YMMV / Monster Hunter: Rise

Tropes #-A

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • How malicious is Narwa, and what does her desire to "lay this land to waste" stem from? Is she a paranoid Mama Bear trying to eliminate any potential threats to her offspring, or is she a psychopath who wants to revel in her destructive might and simply doesn't give a damn about anything aside from her family? The 3.0 update leans towards the latter, as she backstabs Ibushi and uses his power to become the Allmother, and even then it's debatable: one could argue that she's only doing that as a last resort/emergecy measure because there's an invader to their nest and a threat to the nest, Narwa herself, and her offsprings(s), which is YOU, the hunter. Meanwhile, the Japanese version does give a lot of credence towards the Mama Bear theory; it states that killing Ibushi is simply part of the Serpent's life cycle, and her hysteria comes from her wanting to protect her own offspring from any perceived threats.
  • Is the Narwa in Rise more malicious than other Narwa in her end goals, or is it a species wide trait and they just never succeed at their end goals? We know from the historical records and the skeleton in the volcanic cavern that as a species Narwa have been causing Rampages and reproducing this way for centuries or millennia. Indeed the skeleton in the cavern is likely of an Allmother Narwa given its size and other features. Yet according to the narration and thoughts given by Minoto, the Narwa we see in Rise desires not just to dominate the Kamura region for a single brood but to gain power to remake the world as a whole according to her whims, and even outright refers to herself as a divine being. If this is some kind of aberrant extreme in her species behavior, it might explain why various Elder Dragons show up and even interfere with her (with this apparently not happening in other Rampages, given the surprise Hojo and others have when Teostra, Kushala and such appear near Kamura), they see this Narwa as a threat and don't want her to become too powerful. Magnamalo as a species benefits from the Rampages, yet also interferes with Narwa, perhaps due to how if Narwa achieves her goals there will be no hordes to feed on as eventually most other creatures will be dead and the devastation will range far and wide enough that the Magnamalo could starve or simply be killed off as well.
  • Is the symbiotic relationship between the Qurio and Malzeno a trait of the species as a whole or unique to the specific individual that we hunt, making it technically a Deviant or Variant in a sense? Malzeno was specifically mentioned to have not been seen with the Qurio in previous appearances, and that the ones it was currently using were taken from a failed parting shot by Gaismagorm. Do other Malzeno individuals similarly steal Qurio from Gaismagorms or do they have their own separate ecology? Are the Malzeno you hunt in post-story quests actually canonically being hunted, or are they just there for the sake of gameplay and those hunts don't actually exist in canon? If they are truly there, are they imitating and copy the Qurio use of the Malzeno individual that fought Gaismagorm, or have the three species always been intrinsically linked?
    • While the introduction of Primordial Malzeno shows us that Primordial is actually the natural state of the species and the Qurio-hosting ones are technically the Fallen Hero Variants/Deviants, it is still somewhat unclear if what happened between the individual Malzeno and Gaismagorm are a unique series of events or something that happens commonly for both species. The Sunbreak ecology book slightly elaborates on this by mentioning that although it was the specific Malzeno in the story that got infected through direct contact with Gaismagorm, Malzeno being infected by Qurio is a relatively common event if the two happen to be in the same place, and that Primordial Malzeno is fairly uncommon in Qurio-infested areas as a result despite being the original state.
  • Was the Primordial Malzeno that we hunt as the final quest of Sunbreak really just protecting it's territory from the Qurio and the Kingdom just happened to fall inside that territory, or was there something more noble to the monster's actions? While Admiral Galleus says that it is the former, the flavour text of Primordial Malzeno's armor may imply additional depth to it's behaviour. The Primordial Helm "was worn by a knight who swore to protect every-one after losing all he had" and the Primordial Mail is "imbued with the pride of a knight who protected the people from an undead monster". Armor descriptions such as these can often contain superfluous, exaggerated or dramatized information, but they often can still be applied to the monster in some way. As seen from Wind Serpent Ibushi and Thunder Serpent Narwa, Elder Dragons may be driven by instincts and animalistic behaviours, but they are still intelligent beings. Although the Sunbreak ecology book provides no comment on the flavor text of the Primordial Armor, it does hint that Primordial Malzeno's hunt of the Qurio is partially driven by rage towards what the Qurio did to the other members of its species.
• Anti-Climax Boss: From Sunbreak's fifth title update, Amatsu can be this as despite its status as Kamura's Final Boss and having been significantly upgraded since its last appearance. Although it's quite a bit harder than its MR 10 entry requirement would suggest (being closer to an MR 100 quest going off of its monetary reward) and will likely need gear from the other title updates or Anomaly Investigations to handle, hunters that played extensively would already have access to high-level Anomaly Investigations and Risen Elder Dragons for a long time before Amatsu was released, the latter of which require a considerably higher MR 110-180 or AR 110-130+ to unlock. The end result is that players with gear and experience from the brutal Anomaly/Risen monsters may find Amatsu somewhat lackluster, particularly since it deals comparatively less damage and isn't as relentless with its attacks. For comparison, Primordial Malzeno, the True Final Boss added in the bonus title update, is also unlocked right after Amatsu, but has damage, speed, and sheer aggression rivaling that of the strongest Risen Elders, and its reward is greater than that of Risen Shagaru Magala unlocked at MR 180, making its intended MR difficulty about double that of Amatsu.

Tropes B-C

• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Almudron is either liked for its awesome-looking elderly mud cobra design, or hated for being one of the more annoying bosses to fight in the game due to its long and large body obscuring the camera, especially for non-Gunners.
  • The flagship Magnamalo has been praised for its cool tiger-like design invoking a vengeful undead samurai, its bombastic battle theme, its unique abilities involving its Hellfire gas, and it crashing the final fight with Narwa the Allmother in a Big Damn Heroes moment. At the same time, others lambast it for being an overdesigned mess (particularly the abundance of extendable blades and Spikes of Doom which it wouldn't have a feasible use for) that doesn't fit in to the generally grounded setting, accuse it of being a Creator's Pet due to how often Magnamalo gets the upper hand against monsters expected to be above its weight class,^note This wasn't helped by how all of its Turf Wars shared the same animation up until Sunbreak, meaning that it could be observed bringing down Teostra or Kushala Daora with the same ease as an Aknosom, albeit losing the fight afterwards. or consider its role a more unrealistic rehash of the fairly popular Nergigante. However, its fight is a less controversial matter, with it being generally well recieved as appropriately intense and enjoyable. Interestingly, despite it intentionally looking even more supernatural, some detractors of Magnamalo's design like Sunbreak's Scorned Magnamalo for doing away with Magnamalo's more redundant design features while offering an even more fierce fight.^note It lacks the extendable back spikes and just has larger back shells, and it actually makes use of its arm-blades for a good chunk of its attacks.
• Breather Boss: Sunbreak's fourth title update added two monsters - Velkhana, and Risen Crimson Glow Valstrax. While the latter quickly became one of the hardest fights in the game, Velkhana was generally considered pretty easy due to a case of Can't Catch Up. Its moveset is almost exactly lifted from Iceborne with the addition of some of its Arch-Tempered attacks, but it only has the moves of an AT Velkhana without any of the infamously high damage and health that made it so challenging, with said moveset also being designed around a game with far slower movement and less combat options than Sunbreak, making it a good bit less aggressive than what players would have likely been used to at that point. On top of this, Velkhana's ice breath requiring Guard Up to block is far less of a concern due to the numerous means of slotting that particular skill into a Hunter's build. It can still give you hell if you underestimate it, but it's a step down from its fellow TU monsters, especially if you already fought Velkhana in Iceborne and know its moveset.
