Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak Review – A Graveyard Smash

The dreaded blood sucking fiend rises from it’s 100 year slumber! Only a legendary monster hunter can climb it’s castle and stop it’s rampage! Fighting of a legion of mons… wait is this the right franchise?

Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak
Developer: Capcom
Price: $39.99
Platform: Switch
MonsterVine was supplied with a Switch code for review

If there’s one thing the Monster Hunter franchise always needs it’s more monsters. Whether big or small there’s always a need to smash a big dinosaur dragon in the face with a weapon made of its fallen brothers. Whereas most Monster Hunter games usually don’t have a theme for the monsters, Rise broke from that tradition by bringing in a more focused aesthetic pulling from Yokai and traditional Japanese imagery. It was a cool and welcome change that its DLC Sunbreak follows in. This time though, the monsters are based off of the classic Universal Monsters. That’s right people, it’s a Monster Mash. 

The smattering of new monsters are clearly based off of old classics like Gargoyles, Frankenstein’s  Monster, The Wolfman, and of course Dracula. As well as a healthy amount of classic monsters from previous Monster Hunter entries to help fill out the roster. As always it’s exciting to put your skills to the test against the new monsters and find out the best way to… Well hunt them. The loop of fighting the new monster then running to the blacksmith to see the new armor and weapons still feels great and gives you plenty of new options to go full fashion hunter to your heart’s content. The new monsters armor gives everything a wonderful Halloweenish vibe that weirdly makes the dressup more fun than usual. 

In addition to monsters there’s also new switch skills and the ability to swap between two sets of switch skills. This adds even more customization options to playstyle to a game that was already chock full of them. It’s a welcome if not a little overwhelming addition, requiring you to pay that much more attention to what’s happening at any given moment, as well as finding a loadout that fits exactly with what you’re trying to accomplish with your build. Thankfully the game expects you to come into this DLC familiar with the game as a whole, blocking access until you’ve beaten Rank 7 of High Rank in the main game. 

This of course leads to some of the more frustrating elements of the expansion. After starting it you are whisked away to the kingdom of Elgado, the new hub, with promises of new monsters and new locations. Only to fight the same monsters from the base game in the (more or less) same places you’ve been fighting them all along. ‘

Sure there’s two new maps but for the most part you’re basically going through the same progression as the main game a third time.Getting the same armor and weapon progressions again, albeit with new looks on the armor end, but it’s still frustrating to basically engage with the same content again before new guys start trickling in towards the end of the expansion. This wouldn’t be as frustrating if there were more new monsters in the early part of the expansion, but at times it just felt like it was padding out time before it was time to fight the new guys. 

That said, eventually you get to fight the Frankenstein monster and you get excited, and the satisfying loop of Monster Hunter pulls you in once again. While the new locations are limited they’re both wonderful, especially Citidel, which perfectly captures the expansions spooky vibe, especially under the eerie red moon light. Likewise, all the new monsters are incredibly well designed and a ton of fun to fight, especially with the new switch skill options. Sunbreak has a lot of great content that’s well worth the price of entry it’s just a shame that you have to spend so much time wondering when you get to see something new to reach that point. 

The Final Word
Sunbreak takes a while to get going, but the new monsters, mechanics, and armor make it worth the initial trudge through familiar content.

– MonsterVine Rating: 4 out of 5 – Good