Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak
By David Chapman,
Common Sense Media Reviewer
Common Sense Media Reviewers
Monster hunting season gets updated in this paid expansion.
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Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak
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What’s It About?
Grab your gear and return to the hunt with the MONSTER HUNTER RISE: SUNBREAK expansion for Monster Hunter Rise. After the defeat of the Serpent Goddess Narwa, Kamura Village finally seemed to find some peace and tranquility. This calm is short-lived, though, with a strange new monster appearing to wreak havoc through the land. After driving back the creature with the help of a Knight of the Royal Order from Elgado Outpost, your skills and experience as a hunter are requested to help stop the recent outbreak of monster attacks taking place across the seas. You'll need all the help you can get to battle against these new beasts. You'll put together a party with up to four players for online hunts or rely on the support of your faithful Felyne and Palamute companions in solo quests. You can even recruit and team up with powerful allies from both Kamura Village and Elgado Outpost in single-player Follower and Support Survey missions. With the stakes higher than ever and the fate of two lands in your hands, will you be able to "rise" to the challenge once again?
Is It Any Good?
For nearly two decades, this franchise has carved out a place for itself in the hearts of gamers, with 2021's Rise standing out as one, if not the best, offering in the series. Now, after a long string of title updates and special quest additions, the game has gotten a full-blown, paid expansion with Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak. The expansion brings with it a huge amount of content in the form of new quests, new monsters, and new locales, but there's surprisingly little in the way of new additions or changes to the gameplay. It makes for a lot of new things to do, but very few new ways to do them. This "if it ain't broke" mentality means that returning players should be able to Wirebug their way right back into the action, but it's hard not to see it as a missed opportunity.
Sunbreak assumes players already know what they're doing, as the new content isn't even accessible until players complete the endgame portion of the basic Rise story. Once the expansion opens up, though, players are in for a treat. The new hunting grounds are phenomenal. The new monsters are equal parts elegance and savagery. Taking on these new threats, as well as the Elgado variants of familiar faces, requires new strategies and tactics. Being able to swap out Switch Skills on the fly, one of the few new tweaks to gameplay, gives players quick access to a lot more options. The new AI-controlled Followers are great for solo players looking for that multiplayer feel, but sadly they are limited to use in specific missions. And while Sunbreak's story isn't particularly long, the sheer number of available quests, as well as the massive number of new creations added to the Hunter's armory, means that there's more than enough content to keep players returning to Monster Hunter Rise for the foreseeable future.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about violence in video games. Is the impact of the violence in Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak affected by the type of activities that you engage in? Are there times that violence might be considered necessary for gameplay? How might the hunting violence in the Monster Hunter series affect younger audiences -- compared with the violence in shooters where you target more realistic, human characters?
What are some of the ways that people work with wildlife, and what can be done to protect their ecosystem? What are some things we can learn from the behavior of wildlife and how they are impacted by the environment?
Game Details
- Platforms: Nintendo Switch , Windows
- Pricing structure: Paid ($39.99)
- Available online?: Available online
- Publisher: Capcom
- Release date: June 30, 2022
- Genre: Role-Playing
- Topics: Magic and Fantasy , Adventures , Monsters, Ghosts, and Vampires , Science and Nature
- ESRB rating: T for Alcohol Reference, Blood, Violence
- Last updated: June 30, 2022
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