Monster Hunter Rise is basically a fantastic game. If you are still wondering why, you can m’n review grab it. In any case, one thing is clear: DLC for this game doesn’t have to play crazy, new tricks to please players. Let the story ripple a bit, offer new behemoths to beat up and turn into clothes and possibly tweak the gameplay here and there to make it even smoother.
After a thirty minute preview video I can cautiously conclude that Sunbreak does exactly that. It offers more of Monster Hunter Rise and that in itself is cause for joy, but I’m not convinced yet that such DLC is worth the 40 euro price tag.
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Anyone who has spent some hours in Monster Hunter Rise since release will undoubtedly have knocked down all the monsters in the game a dozen times. As a result, you’re already quite the man when you start Sunbreak, in which you cross the sea to save the kingdom from a new threat. You’ll be greeted at Elgado Outpost as the Fierce Flame of Kamura, but that doesn’t mean you can sit on your ass on a Palamute and eat Dango all day.
This area is infested by… well, we don’t know exactly what it is yet, but it seems that an ancient dragon called Malzeno is causing disturbances. I haven’t seen Malzeno in action yet, but with him two more giants are coming to Monster Hunter Rise and begging to be kicked. This is how Lunagaron makes his debut, a gigantic Wyvern also known as the Ice Wolf Dragon. The first Hunt I get to see in the preview session is on him, in a brand new hunting ground called the Citadel.
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The Citadel is a huge purple area that unfolds around the ruins of, you guessed it, the Citadel. It promises to be a varied hunting ground, with again a lot of peaks and valleys to explore and both lush forests and icy mountains. That makes it a perfect location for our first opponent: the Lunagaron. He’s basically a giant ice dragon (no, Wývern!!1!), who looks damn badass with his icy scales. The armor you can make of him (and the weapons I’ve seen so far) look cool too, and I’m definitely a fan of the outfit you can get Palamute through, with his pointy helmet.
The Lunagaron does not seem to provide any surprises in terms of gameplay mechanics. He parades around a bit, jumps back and forth, slaps his front legs and waves his tail. But fortunately I do see new mechanisms at work during the fight. For example, the new Switch Skill Swap allows players to set up two Sets of Switch Skills before hunting, and switch between them during battle. Sunbreak also introduces the Swap Evade, a dodge that you can bet right after you switch Switch Skills. These are subtle adjustments that provide some welcome variation in the Monster Hunter gameplay loop and make your hunter feel just that little bit smoother during a fight.
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Not only during combat are you more agile in Sunbreak, because subtle changes have also been made when exploring the hunting grounds. For example, you no longer need Wiredash to run into walls, which in practice ensures that you can swing and clamber through the area even longer like a kind of Spider-Man without hitting the ground. Since agility is one of the focal points of Monster Hunter Rise, I can’t help but welcome these kinds of changes.
Other changes come in the form of two new Wirebugs (Gold and Ruby, with bonuses for Wyvern Riding attacks) and the Marionette spider, which you can use to pull flying monsters down or slam into walls. And as befits a Monster Hunter expansion, there are plenty of new (master rank) weapons, armor sets and decorations to be found at the Smithy, more about which will be announced later.
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At the end of the preview video I don’t see the player fighting a monster alone or with other players, but with a real NPC. Sunbreak also introduces follower quests, where NPCs guide you and even give you a hand in the battles. Each npc should be given its own skillset and unique abilities, but that remains to be seen. In any case, I’m glad to see that this isn’t going to be some kind of escort mission where you have to defend the npc with your life; if he or she is knocked out, you can still complete the mission. So a little bit of variation compared to normal hunts.
Last but not least there is the not so new, but still new Seregios, known from Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate, among others. This gigantic sand dragon also seems to provide few surprises in terms of behavior and attacks, but there is a well-known status effect in Sunbreak: Bleed. Bleeding wasn’t there at all in Monster Hunter: Rise, and it’s not what we’re used to in Sunbreak.
Where in previous MH games your character was damaged every second if you started bleeding, there is now a meter that increases when you perform certain actions (such as dodging and attacking). If you are then hit by the monster, you will receive the damage incurred in the meter in one fell swoop. By bending you can lose that status effect, but if you do that you are of course extra vulnerable. It certainly sounds interesting; I hope that in practice it also provides some extra depth in the fights.
Which brings me to the monstrous elephant in the room: the $40 price tag. What Capcom has shown me so far feels more like a DLC of around 20 euros, but I have no idea yet how big Sunbreak will actually get and how long the story and the new follower missions will last. We’ll see in a few weeks.
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Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak releases on June 30 for Nintendo Switch and PC.
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