Monster Hunter Rise

Monster Hunter Rise launched on the Nintendo Switch on 26 March 2021, came to PC on 12 January 2022, and arrived on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S, and the Windows Store, on 20 January 2023. This review covers the base game with its free title updates, plus the Sunbreak expansion that carries the Master Rank endgame.

The Wirebug changes every hunt

The Wirebug is a stock of charges rather than a single cooldown. Wiredashing, Wirefall and Silkbind attacks all draw on it, the charges come back on their own, and the price differs by move: a dash is cheap enough to use constantly, while a weapon's Silkbind attacks are the expensive, deliberate option that competes with the Wirefall you may want for an escape. Wall-running is the exception: you spend a bug to launch into a run, the climb itself runs on stamina rather than eating more charges, and you can also start one straight from a dash or a jump without spending anything, which turns half a map into a shortcut.

Every one of the 14 weapons has its own Silkbind attacks and you carry two into a hunt, while Switch Skills change your ordinary moves. Two hunters using the same weapon can be playing recognisably different games because of it. Sunbreak adds Switch Skill Swap, which lets you load two Switch Skill sets and flip between them mid-hunt, with a Swap Evade to cover the switch. That is the most interesting thing the expansion does, because it removes the old either-or choice between two competing moves.

Riding monsters is a real second system

Get a monster into a mountable state and you can ride it. Enough damage from Wirebug moves will do it, and so will letting two monsters fight, or firing off a Puppet Spider. Once you are up there you steer, pick a fast light attack or a slow heavy one, launch the monster into a wall or into another monster, and spend a full riding gauge on a Mounted Punisher. Time the launch well and you can spring back onto the monster and slam it into the wall a second time. Then you dismount and leave the target on the floor. It is not optional once you learn it: the fast hunts are the ones where the monsters do part of the damage for you.

The rest of the traversal kit matters just as much. A Palamute carries you across a map, so walking between fights stops being the default, and riding one costs you nothing from the Wirebug. Wirefall is the opposite: it picks you up out of a knockdown instead of leaving you to eat whatever comes next, but it spends a charge, so the escape competes with your Silkbind attacks. Iceblight slows charge recovery down, and that is one of the few times Rise takes your mobility away.

Kamura, and the mode that splits people

Village quests are the solo opening path rather than the whole game: they ease you in, and nobody else can join you. Hub quests run solo or with up to four hunters, and the difficulty scales to the number of players in the hunt, adjusting on the fly as they join or leave. The Hub is also where the rank progression lives. Around the two of them sit arena quests and challenge quests, which hand you preset gear and rank you on clear time, plus requests from villagers and repeatable event quests. The outlier is the Rampage.

A Rampage is waves of monsters throwing themselves at a fortified stretch of the village, with hunting installations you place on platforms and either fire yourself or leave to run automatically, and a Major Threat to repel at the end of each wave. It breaks the normal rules: fainting does not fail a Rampage quest, but losing the gate guarding the final area does. That turns a hunt into something closer to tower defence with Monster Hunter parts, and plenty of hunters skip it. Worth knowing before you do: Defender Tickets come from Rampage quests, and they are what Rampage weapons, armour and Ramp-up skills are built with. Skipping the mode closes recipes rather than just saving time.

Sunbreak is where the game gets long

Sunbreak is an expansion rather than a second game. It moves the story to the Elgado outpost, adds Master Rank and a new roster of monsters, and it keeps the door shut until you finish the base game's HR 7 hub quest, Serpent Goddess of Thunder.

The endgame inside it is Anomaly quests. Those open at Master Rank 10 and put you against Qurio-afflicted monsters that hit harder and move faster, with glowing Anomaly Cores appearing on their bodies while they are in a Delirious state. Hit the cores enough and they detonate for heavy damage. The materials you get back are what Rarity 10 weapons are made from. Anomaly Investigations arrived with the first title update and add randomly determined conditions and rising levels as your Anomaly Research Level climbs, with Special Investigations as the top tier added in the fifth update. Qurious Crafting spends the same materials on weapon augmentations, which are fixed and slot-based, and on armour augmentation, which is randomised every single roll.

Followers are the friendlier half of the Master Rank package. Follower quests team you up with a named character from Elgado or Kamura, one or two at a time, and completing them unlocks those characters as Support Survey companions you can take into other quests with weapons you choose for them. The third title update widened that to almost every Master Rank quest, Anomaly quests included.

The free update run finished in 2023: five title updates plus a bonus update, from August 2022 to June 2023, ending with Primordial Malzeno. Capcom's own patch list runs on to version 16.0.2 in January 2024. None of that was a limited-time event, so a copy bought today already contains all of it, including the Forlorn Arena, layered weapons, the Risen elder dragons and Amatsu.

Where it lands

Rise has sold more than 15 million copies and Sunbreak more than 8 million. On Steam the base game sits at Very Positive across roughly 126,000 reviews, while the expansion's own store page sits at Mixed across about 6,800. That gap is worth a look before you buy Sunbreak. The base game is the generous half: 14 weapons, a movement system the older games do not have, and a difficulty curve that lets you learn a monster before it punishes you for getting greedy. Sunbreak is the long half, and its endgame is a grind with randomised armour augmentation sitting in the middle of it. If you like a ladder to climb, that is the appeal. If you want the hunts and nothing after them, the base game stands on its own.

Should you play it

Yes, if you want a Monster Hunter where moving is as interesting as fighting. The Wirebug makes a hunt feel like a pursuit rather than a series of committed swings, and the Silkbind and Switch Skill loadouts give each of the 14 weapons room to be played your way. On PlayStation 5 you also get a choice of 4K at up to 60 frames a second or 1080p at up to 120, plus 3D audio and DualSense trigger feedback on gunner weapons and shield blocks.

Before you spend anything, check your subscription. Rise sits in the PlayStation Plus Game Catalogue, so an Extra-tier plan covers it right now, though catalogue games come and go. It was also a monthly game in March 2026, and that only helps if you added it to your library during that month and have kept your membership going since.

Skip it if the Rampage and the anomaly grind sound like homework. The base game is still worth playing for the movement and the monsters, but the version of Rise that keeps people busy for hundreds of hours is the one grinding Afflicted monsters for materials between title updates, and that part is a job as much as a hunt.

Three things before you buy

Sunbreak is an expansion and it needs the base game. The Monster Hunter Rise + Sunbreak Set bundles the two together, and the Deluxe Kits are layered armour and cosmetic extras with no effect on your stats.

Every copy of the base game includes the free title update content, which is an extra story ending, more monsters and more gear on top of the launch version. What you buy today is not the 2021 game, whichever platform you buy it on.

Cross-play and cross-save stay inside a platform family rather than spanning them, so decide with your friends before you commit to a copy. PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 players hunt together, and the Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and Windows versions share cross-play and carry the same save between them. The Steam version is the odd one out: it has no cross-play or cross-save with any other platform, and a Switch hunter cannot join a PlayStation hunt either.