Monster Hunter Rise, Capcom, Nintendo Switch, 013388410194

The game is a lot of fun, it follows a simple gameplay loop of going out hunting monsters for parts, coming back to the village to make new weapons and armor with said parts, and heading back out hunting even bigger monsters. This game does add a couple new mechanics such as the Palamutes which are mountable dogs, and then the Wirebugs which are the grappling hooks that allow you to climb up hills and explore vertically. There is a steep learning curve as there are 14 weapons each with their own mechanics and combos, and a ton of monsters with their own strengths and weaknesses but once you find a weapon that works for you and understand the mechanics of the monsters the game becomes a blast, especially in multiplayer! There are two types of quests, Village and Hub quests where you do single player hunts or multiplayer hunts, and in those Hub quests the monsters are a lot stronger. Highly recommend playing online as it enhances the experience.

I've played it for around 10 hours and so far it's easily as good as the last Monster Hunter when it launched. Better even in some ways. The movement mechanics such as palamutes and wirebugs are easily some of the best revisions/additions to the series to date and getting around has never been so fun and unrestrictive. Performance is also really good too for all the action that happens on screen. This is basically a cut down Monster Hunter World for graphics (but a new game for content) and you can have 4 people on screen attacking monsters without any dips. Overall it's a great entry point to the series and I also highly recommend to anyone who liked World and doesn't mind the worse graphics.