I've played Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, 4 Ultimate, Generations, World and Rise. It's by far my most played series ever and all them are great to some degree. Each one has something interesting it brings to the table and each one has something that doesn't quite work out. I'm not sure which I would say is my favourite, but I do know that Rise (and Sunbreak, which is part of this review) is a very strong contender for that title. It avoids having any feature I dislike as much as, for example, underwater combat or the clutch claw that plagued some of the previous games in the series. It, at least with Sunbreak, has the best endgame the series has ever had along with some of the most fun and fluid combat.

Initially made for the Nintendo Switch, Rise lacks much of the environmental detail that the previous entry in the series had. Environments are less dense and less immersive. Other sacrifices have been made too. In World, you could follow many of the monsters around the map to see what they got up to. In Rise, monsters are more hostile. While these may seem like negatives, I'm not so sure they are. Yes, the detail in the Ancient Forest, the first map you see in World, is great. But after going there so many times, navigating it to just get to the monster can start to become frustrating. Checking out a monster's behaviour is intriguing at first, but when I'm hunting my thirtieth one, I have long since stopped caring. I don't play Monster Hunter for immersion or exploration. With the amount of time I spend playing these games, everything that isn't the core gameplay just fades into the background for me at some point. Through the technical limitations imposed by its initial hardware, Rise mostly streamlines the experience, leaving a focus on its excellent gameplay.

I played through the base game using a lot of the Switch Axe, a weapon I last used in Generations. It's a brilliant version of the weapon. The new Rapid Morph skill is fun and it means you're frequently switching between the two modes, something the developers haven't always got right with this weapon. I switched over to the Sword & Shield for Sunbreak and that was an even better experience. I was let down by the weapon in Iceborne, it being overly reliant on spamming one move that was not in line with the style of play I usually expect from the weapon (fast hits with little animation commitment). Rise returns to how I best like to play the Sword & Shield, complete with a satisfying counter and good gap-closing move.

The monster roster is impressive, featuring the classics, some of the best third and fourth generation monsters and some welcome new favourites like Garangolm, Lunagaron, Malzeno, Rakna-Kadaki and Magnamalo. Some of them have undergone agreeable reworks, like Kushala Daora who is significantly less annoying than it was in World. There are some disappointing omissions, such as Brachydios, Odogaron and Gammoth. But that's not enough to mar what is a very strong collection of monsters.

Perhaps the most disappointing feature of the base game was its endgame. There wasn't a great deal to do and the Rampage mode was a failure, trying to cross Monster Hunter with tower defense and not doing a good job at it. It was tedious and almost impossible to fail. Thankfully, the developers apparently agreed as the mode was ditched for Sunbreak. In its place is a phenomenal endgame, largely based around anomaly monsters. These are challenging without getting out of control with HP bloat. They have a DPS check that punishes you with an explosion that stuns you, but doing enough damage to avoid that feels achievable enough. The best thing about Sunbreak's endgame is easily the variety of it. Each anomaly part is dropped from several different monsters, letting you choose which of them you want to get the part from. No other Monster Hunter endgame has you fighting as many different monsters as this. Augmenting armor is RNG heavy, but not so much that you feel like you can never get what you want. Any time I wanted a particular roll, I was almost always able to get it. I played though this as each update was released, so I never felt like the grind was too much. I do acknowledge that if you were getting into it now, the grind may seem intimidating.

It's not a huge issue, but one area Rise falters is Spiribirds. These are little birds scattered around the map that can give you boosts to stamina, attack, defense and health. That last one is the most important because you can no longer max out your HP bar by eating or using a Max Potion. This didn't bother me in the base game but some of the endgame Sunbreak content hits hard enough that it's advisable to run around the map collecting these. In a game that otherwise removes this kind of distraction, it's a chore that feels out of place. Still, this is not as big of a flaw as the failings of other games in the series, like the aforementioned underwater combat and clutch claw.

The next Monster Hunter game will no doubt take some of Rise's advancements and leave some others behind, as Monster Hunter always does. I hope the flow and fluidity of the combat, especially with the Sword & Shield remains, even if the switch skill system will probably be dropped. I hope the relative lack of hardware limitations from the newer consoles doesn't lead to additions that distract from the core experience. Regardless, I'll be there on day one. No other series nails third person action game combat quite like Monster Hunter does.