• Broken Base:
  • With monster capture status now being always shown (i.e. without requiring the Capture Guru skill, which was removed from this game), this has caused a divide amongst players, particularly in public lobbies and Join Requests. You have many players who insist on capturing every monster because it's a safer option than depleting all of the monster's HP and it's easier than ever to do so, and you have others who don't appreciate that every online hunt in non-private lobbies ends up becoming a capture quest by force due to teammates insisting on capturing it, often at the expense of drops that can only be obtained by slaying the monster. It doesn't help that while there are auto-translated chat macros, including one for "Let's capture this monster," there isn't one for "Let's slay this monster", which means attempts to communicate "slay, don't capture" can end poorly in teams where everyone speaks different languages, so every non-Elder Dragon, non-Rampage, non-Apex quest in a public room ends up being a race to see whether the monster will be captured or slain first. This was an issue at launch and still continues to be an issue into Sunbreak, somewhat mitigated by the post-game Anomaly Quests, as Afflicted monsters cannot be captured.
  • The voice clips. As opposed to Speaking Simlish, there is an option that lets hunters speak in English. Unlike the English cutscenes in World, your hunters will shout voice clips. Some people shut it off entirely, while others find it useful. On one hand, hunters sometimes shout useful information like "It's up to something!" before every That One Attack. On the other, shouts like "You're the target!" don't give enough information (meaning many players scramble unnecessarily). This is along with all the various "Taunts" which might eventually get on peoples' nerves, particularly since they're sometimes either excessively corny or a bit too enthusiastic about decimating the wildlife for a hunter canonically just trying to protect their home and keep nature in check.
  • The overall much faster pace of the game's combat combined with the "Frontier-like" escalation of some of the endgame monsters (particularly their tendency towards lengthy combos and unrelenting aggression) is a popular point of contention, with some noting that it allows for spectacularly intense fights and opens up potential for more diverse monster movesets, while others prefer the slower, more realistic combat of World and some of the previous installments.
  • The absence any of the so-called "Black Dragons" (Alatreon, Dire Miralis, and the Fatalis Trio) was particularly contentious for some fans, as this marked the first title to not include any of them in the finished product and the grouping has typically been treated as final, definitive threats. Amatsu was seen by this camp as generally being too weak to be worthy of being the final fight, not helped by how it had only appeared in two previous games and one of them was never released in the West. The pro-Amatsu side cited the thematic appropriateness for its inclusion in the final main title update considering all the prior references to Monster Hunter Portable 3rd and the potential glow-up it could have as this marked the first time it was in a non-portable console, as well as arguing that shoehorning the Black Dragons in every Monster Hunter game just to feature them would diminish their significance when they did show up. Following the title update and Amatsu's significant overhaul from its home game, disagreements about Amatsu's inclusion have generally cooled, though people still will debate as to whether he's too easy or not, as well as the general absence of a final fight on the level of Iceborne's infamously difficult Fatalis.
• Catharsis Factor: Any monster with That One Attack will result in this trope if mounted. Tired of getting blasted by Rajang's thunder beam? Annoyed with Tigrex's damaging roar? Always have trouble with Mizutsune's water guns? Simply get a puppeteer spider or enough silkbind damage to mount and enjoy spamming said attacks to your heart's content. The specific examples here are particularly satisfying moments.
  • Thunderblight is a status ailment that makes you more likely to get stunned. Since getting stunned renders you unable to move, this usually led to a whole lot of untimely carts. Now you can inflict elemental blights on monsters via Wyvern Riding and the scarab Helpers (e.g. Thunderbeetle), which includes Thunderblight; when this happens, you can stun monsters even with cutting weapons, and blunt weapons suddenly get a lot better at their job, letting you trap the monster in a Cycle of Hurting. Pull off a Magnificent Trio or a Big Bang on a thunderblighted Rajang, then point and laugh as you bludgeon the big baboon into oblivion.
  • Rathian's notorious poison tail flip is known for causing many a cart in older games, especially when facing the Queen of the Land for the first time. Now you can weaponize that exact tail flip via Wyvern Riding, which also happens to poison whatever enemy it hits, too. Not so fun when the shoe is on the other foot, is it, monsters?
  • After being possibly the hardest demo fight in the entire franchise, the Magnamalo hunt in the game proper serves to offer an actually fair fight against the mascot, where Hunters that have taken even modest steps in acquiring good equipment can handily trounce it. Even the quest name of "Comeuppance" calls attention to this. That said, encountering it in an expedition or soloing its Hub Quest are going to be a different story.
  • While not one of the harder monsters overall, Bishaten can be downright irritating during your first hunt thanks to its confusing fighting style and all the status-inducing fruits it fights with. But once you've gotten used to fighting it, subsequent hunts are a lot more satisfying once you make it drop its fruits and use them against it, stunning and poisoning it the way it would do to you.
  • The hunt against Amatsu has you and Utsushi mounting and Wyvern Riding an Apex Zinogre. After a grueling fight against Amatsu, as well as many players who played the game a lot pre-Sunbreak having their asses handed to them by Apex monsters, it's satisfying to not only wail on Amatsu, but to do so with the power of an Apex monster. Furthermore, Monster Hunter Portable 3rd veterans may appreciate the chance for a souped-up Zinogre to get its revenge on the Elder Dragon that drove its kind away from their territory. Alternatively, you may instead get help from Crimson Glow Valstrax, who for once uses its infamous "Around The World" Jump Scare attack to assault a mutual adversary.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • Gear:
    • You can only bring one Buddy per quest when playing with others. Most hunters choose to bring their Palamutes instead of their Palicoes, since the massive boost in mobility is extremely helpful for getting around quickly and keeping up with monsters, and the firepower of other hunters can make up for the status effects and healing of the Palicoes. It is possible to keep up without a Palamute, but it requires more effort and understanding of the game, so many hunters simply stick with the easier and more reliable option.
    • If you do see a Palico user online, you really only see two types; Gathering and Healing. Gathering Palicoes can expedite the crafting process by plundering parts from monsters and automatically gathering materials, and give you an extra shot at that pesky Rare Random Drop you've been eyeing. Healing Palicoes, on the other hand, are mainly used to offset the questionable competence of most online players.
    • Expect to see a lot of Magnamalo weapons online, as they can be obtained relatively early, have good damage and stats, and have the Blast element for free damage that also breaks parts quicker. This also applies to some extent in High and Master Rank, especially once Scorned Magnamalo's weapons become unlocked.
    • You'll see just as many if not more Nargacuga weapons. While their base damage is lower than Magnamalo weapons, they were the only ones in the initial launch that had white sharpness naturally and high natural affinity.
    • Find a Light Bowgun player online in High Rank? Chances are they're using Night Owl, AKA the max upgraded Nargacuga LBG. It's the only LBG in the game with Rapid-Fire Pierce 1 and Pierce 2, giving it outrageous damage output and the best compatibility with the skills Pierce Up and Rapid Fire Up; combined with access to Slicing Ammo and Paralysis Ammo and its naturally high Affinity, Night Owl is one of the single-most powerful LBGs in the base game.
    • Any Light Bowgun player not using Night Owl is probably running Sinister Shadow Bolt instead, the max level Magnamalo LBG. It's the best Normal 3 & Spread 3 LBG in the game and also has access to Sticky & Clust for support, aka all the ammo types Night Owl doesn't cover.
    • Light Bowgun users in general are scarcely seen without at least one piece of the Vaik armor set, since it has several skills useful for the weapon class, such as Ammo Up and Normal/Rapid Up.
    • Expect to see a lot of Rajang's leg armor. With two pips of Crit Boost in addition to some decoration slots, it is a significant force multiplier for any build that involves a high crit rate.
    • Most Insect Glaive users will run Assist-type Kinsects. They always fetch two different Extract types, making it much easier to activate the Glaive's Super Mode. Furthermore, Assist Kinsects will perform their own attacks in combination with some of yours, helping your damage output. More specifically, Blunt Assist-type Kinsects are favored as they have enough Stun power to actually land a few KOs, turning the Insect Glaive into a hybrid impact/cutting weapon.
    • Every Switch Axe and Charge Blade build is going to put three points into the new Rapid Morph skill, which in addition to speeding up any attacks that switch between the weapons' two modes also boosts said attacks' power by a whopping 20%. One of the most popular armor pieces for this is the Almudron Helm S, which gives two of the ranks needed plus two level 2 decoration slots.
