Monster Hunter Rise only just released, but it is positioned to be one of the most popular Switch titles ever. With it, Monster Hunter returns to a portable platform, which some feared would undo many of the improvements made by Monster Hunter World. Instead, Rise seems to have streamlined even further than World ever did, prioritizing fast-paced action and mobility over all else. For many players, though, any new Monster Hunter title means just one thing: hours and hours of content to play together with a group of friends.
In Co-Op Watch, a weekly series investigating new hits, hidden gems, and classic titles, the goal is to find the very best games to bring two or more people together in jolly cooperation. Games will be considered based on how easy it is to play with friends or strangers online, how well gameplay is built around cooperation, and what makes each game's cooperative play stand out. Monster Hunter has always been a series with co-op baked into the formula, and Rise is no different, but it has plenty of new features to consider and a few downsides to be wary of.
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Right off the top, Monster Hunter Rise lets players choose how to play. After an intro that familiarizes players with their home base, a long list of available quests open up and players can immediately start searching for an online Monster Hunter Rise session. The game doesn't force a lengthy tutorial mission before letting the player hop online; it just drops them off and lets them choose what to do next. There are some story missions that disallow multiplayer, but there is nothing wrong with putting them off for a while to focus on playing with a friend or three.
Accessing multiplayer is remarkably easy. In fact, the game tends to push towards playing online, and allows anyone to create their own lobby with a single menu option at the Courier, located right in the middle of the hub town. There is also an option for local play, which works great given the Switch's portable nature. Players can matchmake into any open lobby, or search specifically for a lobby that a friend is currently in. Players can also send out join requests mid-quest, and other hunters with a higher rank will receive rewards for helping out. Lobbies are limited to four people though, so larger groups may have to split up or find another game.
Once in a lobby, players will have the run of the home-base village together, able to show off pets, armor, and weapons, or just explore the quant ninja village with one another. It's clear Capcom put thought into player interaction, since there are entire sub-menus for group poses and taking photos with other people online. There's nothing more fun than spending twenty minutes finding a scenic spot, lining up the perfect fist-bump pose with a friend, then snapping a photo to add to both Hunter Cards or hang in the characters' houses.
One improvement from Monster Hunter games of yore is the fluid difficulty scaling for multiplayer. In past games, there were only two difficulties: one for single-player and one for multiplayer. This made playing with two people objectively more difficult than playing alone, and only with three or four players did the difficulty balance out again. Now when each player joins in, the monster's difficulty goes up a single tick, and if someone leaves, it goes back down again. There's no longer any reason to wait for a full group to start hunting, since playing with two hunters is no more difficult than any other number.
Unfortunately, there is a pretty glaring downside that's new to Rise. The main story "Village Quests" that push Rise's plot forward cannot be played in multiplayer. That's a step backwards for the series, because Monster Hunter World allowed players to run through the story together, even if the process was a bit inconvenient. Luckily, that's the only major negative mark on Rise's "co-op-ability."
Unlike Village Quests, the panoply of quests accepted from the Gathering Hub are all available for co-op, and there is no restriction on what quests a player can join. One can even join quests they haven't unlocked yet, and still earn rewards. Even if one member of the group is much further ahead than the others with their Monster Hunter Rise builds, there are little to no penalties, and gameplay is usually just as compelling for all parties involved. Once in a quest together, players will find that Rise's team-oriented gameplay is a shining example of what to look for in a co-op game.
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The core, moment-to-moment action of exploring large locales with one-another, gathering materials and useful items, then tracking and hunting large, dangerous monsters as a team is masterfully crafted. There is just enough downtime to chat, explore, and find secrets, broken up by lengthy bursts of action that test everyone's individual skills while rewarding good teamwork. Someone tosses out a powerful item or lures another large monster in to fight the target, prompting everyone to line up and unleash their most powerful combos. The monster flees, and everyone sharpens up their weapons, takes a moment to heal up to full, then hops on their mounts to continue the chase. There are enough weapons to support any playstyle, and in each hunt every player is practically guaranteed one big moment to shine.
One of the greatest joys of Monster Hunter's combat is finding the synergy between various combinations of the game's fourteen weapons. Every weapon has a role, from the Greatsword's tail severing and massive one-hit damage for waking up sleeping monsters, to the Hammer's partbreaking and KO, the Insect Glaive's mobility, the Hunting Horn's support, and all the various flavors of DPS, both ranged and melee. Forming a good team comp is key to success, and playing with others frees up more interesting builds, like a hammer focused on applying status effects rather than straightforward damage.
Monster Hunter Rise seems fine-tuned to provide those brief, glowing moments when everything comes together and every player wordlessly fills their role in perfect, concentrated synchronization. In between those moments, each 10- or 20-minute hunt is filled with commiserating over all getting hit by a big ultimate attack, frantically fleeing to heal up, gleefully chasing down a wounded foe, laughing as one squad member gets launched by a tail swipe, or urgently calling out a hidden Monster Hunter Rise area filled with ore veins and bonepiles to scavenge. It's all great fun, and the game is purpose built to make it last.
Perhaps most importantly, Monster Hunter games always provide hundreds of hours of content to chew through. Rise seems to be no different, tasking players with steady grind but rewarding them with constant progress. Rise will often provide a dozen quests to choose from, but only ask players to choose four or so to complete in order to move on to the next segment of the game. That means a team can choose which baddies they enjoy fighting or need lots of parts from and focus on those, rather than grinding through uninteresting quests. It's a freeing way to serve up all the content Rise has to offer.
All of these clever systems and carefully thought out mechanics add up to mean that two, three, or four friends can easily make Monster Hunter Rise a mainstay co-op game with incredible longevity (just look at how long Monster Hunter World has stayed alive). At the same time, it's also plenty of fun to play with random strangers online. The game being on the Switch means trading the lush realism of World for a more sparse, cartoony style, but in return it makes local co-op and playing on the go as convenient as possible. With all that going for it, any friend group should consider Monster Hunter Rise a strong contender for their next big co-op game.
Monster Hunter Rise is available now on Switch.
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