of a frozen snail. I’m the only one who has limited skill with a controller. I finished Hades ( after 50 runs) and the others gave up way sooner due to frustration with the controller. Is MHR a game we should attempt? Is M&K viable?
It is definitely playable, but it’s a port of a controller game for sure imo. I don’t think monster hunter needs a lot of reaction time, its more about learning the patterns and being patient. The combat has a lot of variety though, each weapon is as deep as its own game, so if your buddies want to do a gunner glass thats actually more viable on M&K than controller
If you beat Hades, you can beat Rise. I would say use a controller, but a lot of people play it on MKB.
In regards to your possibly gaming-challenged friends: Rise is split into low rank and high rank. You spend the first few dozen hours playing low rank quests, which takes you through easy to beat versions of the same monsters in high rank. It has its own set of gear and progression items to chase after specific to low rank. This is good because you instead spend your mental faculties experimenting with the systems of the game, and gaining skill with your weapon loadout. Basically anyone can get their money’s worth out of the game just playing low rank. I’d say you should get it with the understanding that you and your group will have a hell of a good time just doing this. Then for those who stick with it, you can choose to move on to high rank and start testing your mettle.
If anyone struggles for too long, you can also buy the “Defender” sets of armor and weapons, which make you super-overpowered because they were added to the game to allow you speedrun to the expansion content.
EDIT: Also, I forgot to mention - Monster Hunter is so much fun with a regular group of four. I’m salivating at the thought of four noobs getting to experience it together. Do it!