    • Prior to 2.0, you typically only hunted for Weakness Exploit talismans through Wisp of Mystery melding since the skill got a small buff due to the removal of the Clutch Claw: instead of boosting affinity partially when hitting a monster's weak spot, with more being added if the part was tenderized, it just gives you that much of an affinity boost outright. The addition of Tenderizer jewels to the smithy's wares lessened this pressure immensely, although very few players would turn their nose up at a decent talisman with the skill should one drop.
    • As of 3.0, expect players to wear at least one piece of Crimson Glow Valstrax gear, as they provide some very powerful skills such as Weakness Exploit, Resuscitate^note gives an attack boost when afflicted with an ailment or blight, up to +20, and Resentment^note attack boost as long as you have health to naturally heal, up to +25. This is why you'll see a lot of players suddenly get dragonblight even when not fighting one of the four monsters that can inflict it^note Kushala Daora, Crimson Glow Valstrax, Wind Serpent Ibushi, and Narwa the Allmother, as each piece of armor has one point in the Dragonheart skill, which inflicts dragonblight when falling below a specific health percentage threshold and which so happens to synergize with Resuscitate and Resentment to allow for extremely powerful non-elemental and dragon-element attacks. While the full set is pretty popular, even mixed-set players will throw in at least one piece of Valstrax gear; the Valstrax Mail adds 2 out of 3 points of Resuscitate, the Valstrax Braces add 2 out of 3 points of Weakness Exploit, and the Valstrax Coil adds 3 out of 5 points of Resentment.
    • In Sunbreak, expect to see a lot of Ingot Greaves X. Despite being one of the earliest pieces of equipment you can obtain, it comes with two levels of both Attack Boost and Critical Eye, making it a key component of many builds despite its relatively low defense.
    • In upper Master Rank, expect to see a lot of builds (particularly for the Bowgun and Bow) using Dereliction and/or Bloodlust, which provide some of the best DPS increases in the game at the cost of constant health drain that can be mitigated with range or skill. Many Bow users may also take advantage of their better mobility to also run Berserk and Strife, providing even more damage at the cost of effectively turning them into a One Hitpoint Wonder.
    • After Title Update 4 for Sunbreak, just about every Charge Blade user will be running the rather unorthodox, but extremely devastating loadout incorporating Dragon Conversion, Furious, Strife, Dereliction, and as many Elemental Resistance-boosting skills as possible, as these skills synergize to make Ultra Elemental Discharges absolutely devastating to the extent that no other build can compete. Dragon Conversion in general is a mainstay in almost all endgame elemental damage builds, often combined with Heaven-Sent for infinite stamina and sharpness.
    • In endgame Master Rank, you'll likely be seeing just as much Primordial Malzeno gear due to its Blood Awakening skill allowing for a comfortable DPS increase while only requiring some form of lifesteal like Blood Rite, which both comes with the armor and bolsters survival instead of reducing it like Bloodlust or Dereliction. This is especially true in Anomaly Investigations where you can just use the monsters' Bloodblight to heal instead (except against Risen Elders or secondary targets). It helps that Primordial Malzeno armor also has a ridiculous number of decoration slots that give it almost unmatched customizability, while its weapons also boast extremely high specs and an innate lifesteal multiplier. Of course, have fun hunting the monster for the materials in the first place.
  • Switch Skills:
    • Most Light Bowgun players use Fanning Maneuver as opposed to Fanning Vault, as it allows you to drift around monsters' attacks easier than Fanning Vault and increases damage to boot.
    • A lot of Long Sword users run Silkbind Sakura Slash instead of Soaring Kick, since it deals several hits of severing damage much like Slicing ammo and it functions as a good way to increase the Spirit Gauge's level quickly.
    • Sword & Shield users run Windmill in Rampage Quests and Metsu Shoryugeki in regular quests. Windmill has amazing crowd control and its multiple hits allow it to repel monsters with ease under the effects of the Counter Signal, while Metsu Shoyugeki is basically a guaranteed stun if it lands clean on the monster's head.
    • Most Gunlances you'll see online run Blast Dash instead of Charged Shelling, since the extra mobility it gives them lets them zip around the monster and unleash Full Bursts with ease. Likewise, you'll often see them running Ground Splitter as well, since it has super armor, increases the Gunlance's shelling power, and the Hail Cutter is redundant when you can jump up into the air to release a barrage of Aerial Shelling at any time with Blast Dash.
    • Switch Axe players will typically run Finishing Discharge over Compressed Finishing Discharge and Soaring Wyvern Blade over Invincible Gambit. While Compressed Finishing Discharge is much quicker to get its damage out than its standard counterpart, the inability to use Zero Sum Discharge is a stiff penalty, and the fact that it also sends nearby allies flying makes it a complete non-starter for multiplayer hunts. Meanwhile, Soaring Wyvern Blade builds up a massive amount of amp charge and can be used to avoid a great deal of the ending lag from Zero Sum Discharge, although Invincible Gambit's damage and super armor are solid enough to attract a decent minority of players.
  • As of Sunbreak, a lot of players will use the Bowguns in group hunts, especially during Anomaly Quests. On top of the popularity of Long Sword and Great Sword, anomaly hunts require players to aim for specific spots to trigger an explosion to harm monsters and stun them. It's much much easier for Bowgunners to aim for some of these spots since they can be hard to hit for melees. Plus, even if an afflicted monster explodes, the ranged attack is more easily avoided for ranged characters. Similarly, Insect Glaive users can be seen flying around a lot of the time — it lets them hit taller monsters, break hard-to-reach parts, and often lets them keep out of the way of melee attackers or the line of fire from a gunner.
  • Sunbreak's Title Update 3 allowed Hunters to bring Followers on any quest they wanted (excluding Event ones) provided they don't bring other players. Of the three, Utsushi, Hinoa, and Minoto see the most play purely because they are the only three able to use Hunting Horns, and thus provide the player with many status buffs that make it difficult for any monster - not including high-level Afflicted monsters - to easily cart them.
  • In Anomaly Investigations, expect to see a lot of Seething Bazelgeuse quests once they become available. Seething Bazelgeuse is an A7 monster that nets a lot of points when slain, and compared to its A7 cohorts,^note Furious Rajang, Scorned Magnamalo, the metal Raths, and Flaming Espinas it's not only a lot slower, but it's much faster to defeat thanks to its massive and extremely vulnerable weak points, which also make it easier to break its parts and score even more points. All of this makes it one of the most efficient monsters to quickly grind out AR.
  • At higher Anomaly Investigation quest levels (200 or more), expect the vast majority of quests you join via Join Request to be quests that are set in one-area maps (Arena, Forlorn Arena, Infernal Springs). The Prism Spiribird near the Supply Chest maxes out the player's stats, elimininating the need to find an optimal Spiribird route through the map. Furthermore, these arena-style maps mean the player doesn't have to travel all over some big map just to catch up to the monster, which also makes them favored amongst speedrunners who don't have to worry about losing time because the game's RNG decided to spawn the monster as far away from camps and Buddy Recon points as possible.
• Contested Sequel: The game was acclaimed for carrying over and further improving many of the quality-of-life improvements first seen in World, plus featuring a greater variety of monsters (including classes that were absent in World due to technical reasons, such as Leviathans and Amphibians), introducing the beloved Palamute companions, and more quests by bringing back the dedicated single-player questlines (though, in line with the older non-expanded games, they don't go beyond Low-Rank). However, it also received criticism due to the Rampage quests, not having a very extensive postgame until title updates and Sunbreak, diminishing the emphasis on worldbuilding and immersion World was known for, and once again for having a decreased difficulty.
• Crosses the Line Twice: The truth about Shogun Ceanataur's "water beam" has disgusted a lot of players. Others, however, think of the SA2 Real Time Fandub.

Tropes D-H

• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Goss Harag, the oni-like bear monster, has become a beacon of fan art among the community. While the other yokai monsters have all been well-received, Goss Harag stands out for being one of the coolest and most evil looking monsters in Rise, and potentially the entire franchise.
