Monster Hunter Rise
About the game
Monster Hunter Rise is the entry where Capcom pushed its hunting series toward a faster, more vertical rhythm. You play a hunter from Kamura, a Japanese-inspired village menaced by a monster stampede called the Rampage, and you head out to track towering beasts across open maps you roam with no loading screens between zones. What sets it apart from earlier games is the Wirebug, a grappling tool that lets you scale cliffs, chain acrobatics and unleash aerial attacks, alongside the rideable Palamute dog for lightning-fast traversal. It's a nimbler, more free-flowing Monster Hunter than the classics, without losing the heft of the hunt itself.
The hunting loop
The heart of the game is the same one that always hooks: you hunt a monster, carve its parts to craft better weapons and armor, and use that gear to take on ever-tougher prey. The variety comes from the fourteen weapon types, and they're not reskins: each has its own style, rhythm and learning curve, from the graceful Long Sword to the punishing Hammer or the ranged Bow. Play it solo —backed by AI companions, your Palamute and Palico— or in four-player online co-op. Rise also folds in mode-specific extras like the Rampage, a wave-defense mode where you hold off monster hordes with traps and installations, unlike anything else in the game.
Sunbreak and the full package
The big expansion, Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak, is what rounds out the package. It adds Master Rank —the series' highest difficulty tier—, a new hub in the citadel of Elgado, and dozens of monsters both new and returning, plus systems like Switch Skill Swap to reconfigure your weapons mid-fight. With the base game and Sunbreak together, Rise is one of the most complete Monster Hunter games out there and, at the same time, one of the easiest entry points into the series: the brisk pace and mobility tools lower the barrier considerably.
What you pay for, and what you don't
It's a Buy to Play game with no subscription of its own: pay once and it's yours. The base game runs about USD 39.99 and the Sunbreak expansion another USD 39.99 (it requires the base game and some campaign progress). The Rise + Sunbreak bundle lists around USD 59.99, but it goes on aggressive sale regularly —it's dipped under 15 dollars during discounts—, so it's rarely worth paying full price. There are Deluxe editions and cosmetic DLC (layered armor, gestures, voices) sold à la carte, and they're purely visual: they don't touch gameplay. Online play is free on PC via Steam; on consoles, multiplayer requires the platform's subscription (Nintendo Switch Online, PS Plus, or the Xbox equivalent). It's also included in Xbox Game Pass.
Where it stands today
Rise is a finished game, not an evolving service, and that's worth knowing up front. Development wrapped with Title Update 6 / Bonus Update, which added Primordial Malzeno as Sunbreak's final monster (it arrived in 2023, first on Switch and PC and later on PlayStation and Xbox). No new content is planned: what you see is what you get, and it's polished and stable. The 2023 releases (PC, PlayStation and Xbox) added crossplay and cross-save among themselves; the Switch version sits outside that ecosystem, something to keep in mind if you want to play with friends on another platform. Even so, it remains fully playable online, with an active enough community to fill co-op hunts.
Who it's for
If you've never touched a Monster Hunter and its reputation for being complicated always put you off, Rise is probably the best gateway into the series: fast, generous with mobility, and with a campaign that teaches without overwhelming. And if you're a veteran, it offers a remarkably deep combat system, fourteen weapons to master, and Sunbreak's Master Rank to sink hundreds of hours into. That said, honesty first: it's not for everyone. The loop of hunting to craft to hunt again is repetitive by design, and if the hook doesn't land it'll feel like a grind; the Rampage mode splits opinion; and since it's a closed game, don't expect events or updates to come. But as a complete, self-contained package that's frequently dirt cheap on sale, it's one of the best fun-per-dollar deals in the co-op action genre.