I walk through the ruins of a fallen kingdom. As a ghoulish, red glow lights my path, I run past the corpses of many monsters, large and small, while my target awaits ahead. Long gone are the times when my only concern was saving my village from a stampede.
Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak takes the adventure far from Kamura Village to a now-fallen kingdom struck by disaster, a place that now needs your help to face what could be the definite end of its people or their only hope to rebuild. Once you arrive at the base of Legado, the Admiral Galleus briefs you on your mission: finding out about some mysterious, parasitic monsters that may hold the key to the mystery behind the kingdom’s fall. It’s time to take your equipment and rise to the next level of hunting.
Master Rank is now introduced as it happened in Monster Hunter World: Iceborne. The addition of a new rank is accompanied, of course, by a new cast of monsters, some returning from past iterations and some entirely new, or even subspecies of monsters introduced in Rise. The jump in difficulty, while challenging, isn’t overwhelming. Even if the monsters sport new moves and attacks, it feels like a smooth transition.
To balance our foes' new skills, players get a new array of Switch Skills, and the ability to change between two loadouts. This brings versatility in combat and enables hunters to conveniently adapt to different fights on the go without needing to head back to the camp or the hub. It’s also worth noting that some of the newly added equipment Skills will interact with this new command, bringing some extra buffs and tools to play with.
On the downside, where Iceborne felt like a cohesive improvement upon the foundations that World set, Sunbreak feels somewhat disconnected from some of the systems introduced in Rise. Rampage missions and Apex monsters are nowhere to be seen in Master Rank, and going back to High Rank for the sake of enjoying those seems a bit pointless. They still could be added as a part of future updates, but right now, they are conspicuous by their absence and are sorely missed.
Combat aside, Sunbreak brings a lot of love for veteran players in the form of references to older entries in the series. While some of these are obvious — like the Jungle map directly adapted from Monster Hunter 2 — others come via equipment inspired by beloved NPCs across the series. Others are even more obscure, like Espinas, a monster once featured exclusively in Monster Hunter Frontier, a defunct Japan-only MMO. But while there’s a lot for seasoned hunters to notice, none of those references alienate newcomers, and every single one of them is integrated into the game and properly adapted to the current generation without making you feel like you’re missing a joke.
It’s also worth talking about The Citadel, the new map showing the ruined remains of what once was the kingdom where the people of Elgado lived, now reduced to ashes and completely taken by monsters and blight. In an unexpected display of environmental storytelling (not unlike the Souls series), this map is one of the most detailed ones in the series yet, a labyrinthic landscape with ruins of Gothic buildings, filled with tunnels and passageways that shed some light on the catastrophe that made this place fall. There you can find hidden details narrated within the Relic Records, everyday objects that people left behind while escaping through the tunnels, and various abandoned houses that you can break into to find gathering points or hidden treasures.
As you try to discover the true artifice of this situation, solving the mystery looming over Elgado is just part of what Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak entails for your adventure. Whether a newcomer or a veteran, you’ll find the classic feeling that hunting brings every time, and every monster represents a thrilling challenge in what it is Monster Hunter at its finest.