  • As far as concept and design go, Almudron is a very popular monster thanks to its unique fighting style that revolves around using its tail as a paintbrush to sling mud and acid around. Its armor and weapons are also beloved thanks to their cool robotic motif. The same can not be said, however, for its boss fight.
  • Master Hojo's baby Tetsucabra is popular thanks to being a friendly monster with a lot of Ugly Cute appeal going for it.
  • Also in Sunbreak the Wandering Felyne Supy became quite popular, due to his playful interactions with Oboro and Chichae and showing up in the quest and shop menus if he's interacting with them, wandering about the outpost to check out various places with wholesome, wondrous reactions and having a rather cute design.
• Evil Is Cool:
  • Narwa and Ibushi are rarities among elder dragons in the sense that they're genuinely malicious and knowingly destructive creatures. And it's these traits, along with their creepy appearances and interesting dynamic as a mating couple that earned them plenty of fans.
  • Gaismagorm is one of the series' closest things to a Satanic Archetype, and the game plays it up for all it's worth, between its in-universe mythology of the Archdemon of the Abyss, dynamic with Malzeno paralleling the original myth of Dracula, and its reawakening being heralded as a sign of the apocalypse, complete with it literally crawling out of an abyss and unleashing a plague upon the surface. Combine that with its monstrous Pacific Rim-like appearance and spectacular (albeit fairly forgiving) encounter, and it's gained a decent following.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Most of the Rampage weapons are some of the best in their class, but one specific example is a head above the others; the Rampage Agitato. This Hunting Horn, when combined with three stacks of Recovery Up basically allows one hunter to constantly heal their entire team by using a combo that results in a healing Performance, which activates as soon as the final note is played. Combine that with its decent Attack, interchangeable element, and access to several forms of Ramp-Up skills, and a team with just two intermediate players basically becomes immortal while still keeping a solid damage output. The only real problem is the weapon's less-than-desirable Sharpness stats, but this issue is lessened by the fact that most of the time, Hunting Horns literally cannot bounce off monsters due to the effects of their Self-Improvement melody.
  • Blast weapons make getting good grades on Rampages ridiculously easy, along with substantially lessening their overall difficulty. As mentioned below under That One Side Quest, they bypass one of the harder available sub-quests along with doing decent damage, but the real kicker is the fact that Blast damage will earn points every time it triggers. Going on foot with a Blast weapon can easily earn you just enough extra points to get to the next upgrade level early, thus acquiring valuable offensive tools as soon as possible, and by the end of the Rampage it's not unheard of for players to get A or S rankings even without having completed half the objectives simply because they acquired so many extra points.
  • With Version 3.0's release and the re-introduction of Valstrax, the full Crimson Valstrax armor set is now among the best armor sets in the game. Not only does it have the highest defense among High-Rank armor period, its unique skill is Dragonheart: at level 5 from wearing the full set, if your HP is 80% or below, you get all elemental resistances boosted to 50, 10% extra attack power, and dragonblight inflicted upon you. While that last one is a big drawback for elemental and status builds, it's irrelevant for raw damage and dragon-element^note Dragon element is not affected by dragonblight, and in fact, the Valstrax weapons have a Ramp-Up Skill that boosts dragon-element damage when dragonblighted builds, and more importantly, Crimson Valstrax armor has Resuscitate 3, which grants more attack when afflicted by a blight, including dragonblight—literally more attack power at no cost. Valstrax armor also provides Weakness Exploit 3, one of the most efficient damage boosting skills in the game, as well as Resentment 3, which grants more attack when you can recover from damage taken, which should be common since you need to bring yourself below 80% HP somehow. And if for some reason that wasn’t enough to define the meta, each armor piece has either a level two or level three slot for decorations, effectively giving you access to any other group of powerful skills you feel like adding on to the already premium set. Lots of free power and tankiness for a relatively small sliver of health make Crimson Valstrax armor supremely popular as an endgame raw-damage-focused set. With the massive boost to elemental defenses effectively making one immune to both elemental damage and blights, one only needs to really worry about physical and otherwise Non-Elemental attacks from all but the most powerful of elemental monsters. Good luck fighting that Crimson Glow Valstrax in the meantime, though. Also because making full use of this set requires taking damage, this can make using healing problematic; many players' first instinct when they see a sufficiently wounded player is to try to heal them (with a Lifepowder, for example), and the healing may exceed the Dragonheart threshold much to the afflicted's consternation.
  • Although Valstrax's MR armor set ended up somewhat falling off due to the abundance of powerful new skills added, its Risen variant and its Epoch armor brought the jet dragon back into relevance due to Dragon Conversion, its unique skill that almost completely overturned the meta overnight. It functions as a more powerful version of Alatreon Divinity from World, setting all elemental resistances to 0 while converting a much higher 25% of the total into more elemental damage (8% for ranged weapons), compared to the 5% conversion from Alatreon's Element Conversion. On top of Dragon Conversion also buffing all resistances and ramping them up even more using the Blue Scroll (up to +25 to all resistances), both of which feed into the Red Scroll's element boost when switching back, what really made it strong was its synergy with other resistance-boosting skills, such as Furious and the aforementioned Dragonheart, as well as the abundance of powerful element-buffing skills like Dereliction, Bloodlust, Blood Awakening or Element Exploit. Combined with Sunbreak having a more lenient cap on elemental damage, pretty much any weapon could make use of the set bonus, and lining up an elemental weakness to the target would result in almost all of your attacks hitting like nukes, single-handedly making elemental sets almost unchallenged in the endgame meta. As an added bonus, the armor set also comes with high defense, good Decoration slots, and nice secondary skills like Attack Boost, Critical Boost, Stamina Surge, and Stun Resistance, and Dragon Conversion can even be added to other armors and Talismans using Qurious Crafting/Melding, meaning you can swap some of the parts out and use other armors for more synergy or variety. Of course, much like the original, have fun farming Risen Valstrax to get the Risegems needed.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • In rampages, Gate-Crasher monsters are already annoying since you have to ignore your other equally-annoying targets and hit them with everything you've got to keep them from bulldozing through your gates. But Basarios are easily the worst because when they jump into the fray, their bodies start off with no weak spots and take forever to heat up and soften, leading your otherwise trusty ballistas to deal pitiful Scratch Damage against their meaty health pools. Their heads are tiny and because they move way faster than a creature that looks like a pile of rocks should, stunning and repelling them can be an exercise in frustration. And if two or more attack at once early on, you're almost guaranteed to lose a gate or two unless you feel like wasting Elder Fugen on them. Cannons can make short work of them, but you don't start with them and have to unlock them as the rampage goes on, and even then their slow-paced firing rate won't quite cut it against multiple Basarios at once.
  • Most Targetters in Rampage quests are flying monsters, so you can at least send them crashing down with a Flash Bomb, Crag Ammo, or Retreat Shot. But prepare for a headache in higher-level Rampages, as the third horde of these will instead throw Rajang at you as a Targetter. While Rajang in Rampages is nowhere near as dangerous as in a standard hunt, it's still supremely annoying as it will spawn in the back of the Stronghold and is a ground-based monster, so your Anti-Air tactics won't work on it.
• High-Tier Scrappy: The Long Sword is considered by many to be overpowered compared to the other weapons. Its various counter attacks grant invincibility (which means they can't be negated by knockback or foiled by multi hit attacks), don't require any skills like Guard or Guard Up to make them usable (allowing the Long Sword to invest in offensive skills), and have minimal drawbacks for failing to pull them off. Foresight Slash in particular can be used in the middle of combos and has a very long invincibility window. This results in a weapon that can attack constantly, can take more risks than other weapons, and is better at counter attacks than slower weapons like the Lance and the Charge Blade. This perception only got worse after the Long Sword's showcase for Sunbreak, where it got new switch skills that are both flashy and useful, while other weapons like the Lance got underwhelming ones. The only annoyance is the weapons' attacks making it difficult to hunt in multiplayer without being constantly tripped up, but if players don't have room for Flinch Free, the new Shockproof decoration (disables Friendly Fire entirely, except for Stun and Sleep ailments) will eliminate this. Fittingly, when Sunbreak's final update came out with user stats, Longsword accounted for a whopping 21.8% of global weapon usage, even with the DLC's nerfs to many of Longsword's moves.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The final boss for Generation Ultimate's online mode was the Ahtal-Ka, a Neopteron whose signature technique was using its silk to manipulate objects, including being able to pilot its Ahtal-Neset, a colossal puppet cobbled together from stolen siege weapons and webbing. Now Rise's whole gameplay gimmick is using silk to hunt and even ride monsters!
