With every hour of sleep I irresponsibly sacrifice to Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak, I'm reminded of the start-up screen for Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate. I remember a prominent warning that politely advised players to consider drinking water and maybe even touching some grass in-between gaming sessions, and at the time I thought it was a fun little joke. Who would actually need such a reminder?
I played Monster Hunter Rise on Switch but jumped to the SSD bliss of PC for the new Sunbreak expansion, and since starting my new save file on June 30 I have played it for over 120 hours. Let me be clear: this is not normal for me. I game a lot, but not usually this much for this long. I don't think I played Elden Ring this heavily in the week I took off work specifically to play Elden Ring, and this is after playing base Rise for over 100 hours last year. Sunbreak is the most engrossing gaming experience I've had this year, and I think it's the best version of Monster Hunter yet.
One more hunt
Somehow I'm more motivated than ever to keep playing Sunbreak. That's partly because I'm still unlocking new stuff, and I'm not just talking about weapons and armor, though I do eyeball upgraded elemental lances like kids pressed against store windows at Christmas time. Elemental weapons are generally good in this game, so there's a bigger variety of stuff to craft and collect. I'm currently working toward Master Rank 50, which I'm sure will unlock another Elder Dragon or no-doubt furious subspecies, and rank 100 beyond it. I also have a massive list of side quests to finish, and clearing them as efficiently as possible is my version of tidying up a room in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
But there's more than systemic progression propelling me. Sunbreak is so mechanically satisfying that I'm actively inventing games within the game just to keep fighting monsters. This usually amounts to a time trial I'll set for myself. I spent an entire Friday night fighting Shagaru Magala, unlearning years of muscle memory and studying its updated move set, because I wanted to kill it in under 10 minutes with the gear I had at the time. That's usually my starting point: I'm happy to clear a hunt in under 10 minutes, and then I can shorten my time from there. I did the same thing with Lunagaron, Garangolm, Mizutsune, Rajang, Kushala Daora – the list goes on.
Setting goals and overcoming challenges are two of the fundamental reasons I play games, and Monster Hunter's formula is so fun that it overcomes even my dislike for competition. While I typically avoid competitive games, I'm happy to challenge myself in games. And Monster Hunter isn't really competitive in the traditional sense; I'm not trying to climb speedrun leaderboards. For me, Monster Hunter is more like mastering kitchen knife skills. If you practice while focusing on safety and accuracy, speed will come with time. And like good knife skills, it's immensely gratifying to see and feel your experience in action. Elder Dragons like Shagaru Magala gave me hell before, but now fall like so many carefully diced onions.
Bury me with my lance collection
My go-to weapon has been the lance, which I also mained in Monster Hunter World but didn't touch in base Rise after it was absolutely gutted. Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak has thankfully un-gutted it and restored my love for the weapon, to the point that it's probably more accurate to say that I'm enjoying Sunbreak this much because of lance. I use a lot of insect glaive and hammer, too, and I'm beginning to dabble in other weapons like sword and shield, but lance is my hometown.
See, Monster Hunter doesn't give you many invincibility frames on your default roll, so where games like Elden Ring let you i-frame through attacks with a well-timed dodge, you generally need to roll out of the way of monsters or build for evasion skills. And because this is Monster Hunter, some attacks can hit you in a different area code, so panic-rolling quickly becomes a habit. Not with lance, though. If you play it right, you can treat the lance and its greatshield almost like Sekiro.
Lance isn't the only weapon with a shield or a parry, but it has the strongest shield and the fastest parry. After Sunbreak, you've got your normal block, omnidirectional heavy block, two flavors of dashing block, a standard parry, and special parries fueled by the wirebugs that aid hunters. Most importantly, you have an instant parry with a small activation window and a tremendously stylish follow-up attack. This complexity is offset by the lance's simple attacks: straight pokes, high pokes, and charged slaps for the most part.
You might think that the weapon with the biggest shield would play more defensively, but lance is more about gluing yourself to monsters and negating all of their attacks. Figuring out how to optimally block every attack transforms the way you can engage with monsters, and using the instant parry whenever possible can exponentially increase your damage. If you've struggled to get into Monster Hunter because the dodge sucks and you just felt like a chew toy, play Monster Hunter Rise and try lance. It's exceedingly aggressive and reactive, and I love it to bits.
I could play this series forever
My lance obsession aside, Sunbreak has done a world of good for Rise specifically, and Monster Hunter as a whole. For starters, its end game Anomaly system is a huge step up from the Tempered monsters of World and Iceborne. Anomaly monsters aren't tied to random hunts, and while they still have massively inflated health pools, you can tear through them with pinpoint attacks on special weak points. This mechanic rewards detailed knowledge of a monster's move set, which you should have by the time you unlock Anomaly hunts, and makes the pinnacle grind less tedious. It's kind of awkward for hammer users, who always want to hit one weak point – the head – but I'll let that slide.
Anomaly monsters are also a welcome test of Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak's upgraded combat mechanics. One of the expansion's big selling points was the ability to change between two loadouts of switch skills mid-hunt, effectively doubling your arsenal of special attacks and combos. I still generally stick with one loadout for most hunts – and that loadout usually includes some of the new switch skills added in Sunbreak – but having the option to swap over is great. An NPC describes your second loadout as your "rainy day" skills, which is a good way to put it. I'll usually put a heavy hitting wirebug move on slot two and swap to it during a big opening, or maybe I'll slot a wirebug buff that I don't need to reactivate all the time. This adds another wrinkle to the already involved process of countering specific monsters, which helps distinguish the game's central hunting theme from the flow of normal action games.
Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak may also be the first Monster Hunter game with NPCs I actually care about and remember. Sure, I've enjoyed the voices and designs of previous characters, but they've all just been faces telling me to hit a lizard with another lizard. But in Sunbreak, your allies will hit lizards with you. The follower and survey hunts that let you hunt with NPCs are fabulous. Spending time with characters like Hinoa and Minoto is a delight, and as ever, there's a genuine bond to be forged in group hunts. It's single-player multiplayer, which is just how I like my multiplayer. Fiorayne, who accompanies you on multiple hunts that drive major story beats, is handily my favorite person in the entire franchise. She's out there in the trenches with you, so she feels infinitely more present and involved than the usual brooding leaders brooding leaderly about ominous prophecies or whatever.
I'll always have a soft spot for World and Iceborne since they brought Monster Hunter into the current generation, but I reckon Sunbreak is the superior mix of modernized combat and stylized presentation. It's got a lot of World's mechanics under the hood, but they've been embellished with much more color and flourish. I don't want to put it down, so I'm thrilled to see Capcom already planning multiple seasons of free updates packing rare and powered-up monsters. That means more gear to chase and more time trials to master, and I say bring it on. I could do this all day.
