Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak Review

It has become a tradition that about a year after the release of a new Monster Hunter game, Capcom releases a massive expansion that offers a bunch of new content. The tradition continues this year, so Monster Hunter Rise (reviewed HERE) has received a Sunbreak expansion that introduces a new story, difficulty, monsters, and several new gameplay principles.

• Platform: Switch, PC (Steam)
• Publication date: 06/30/2022
• Producer: CAPCOM
• Genre: Action/RPG
• Czech localization: Not
• Multiplayer: 4 players online
• Data to download: 36 GB (pair)
• Game time: 20+ hours (story only)
• Price: £35.99 (Nintendo Store), €39.99 (Steam)

The kingdom is in danger!

Sunbreak follows the story of the end of the main game as a delegation arrives at Kamura’s village asking for help with a new threat to the entire Kingdom. You will travel to a new base that functions as the Central HUB, and from there you will go on quests to find out what is really going on and prevent a catastrophe. The whole story revolves around cute flying leeches, but they are the harbinger of a much more dangerous problem. All game content is on Master Rank difficulty, so you’ll have to fight your way through a bunch of monsters over and over again, from the simple Great Jaggi to the new Elder Dragons. The pace is very nicely set, with each Master Rank quest level giving you four quests to choose from. After completing two, an Urgent Quest follows, which then unlocks new monsters at the same level (and again a series of four quests), or immediately a new level and advances the story a bit. This way, you never stand in one place for too long, and overall the story progresses fairly quickly.

In addition to the main MR quests, recently added Follower quests have been added to the game – in them you go after monsters along with NPC characters and only in single player mode with a higher reward. Each character has their own storyline, after which their unique weapons and armor become available for crafting. After completing the main storyline, the Masters Rank level, which was previously limited, will also be unlocked along with the entire endgame. Increasing your MP level gradually unlocks new quests with new monsters and MP versions of old ones you haven’t seen in history, or unlocks the so-called Anomaly quests where you fight the stricken version of the monsters – imagine a much stronger version of what you know, right what sort of like Iceborne’s version of Tempered. At the same time, it will also make rarity 10 weapons available, which can only be built using special materials from Anomaly quests. It costs 100 MR to unlock the last monster, so it’s really a lot of work here. The final is pretty close to the addition to the previous part – Monster Hunter World: Iceborne.

After completing the main storyline, the Masters Rank level, which was previously limited, will also be unlocked along with the entire endgame.

From a technical point of view, there is not much to criticize in the game. The Switch version is under review and in her case everything went smoothly, loading times weren’t very long and overall the game doesn’t compete with the most beautiful games on the platform. I was a little embarrassed by the insipid musical theme of some monsters, and a couple of times I noticed a drop in fps in the HUB location – nothing was visible to the eye, but camera control and character movements were noticeably choppy.

More dangerous monsters and hunters

Of course, the new addition should bring with it a new batch of hunting targets. In addition to the all-new Three Lords – Garangolm the gorilla, Lunagaron the werewolf, and Malzeno the vampire seen in all promo photos – there are figurines that have previously been seen elsewhere. Seregios, Astalos and especially a pair of Gor Magala and Shagaru Magala brought joy to the veterans. Players who have been to MH: Frontier were delighted to welcome Espinas into the game, who has not appeared anywhere else since his debut in Frontier Season 2. All of these (and many more) monsters have a deadlier set of moves, some will even introduce new mechanics for younger fans (a pair of Magala), and definitely something to look forward to in the future, when more and more pieces appear in the game. as free DLC. That being said, one can’t help but mention the final boss, which once again brings the experience quality back to the top, and after a lean and unsalted duo in Rise Sunbreak, once again offers a great final experience.

At first glance, the add-on does not make as significant changes to the gameplay as Iceborne’s Clutch Claw, but it still mixes up the fights a bit. Each weapon has several new skills – mostly more “animated” than the previous parts and perfectly illustrating the nature of each type of weapon. In addition, it is now possible to create two skill presets and change them on the fly in the middle of a battle. There are even armor set bonuses in the game that work with the skill preset you are currently using (red is always primary and blue is secondary – the only difference is that you always start the mission with the red preset active). Unfortunately, the newly added scout options and a few other small things don’t make up for the lack of a new weapon class or Iceborne’s equivalent of Guiding Lands. But my guess is that the size of the Rise team is not as large as it was in the case of Iceborne, and therefore it was probably not possible to keep track of everything, and, unfortunately, there are no cardinal changes.