    • On the matter of Ahtal-Ka, she throws up to four Dragonators at you, after you were used to them being on your side to skewer Elder Dragons with. Allmother Narwa ups the ante and does the same thing with five, spinning them around the arena as if you're in the middle of a blender.
  • A fan animation by NCHProductions showed Teostra losing his crown to Magnamalo in a fight. This animation came out around one month before it was officially revealed that Teostra is in the game proper and has a Turf War with Magnamalo. Even the results of said Turf War are identical!
    • Said animation also featured a cameo from Valstrax, where Magnamalo takes its jet engines for himself. Crimson Glow Valstrax made its debut in the 3.0 update.

Tropes I-N

• I Knew It!:
  • Considering the overall Japanese aesthetic, many players guessed Mizutsune would be returning. It was proven right when Mizutsune was revealed with the release of the limited time demo.
  • Many guessed that Nargacuga would be returning due to its general ninja aesthetic as well as Zinogre for appearing in Portable 3rd which was previously directed by Rise director Ichinose.
  • Many people guessed that there would be a Steam/PC port of the game at some point. On February 25, 2021, this was confirmed by Capcom, with the port itself releasing in early 2022.
  • With the Palamutes being such a big feature of the game, many guessed there would be a collaboration with Ōkami.
  • With Sunbreak's teaser beginning with the reveal of Malzeno, who strongly resembles a gothic vampire or gargoyle, many fans predicted other upcoming monsters in the expansion would be themed after classic European monsters in contrast to base Rise's monsters being based on classic Japanese Yokai. Lo and behold the 2021 Game Awards dropping another teaser trailer, showcasing a new monster named Lunagaron which strongly resembles a werewolf.
  • Since Sunbreak takes place in a medieval European setting with knights, some people predicted that Astalos, who was once described as "the knight" of the Fated Four, would return. The March 2022 Digital event went on to show that Astalos would indeed return.
  • Many fans guessed that there would be a proper Afflicted Lunagaron hunt in a future update. On the August 2022 digital event, one of the monsters slated for the update was Afflicted Lunagaron.
  • Many people guessed the Chaotic Gore Magala would be added in an update due to both Gore Magala and Shargaru Magala being added into Sunbreak. Sure enough, the November Digital event confirmed this.
  • A lot of people guessed that Velkhana was going to appear in Sunbreak due to the roadmap showing a part of its head and the "A Look Back at 2022 - Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak" event ended with background snow. Before long, the February Digital event showcased their return.
  • Due to the numerous hint drops from "Sunbreak Stories - Vol.4 Dear Princess" on Sep 30, 2022, plus foreshadowing in the game itself during later Title Updates, quite a few people guessed that Amatsu was going to appear in Sunbreak. Once the April Digital event arrived, peoples' theories were proven true.
  • Many fans guessed that there would be a Malzeno variant in the Bonus Update due to the preview picture showing a monster resembling it and several foreshadowing elements. On the June 2023 digital event, the final monster slated for the Bonus update was indeed Primordial Malzeno.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: The initial release saw a lot of debate on the difficulty of the game. Some argued that the new options afforded by wirebugs^{In Particular}Wirefall allows a way to instantly escape attacks that would normally leave hunters wide open and gets hunters to safety, while several weapons have silkbind attacks that grant an enhanced guard (charge blade, gunlance) or periods of invulnerability (dual blades, long sword) weren't offset by monsters becoming more dangerous in a way that forced hunters to use these tools properly. Others contend that this is largely an unfair comparison to Iceborne and other games that featured G-rank/Master Rank, and that even with lower difficulty the game is no less enjoyable and plenty of challenge remains. Come Master Rank in Sunbreak, this is somewhat mitigated due to many of the new monsters (especially in the lategame) having the speed and aggression to match hunters' new arsenals,^note Particularly, Wirefall is no longer a guaranteed escape due to many monsters having more follow ups or combos, which also slightly discourages reckless counters lest the user get caught in the endlag of the animation but at the same time, the expansion also gave hunters even more tools to work with, like Switch Swap/Evade and powerful new skills, making it up to interpretation whether or not the monsters were able to catch up.
• It's Popular, Now It Sucks!: Some veteran Hunting Horn users feel this way towards the new and improved version, citing that before, it was rare to meet a HH user in your party, moreso an incredibly competent one. With Rise, Horns now see much more widespread use following their ease-of-use, and as a result, have lost their "uniquity" for those that enjoyed using the weapon for its obscurity and perceived complexity.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Fans anticipating Magnamalo's Turf Wars with post-release Elder Dragons like Kushala Daora and Teostra were deeply disappointed by them being no different than its Turf War with Rathalos, Aknosom and Barioth. The same can be said for its Turf War with Bazelgeuse, as all employ the exact same animation despite fighting opponents of varying strength. Somewhat downplayed as of Sunbreak, which adds a new, unique Turf War for Scorned Magnamalo vs. Malzeno in the initial release and a different Turf War for Velkhana in the fourth Title Update.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: Some fans have voiced complaints about the base game being quite a bit smaller than most Monster Hunter games, with the whole of its content being doable in a shorter length of time and having virtually no endgame whatsoever. To its credit, the game has one of the most streamlined prep/hunt cycles in the series and also has almost no padding unlike almost every other mainline Monster Hunter game, but the lack of things to do after defeating Narwa is still very much a sore point. Capcom has seemingly addressed this with the announcement of Free Title Updates in the pipeline designed to increase the game's longevity by gradually adding more content, although this has lead to accusations that the game was rushed out and should've been delayed. As of 3.0 this is mostly averted as the game now features approximately the same level of content as a non-Updated Re-release Monster Hunter game, including a proper Final Boss, ending, and endgame monsters.
• Low-Tier Letdown: The Lance is considered one the weakest weapons in the game due to a number of game mechanics not working in its favor. Guard Lancing struggles because the decorations for Guard (which has 5 levels) and Guard Up (which has 3 levels) are both level 2, making it difficult to add or improve them; its counter attacks cannot protect against multi hit attacks; and even with maximum investment, there are still numerous attacks that inflict significant chip damage and have enough knockback to cancel counter attacks. Evade Lancing struggles because the invincibility window for evading is shorter than it was in World, requiring the player to invest in Evade Window, which has 5 levels and level 2 decorations. The Silkbind moves are also a mixed bag. Anchor Rage is based on how much knockback is received, meaning it actually becomes weaker if the player's guard is too strong, and it wears off if the player sheathes their weapon, such as from Wirefall; meanwhile Twin Vines requires 2 Wirebugs to use, which is too costly considering all it does is allow you to jump toward the monster. The end result is either a defensive weapon that has difficulty pulling off counterattacks and can be worn down by chip damage, or an evasive weapon that lacks offensive skills or mobility.
• Memetic Badass: The revamped Hunting Horn quickly gained a reputation as this. While it wasn't bad by any means beforehand, the weapon took a considerable amount of skill to use effectively due to its slow speed and because of the way its Recitals worked, leading to the few people that have mastered it to be considered somewhat of an elite corps by the fanbase. However, the Rise incarnation was seen as a huge step up from former Hunting Horns, due to eliminating the speed issues and removing the recital mechanic entirely, allowing it to slap monsters silly far more efficiently than before. And it can do all of this while BREAKDANCING. People started joking that the true master wasn't the horn mains, but the horn itself, or that the horn was being held back the whole time. Even Capcom themselves got in on the joke several times.
• Memetic Loser:
  • Wind Serpent Ibushi, thanks to his... "eventful" relationship with Thunder Serpent Narwa. See Memetic Mutation below for further explanation.
