Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak – Review
Every Monster Hunter follows a cycle in which they are first overwhelmed by a terrifying monster, then understand the beast’s idiosyncrasies, and then use the monster’s pieces to upgrade their equipment and prepare themselves for the next challenge.
There is never a time to rest easy in Monster Hunter, since there is always an even greater and more challenging search just around the corner. After the success of Monster Hunter Rise, Capcom has listened and released the first expansion, Sunbreak. Sunbreak has all the fresh environments, creatures, and difficulty spikes you could want, but without any real surprises.
That’s in part because Rise, following in the footsteps of Monster Hunter World’s worldwide success, established a solid foundation for future innovation by introducing fascinating game-changing wirebug features that made navigation and monster-hunting much more efficient, as well as the incredibly dependable wolf-like Palamutes.
Sunbreak adds a few more features for the aforementioned, but doesn’t add much else mechanically; in fact, it completely removes the tower defense-style Rampages from the original game, which, while novel, generally divided fans due to the difficulty of dealing with large numbers of monsters at once. The most notable change is that now your hunter must travel to mediaeval Elgado on a mission to kill Malzeno, an Elder Dragon so terrifying because of its capacity to drain the life force from other monsters that it poses a threat to the entire environment.
Compared to Kamura Village, which was oddly divided into single-player and multiplayer regions, the new Elgado Outpost, with everything easily located in one spot, is a welcome improvement. Unfortunately, Dango is no longer available to bolster your hunters before a big hunt, and in my opinion, it lacks the particular appeal of Kamura’s obviously Japanese elements.
But the new areas and the creatures that inhabit them are where the action really is for you. One of the maps is the Jungle from Monster Hunter 2, so veteran hunters can now explore that area in its entirety without having to wait for loading screens. The new, massive Citadel level has the ruins of a gothic castle and a drawbridge—a perfect setting for the Three Lords, the game’s three new monsters. Sunbreak’s Dracula is the regal Malzeno, the bipedal Lunagaron is the icy Wolf Man, and the ape-like Garangolm is reminiscent of Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein’s Monster.
However, despite the fact that these additions are a lot of fun, they take a while to appear, and you’ll spend the first half of Sunbreak’s campaign hunting the same enemies you did in the original. Although we don’t recall an Aksonom ever putting up such a spirited defence, it’s possible that they’ve learned some new tricks at the new Master Rank. These more formidable variants, including new sub-species like the Blood Orange Bishaten, do much to keep you on your toes, and also serve as a reminder that you’ll need to be forging new stronger equipment if you want to have any hope of surviving the hunt without spending most of it on the ground or being dragged sheepishly back to camp in defeat. Still, Sunbreak feels like it drags on a bit before you get to the good stuff, including returning favourites like Gore Magala and Seregios, especially when compared to the last Iceborne expansion for World, where you jump straight into a new area and new monster.
You may now set your loadout of unique weapon skills to a red and blue scroll, and switch between them in the middle of a hunt, giving you even more opportunities to vary your playstyle. The game recommends keeping your tried-and-true Switch Skills on the red scroll, and your specials on the blue scroll, so it’s not as confusing as it first appears, but it is daunting to have to balance more mechanics in your head, with additional UI at the bottom of the screen just to help you stay on track. The Switch Skills that make each weapon class more fun to experiment with don’t arrive until much later, in line with the rest of the new content.
Follower Quests are a single-player only feature in Sunbreak that allow you to hunt with AI-controlled characters like the Kingdom knight Fiorayne, sister of the Rise trader Rondine, and ultimately invite them to Support Survey hunts where you can partner with up to two characters at once, though this is still not a story-driven game. You can invite all of your friends from Kamura to join in on the fun. It’s a good option for those who would rather not team up with strangers online, and if one hunter gets knocked out, it won’t count against the group’s total number of carts like it does in multiplayer hunts. You can even try to revive them right there.
However, despite the potential benefits, this component feels underutilised because it is not required to participate in the campaign. Having it be single-player only doesn’t make much sense, however, especially since that Fiorayne will join you on a few hunts throughout the story—hunts that you can, of course, still make available to other players.
Sunbreak is a great expansion for Monster Hunter’s dedicated fanbase, despite a few minor flaws. For newcomers, it’s a harder sell because it requires playing through the original game first, and there’s no clear option to skip it. But again, as the new Master Rank moniker suggests, this addition is Master mode, so it’s one you have to earn if you don’t want to be stomped on right away. Prepare yourself for the difficulties ahead; the quest is far from done, with upgrades scheduled all the way into 2023. This is especially true once you acquire the new, more difficult ‘Afflicted’ monster types.