  • With the release of the Haunting of the Sun ecology book, Gaismagorm gets a bit of this due to the spree of misfortune it goes through prior to the events of the game (including flooding one of its own sinkholes by tunneling beneath a massive body of water), as well as its Curb-Stomp Battle by Primordial Malzeno which spooked it so badly that it became dead-set on avoiding Malzeno despite being several times its size.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • So many people mistook the offensive-type Palamute for Repede for bearing a striking resemblance to him. Some even thought Rise was a Tales of Vesperia sequel for the first 10 seconds of the trailer.
  • The game's title inspired many a joke about Rise Kujikawa.
  • Terry the Tetranadon ^ExplanationTetranadon's platypus-like appearance drew comparisons to Perry the Platypus.
  • When the game was initially revealed, there was some speculation that it would add a 15th weapon to the hunters' arsenal. While this was eventually disconfirmed, with all the weapons being the previous 14, the reveal of the Wyvern Riding ability lead to the joke that there is a 15th weapon in the game: the monsters themselves.
  • "Ha ha, you're here!" ^ExplanationSince the demo limits the number of times players can hunt monsters, a lot of people who want to practice or explore the map get around it by using the wirebug tutorial. Unfortunately, Utsushi will constantly chime in to tell you what you're supposed to do, usually by saying, "Ha ha, you're here!"
  • Triple Apex Rajang ^ExplanationThe February 17, 2021 trailer showed off Apex monsters in the Rampage, as well as Rajang. Before people found out these Apex monsters were different from the ones in 4 Ultimate, several veterans were cringing at the mere thought of Apex Rajang appearing as an invader and in the Rampage, in the same painful glory it had in 4 Ultimate.
  • Horny snakes ^{Explanation (spoilers ahead!)}As it turns out, the Rampage is caused by an Elder Dragon named Ibushi, who sends out vibrations to court Narwa every fifty years, which causes all the monsters to get scared and run. Fans found it somewhat hilarious that this cataclysmic event is effectively caused by two horny Elder Dragons.
    • Ibushi the Simp ^{Explanation (more spoilers ahead!)}In the final battle against Narwa where the Serpents have reunited once more, Ibushi gets his life force consumed by Narwa, transforming her into the Allmother... The reveal that this is a natural part of the serpents' life cycle did nothing to prevent fans from taking the former interpretation and running with it, portraying Ibushi as a horny simp for Narwa since he went and caused the Rampage, leaving a trail of destruction behind him, and got eaten up by the dragon he was trying to woo for his troubles.
  • Golden Almudron Orbs/Where are the Golden Almudron Orbs?! ^Explanation Almudron became the temporary poster-monster for the "desire sensor", given its Goddamned Boss tendencies and seemingly miniscule low drop rate for Golden Almudron Orbs, even by Rare Random Drop standards; thus, you'll see many more people raging about Almudron in particular than any other monster's rare drop.
  • Gotta catch em' all! ^Explanation In World, capturing non-Elder Dragon monsters was generally agreed to be the better option for hunting, since it gives you significantly higher rewards, drawing from the same pool as from slaying the monster. Here, however, the reward pools for capturing and slaying are different, and new players and players coming in from World will usually try to capture the monster the moment it runs low on health, not knowing that the "slay" rewards might have better chances of getting that pesky Rare Random Drop.
  • Bazelgeuse is on the loose! ^Explanation The second trailer for the 2.0 update showed off three new monsters: Chameleos, Kushala Daora, and Teostra, as well as most of the new features. However, what it didn't show off was a fourth returning monster; Bazelgeuse, who was sneakily slipped into the update and gave players returning from World quite a shock when they saw it again. As such, people started joking the beast invaded the game like it invaded their hunts three years ago.
  • Arzuros Escobar/Pablo Escobear ^Explanation There was once a bear that died from eating a massive shipment of cocaine, leading to people calling it "Pablo Escobear" as a reference to the famous drug lord. Since Apex Arzuros amounts to a Redhelm Arzuros from the Generations games on crack, people started making jokes about the beefed-up version of the Blue Bear Beast getting its fearsome strength from copious amounts of cocaine. This saw a resurgence in Sunbreak with the addition of Afflicted Arzuros, who is literally a cracked-up Arzuros driven berserk by an overdose of the Qurios' energy and virus.
  • Yoko Taro's Monster Hunter Rise ^Explanation Upon playing the game for the first time, Yoko Taro stated some...interesting theories about how the game's story would progress, likely based on his works, which are much darker than standard Monster Hunter fare. People had...mixed reactions to this, to say the least.
  • Sticker Hunter^ExplanationA term used to refer to this game and its post-3.0 updates in particular, which consist mainly of Event Quests against existing monsters that unlock cosmetics, often chat stickers.
  • Dame Fiorayne is the dragonator! ^Explanation During the final boss fight of Sunbreak, the knights end up unable to send any more equipment to help knock Gaismagorm down to the ground when it tries to escape. To compensate, Fiorayne instead launches herself at the beast, dealing several thousand damage and knocking it back down with more force than any other weapon, including multiple dragonators that it shrugged off. This has led players to make the comparison that while the Fifth Fleet's commander kept looking for his dragonator, Fiorayne doesn't need a dragonator because she is the dragonator.
  • That's right, this is what you get: my SUPER LASER PISS!! ^ExplanationWhen the internet learned that Shogun Ceanataur's excretory system is inside its shell, they came to the tragilarious realization that its high-pressure water cannon is actually urine. The memes were inevitable.
  • Incel Magnamalo studied the blade^ExplanationThe Scorned Magnamalo introduced in Sunbreak is said to be a Magnamalo who attained enormous strength by surviving countless injuries and battles. One of said injuries is a lost horn (seemingly courtesy of Hamon for the one fought as an Urgent Quest) which, according to supplementary material, causes male Magnamalo to be deemed unfit to mate for the rest of their lives, leading them to focus on gaining strength and expanding territory. This is specifically cited as one of the reasons for the heightened aggression and constant fighting that gave birth to the Scorned variant, so the humor of a Magnamalo evolving into an Elder-busting threat out of sheer rage at being forced to be celibate spawned many jokes. Adding to this is the fact that Scorned Magnamalo's most notable physical difference is its elongated armblades; given that "studying the blade" is already a meme associated with neckbeard/incel culture, the comparisons only got wilder from that point on.
• Memetic Psychopath:
  • Yomogi, thanks to players joking that she doesn't take nicely to having people skip the dango eating cutscene, and will bring forth lots of pain to whoever skips it. Then there's also how she laughs when she's summoned during the rampage and begins firing with the machine cannon...
  • Sunbreak gives us Luchika, who even the other knights avoid hunting with due to how bloodthirsty she gets. It pays to note that not only will she forget to heal players during follower hunts with her, should the player get knocked down and need assistance, her usual answer is to use a small barrel bomb to knock them away from danger. The fact that her Japanese VA gives her a rather creepy laugh during hunts doesn't help.
• Nausea Fuel: Breaking Shogun Ceanataur's shell in Sunbreak reveals that it has a rather detailed anus underneath it, reflecting the true nature of its water beam.

Tropes O-S

• Older Than They Think:
  • The concept of CPU-controlled hunters who help out and aren't just decoration or utility NPCs actually dates back to Monster Hunter Frontier, where you can have an AI-controlled version of your character be recruited by other players for hunts, although with much less refined AI.
  • Similarly, a number of other elements can be traced back to Frontier - certain armor/decoration skills, Switch Skills, monster attacks^note Ie, Lucent Nargacuga in Sunbreak has a triple poison spike-rain attack that originated from Frontier, along with a spinning forward-charge move inspired from Blinking Nargacuga, a subspecies exclusive to that installment, etc - under different names and/or with slightly altered effects.
  • Rise is available on Windows PC, Nintendo Switch, Sony PS4 and 5, and Microsoft Xbox One and Xbox Series S/X, making it the first mainline game to be on all three major console makers' platforms. Frontier actually did this first on PS3, PS Vita, Wii U, and Xbox 360, but that's a now-defunct spinoff game that was released exclusively in East Asia.
• Paranoia Fuel: As of 3.0, you can expect Crimson Glow Valstrax to intrude on a hunt. And not by simply walking onto the scene and attacking your target- it will approach from above and then divebomb the area.
• Polished Port: The PC version is widely regarded as superior to the Nintendo Switch version and the lack of portability or local wireless multiplayer to be a small tradeoff, thanks to the support for higher resolutions and framerates, as opposed to the Switch version being locked at 1080p in docked mode and a cap of 30 FPS with the framerate sometimes falling to 20-25 during more intense moments. And of course, it being a PC game, modding opportunities (for things like custom quests, custom Layered Armor, and extra HUD elements) are open. The PlayStation and Xbox console versions later benefitted from being based on this version of the game.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Kushala Daora has long been reviled due to its wind aura and tendency to stay airborne making the fight against it like pulling teeth. World twisted the knife further by making it so only Elderseal could weaken Kushala's wind when previously poison weapons were used for that purpose, and even then Kushala could restore its aura soon after. Come Rise, Kushala mostly sticks to the ground and its wind powers have a heavier emphasis on offensive applications rather than defensive, with its vulnerability to poison similarly restored.
• Salvaged Gameplay Mechanic:
  • Capturing monsters has become significantly less painful in this game. Monster "ready to capture" status is now shown without needing any skills. Then in Sunbreak, there are no Master Rank quests that require captures, with monster capture being relegated to NPC requests and randomly-appearing Optional Sidequests that can be done as part of regular quests or Expeditions, so you won't be denied of other rewards if you still somehow slay the monster by accident.
  • The way Talismans and Decorations are obtained were swapped around for World, i.e. in World, Talismans are crafted and Decorations are mined in the wild. This proved problematic as it makes assembling builds excessively reliant on RNG. To the joy of many Monster Hunter veterans, Rise makes Decorations into craftable items once again, with Talismans being obtained solely through Melding. Later updates, particularly in Sunbreak, add Melding options that either give a lot of skills and slots or outright guarantee a specific skill, further alleviating much of the RNG-induced frustration.
  • After World's online-requiring and rotating event quests, which many consider as having higher production values than past Event Quests (through things like hubs being decorated for the occasion, multiple quests per event, and even crossover characters and monsters) but which put off less-active players for creating a sense of fear-of-missing-out, Rise rolls back this mechanic and goes back to the series-traditional system of permanent Event Quests that can be played online or offline.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • For some people, Wyvern Riding is this. While it is generally considered to be fun, the fact that it's not optional means it interrupts the flow of combat for those who would rather keep wailing on a monster. This is most problematic in Rampage quests, since while Wyvern Riding can be used to fulfill status ailment and elemental blight objectives, it can work against players trying to fulfill "repel using installation/weapon" objectives. As it stands, you will automatically ride a monster if you hit it in its mountable state. Thankfully, if you so desire, you can easily press Y to send the monster charging head-first into the nearest wall, immediately dismounting you and toppling the monster. Sunbreak would fix this by giving players the option to only be able to ride monsters if their weapon is sheathed, allowing them to keep attacking the monster without initiating Wyvern Riding.
  • Rampages have caught some flack thanks to being simultaneously tedious and chaotic. Unlike hunts where you can quickly demolish monsters with the right equipment and skills, you can't really speed up the process of unleashing a fixed amount of damage onto hordes of monsters that slowly trickle in and try to attack the main gate. And on top of that, any damage you take will send you flying off of the ballista/cannon you're operating, and after you've taken your time to get back on, you can easily be thrown off by another monster attack. And this can be devastating when a gate-crusher/apex monster is breaking down the gate, and their backup just won't let you climb onto a weapon and hopefully stop their assault. Not helping the case was that (initially) certain monsters could only be fought during a Rampage instead of on a normal hunt, such as the Apex monsters and Ibushi. Later updates allowed various quests to allow you to hunt Apex monsters, along with Ibushi, outside of a Rampage.
  • The lobby system has a lot of problems as a result of trying to have traditional four-person lobbies and Join Requests coexist. While you are only shown lobbies with open slots, nothing stops a player from opening up a lobby and then starting a quest with Join Request enabled, allowing people from outside of the lobby to join the quest. This often leads to a frustrating experience where you join someone's lobby, try to join the quest that the host posted, only to be denied entry because it's already full. Or worse, a player hosts a lobby and then uses Join Request to join a quest hosted by someone outside the lobby, in which case the quest they're in doesn't even show up on the quest board. As a result, players with a better sense of lobby etiquette just stick to Join Requests, only using lobbies when hunting with friends and setting those lobbies to private.
  • Spiribirds usually start off as a novel feature, but are often considered a major nuisance once you've done enough hunts with them, as it means that even if you eat to get more HP/stamina, you'll still need to go on a fetch quest across the whole map just to make sure your stats are maxed out, as opposed to World where all one had to do was equip a Decoration. Although it's not exactly hard to get away with not maxing out Spiribirds, this is particularly extreme in Sunbreak's endgame, where not only have players probably done hundreds of bird hunts already, they're practically forced to at least mostly max out their birds just to not get instantly carted. Many of the higher-level Anomaly Investigation quests take place in one-area maps with a Prism Spiribird that increases your parameters to the maximum possible; expect these to comprise the vast majority of the quests you accept via Join Request.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: Many players have observed that Rise is even easier than base World and potentially the easiest game in the series. This is largely due to the monsters still being mostly toned down as in World compared to their previous incarnations but the Hunter movesets and capabilities vastly expanding, with the introduction of the Wirebugs, Silkbinds, and Wyvern Riding being major factors. That being said, It's Easy, So It Sucks! is generally considered a minority opinion, with many players still enjoying it despite its lack of difficulty.
• Spiritual Adaptation: The game has been considered to be an excellent Attack on Titan game, with the Hunters being able to swing around in the air with the Wirebugs similar to the Omni-Directional Maneuver Gear, and the story of the game involves defending the Hunters' hometown from a horde of large monsters. The Dual Blade gameplay furthers this comparison thanks to the Demon Flight Switch Skill that allows Hunters to spin in the air like a buzzsaw and ride down on monsters' backs similar to Levi's Signature Move.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: The Frost Islands theme's main hook sounds a lot like that of "AA" from beatmania.
• Tainted by the Preview:
  • Insect Glaive fans were not very impressed by pre-release material, as its moveset had appeared mostly unchanged from vanilla World and its Silkbind Moves were not as interesting or pivotal as the other weapons, making it appear relatively lackluster. When the game actually came out and players discovered how much it was actually improved, many wondered why these improvements weren't shown in any of the previews.
  • While previews of the PC port of Rise won people over with its upgraded textures, resolution, and framerate, a number of people were left unsatisfied when Capcom revealed there wouldn't be any cross-progression or cross-play implemented with the Switch version, especially since these requests being unmet were already a sticking point with World's PC port.

Tropes T-Z

• That One Sidequest:
  • While achieving an S rank isn't too difficult, some Rampage subquests can have you hurting for that coveted S+ grade:
    • "Inflict a Status Ailment" is one of the more problematic ones. "Inflict an Elemental Blight" is relatively easy to achieve due to the many ways to inflict elemental blights: Charged Thunder Ammo from cannons, elemental Barrel Bombs, and riding most monsters with elemental attacks. Status ailments are harder to come by in Rampages unless you have specific weapons to inflict such, as there's only five ridable monsters that can inflict them and appear in Rampages (Poison with Pukei-Pukei, Great Wroggi, Rathian, and Rathalos, and Sleep with Great Baggi), with monsters that could normally inflict ailments like Khezu, Basarios, and Mizutsune not being able to.
    • "Repel using a Bamboo Bomb". Bamboo Bombs detonate when a monster steps on them, and need time before another one spawns. And you can't really control monsters' movements unless you ride them, in which case all damage inflicted to them is reduced to Scratch Damage.
    • “Repel using Wyvernfire Artillery.” Wyvernfire Artillery is an installation that torches monsters that trip its laser sights. The problem here is that it’s only one burst before it goes on cooldown again, though it also comes with a weaker, multi-hit shot option. You can alleviate the issue a bit by pointing both installations at a Dragonbait Conch, or just at an open area where all monsters come through, but it’s still not a guarantee.
    • "Use a Dragonator or Splitting Wyvernshot." First of all, the description is lying; you need to use either to repel monsters, simply using the device or hitting monsters with it does not count. Second, both devices have long cooldown times, with the Power Kilns needing a lot of coal to fully recharge them. Finally, while the Splitting Wyvernshot can be aimed, the Dragonator cannot, so you have to time it carefully and possibly immobilize monsters (such as with traps and the Machine Cannon's Silkbind Shot) just to concentrate them within the Dragonator's hitbox, albeit a fairly generous one. On top of that, while the Splitting Wyvernshot is virtually a One-Hit Kill to non-Apex, non-Ibushi monsters (doing about 8,000 HP of damage to each target), the Dragonator's damage isn't at the same level.
  • Before a specific event quest popped up, any crafting recipes that required parts from Wind Serpent Ibushi were this, via falling into the same category as monsters like Zorah Magdaros and Kulve Taroth from World (in that the only way to fight it is via lengthy, non-traditional assignments).
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • Fans of Monster Hunter: World were disappointed to discover that all monsters will aggro on sight like they did in old games, as opposed to how World gave them varying levels of aggression which gave the game a more immersive feel. Now, the normally harmless and goofy egg thief Kulu-Ya-Ku is just as likely to attack a player as a ferocious Rathalos or Tigrex.
  • On a less serious level, many players are disapointed with the new Canteen cutscenes exclusively consisting of Dango, even in Sunbreak, instead preferring the massive banquet-style meals from past games.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Prior to Title Update 5, there wasn't much elaboration (outside of a few pieces of intel from Fukashigi and one Urgent Quest) about Kagero, Tadori, and Yomogi all coming from a kingdom that was destroyed long ago. Averted after it released, where the monster responsible for that calamity (Amatsu) appears, and we fight it to help avoid a repeat of that tragedy from happening to Kamura.
• Ugly Cute: Master Hojo's Tetsucabra mount is just as rugged, craggy, and mean looking as the rest of its kind. However, it's a smaller, friendly baby Tetsucabra who innocently hangs around the Gathering Hub, and will play around with bait that its master dangles in front of it with his stick. Unsurprisingly, more than a few fans wish it was possible to pet it.
• Underused Game Mechanic:
  • Hunter Connects are meant to help players find other hunting partners; the flow is that you join someone's Hunter Connect, and when anyone in that Connect creates a Hunter Connect lobby, anyone else in the Connect can join it too. Unfortunately, this feature ends up being useless because each lobby can only be tagged with one Connect at a time, most players just opt to do public multiplayer via Join Requests instead as opposed to lobbies, and there is no notification for when someone makes a Connect for a lobby you're in. Despite this, many people make and spread Hunter Connects anyway (as many Hunter Connects have the "Auto-Invite" feature enabled), giving the impression that they have a very large social life in the Rise playerbase despite using virtually none of those Connects. Of all the Anti-Frustration Features added in Sunbreak, fixing Hunter Connects was not one of them. About the only real use they see is amongst friend groups who make manual-invite Connects so that they don't have to set up passcodes for their lobbies every time; the auto-invite public Connects are largely ignored beyond accepting the invite and never thinking about it again. It's rather telling that one of the changes in Title Update 1 of Sunbreak is an option to disable Hunter Connect auto-invites if one doesn't want to be bothered by the "!" notification for new Hunter Connect invites anymore. Even then, the only ways to join an existing Hunter Connect are either through auto-invite Connects or being sent an invite while in a lobby, so there's no way to join through asynchronous communication.
  • For the players who do enjoy the Rampage quests, it's a disappointment that there are no Rampage Quests for Master Rank. Their absence makes sense from a lore standpoint, as by Sunbreak, the issue has long been taken care of, and in the Master Rank postgame quests to hunt Wind Serpent Ibushi and Narwa the Allmother involved locating the two before the next Rampage could get into full swing. As a compensation, the first post-release Title Update brings back Apex monsters for Master Rank, but only as secondary targets in Anomaly Investigations rather than as the sole or primary target(s) of quests. Nonetheless a number of players like the idea of Rampages and felt the game could've benefitted from improving their more problematic elements rather than just excluding them from Master Rank.
  • Guild Cards and Hunter Connects have unique IDs attached to each one. However, outside of maybe differentiating between two players or Hunter Connects with similar or identical names or reporting player misconduct, they serve no other use.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Great Baggi and Great Wroggi, two theropod bird wyverns who had appeared in various versions of Monster Hunter 3 before vanishing during the fourth generation and World, are part of the early-game monster lineup in Rise.
  • World monsters were expected to show up in Rise, and of the five present at launch, four of them (Kulu-Ya-Ku, Pukei-Pukei, Tobi-Kadachi, and Anjanath) were obvious picks due to being well-recognized and mostly well-liked. The odd one out is Jyuratodus, one of the few Piscine Wyverns in the series (and the only one in Rise at launch besides Delex) who was part of World's early-game but never got much attention otherwise. It even got significantly revamped to the point of being High Rank-only.
  • The 2.0 update presentation showed that the Elder Dragon trio from the second generation would be arriving, as well as a few new Apex Monsters. However, one more monster was snuck in alongside them: Bazelgeuse from World, ready to intrude on hunts with its carpet-bombing once more.
  • While many were expecting Valstrax to return, no one was expecting the regular version to not make an appearance, but a newly introduced Crimson Glow variant for 3.0.
  • With all the new monsters being consistently themed after Japanese mythology, most players were caught off guard when the teaser trailer for the Sunbreak DLC dropped. Said trailer revealed the new Flagship monster bears a very gothic, Dracula-esque design. Albeit, particularly observant players were vindicated on having noticed a lot of hints in the base game that the Kamura Hunter would eventually be traveling to a Medieval European setting.
  • For Tokyo Game Show 2021, there was an announcement that bits of Sunbreak would be revealed, alongside a returning monster. Many thought this would be something akin to Deviljho, Seregios, or Lagiacrus. What many did not expect, however, was the announcement that Shogun Ceanataur would be in the game instead.
  • June 13th, 2022's Capcom Showcase revealed that Espinas from Monster Hunter Frontier would be added to Sunbreak, marking the species' first mainline appearance. What makes it unexpected is that Frontier had been shut down in 2019 and the only content of the game to ever be added to the mainline games were the music, Great Forest Area, Hypnocatrice and Lavasioth and most of them were entirely restricted to Freedom Unite with Lavasioth being the only returning monster. Furthermore, the backlash for their inclusions left fans feeling as if they'd never get added even before Frontier shut down. Sunbreak's 2nd title update also added Flaming Espinas, a localized version of the orange Espinas Subspecies from Frontier.
  • The June 13, 2022 showcase had another huge surprise with Gore Magala. A lot of fans didn't think Gore would get in because of how similar its Frenzy Virus is to Malzeno's Bloodblight from a gameplay perspective, and the ecological effects of the Frenzy Virus back in 4 had a massive impact on the plot.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Rise is the first Switch game (and the first Monster Hunter) to use the RE Engine from Resident Evil 7, 2, 3, and Devil May Cry 5, and despite it being a modified version made to work on the Switch, it still looks absolutely gorgeous for the console.
• Win Back the Crowd: Sunbreak's teasers for the new Silkbind and Switch skills renewed the outcries of blatant Long Sword favortism especially when it was released alongside the Lance's far less visually impressive teaser. The subsequent demo and balance patch for Sunbreak significantly alleviated these concerns as Long Sword was struck with a relatively accepted damage nerf while the Lance — and other less popular weapons like the Gunlance — received significant overhauls to their moveset that boosted their viability.
• Woolseyism: Monster/area intros are voiced. In the original Japanese, they are performed in a very similar manner to kabuki theater, but since this style of acting is very difficult to translate out of its native language, the English narrator instead reads the text in the style of an epic poem.

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