Monster Hunter Rise Demo Thoughts

Last night, a demo for Monster Hunter Rise for the Nintendo Switch came out. I have some thoughts on it.

Full disclosure: I’ve never been much of a Monster Hunter fan. I’ve tried previous demos for the series and never could get into the games. I wanted to like them but they just didn’t connect with me.

So why did I try the Monster Hunter Rise demo? As always I was curious. Would this be the Monster Hunter that I finally like?

The Monster Hunter Rise demo contains two training missions and two regular missions. There are a lot of classes to try out too. Single player and multiplayer are both available to check out. The content for this demo seems large but its unfortunately limited by 30 mission tries. Also the demo will only be available to download until February 1st and the online multiplayer will be turned off at the end of this month. That all said, I mostly liked what I’ve played so far.

I’m very impressed by the game’s graphics. Monster Hunter Rise is a really good looking game! Perhaps better looking than the other ones I played. Rise, without a doubt, plays much better than the Wii U or 3DS games!

Some classes, like blade characters and bow characters, walk faster and combat seems quicker. Bigger (tank) characters are still slow and a bit harder to control. One of my favorite things so far is when you start the mission with the waterfall, you can slide down the water and jump into the mission area. Its pretty neat! And I like the new “hookshot” ability, even though I haven’t got a handle on how to use it well yet.

I did briefly try out the online multiplayer and it seemed to work fine. It was easy to connect with people I didn’t know and head off on a mission. Though because we couldn’t chat with our voices, it was hard to keep ourselves working as a team to take down the enemy. Also the enemy just wouldn’t die. sigh. Monster Hunter Rise is a pretty hard game.

I’m still not sure if its my type of game. I found the enemies to be a bit too hard. I did like the graphics and gameplay of Rise more than previous Monster Hunter games I had tried though. I will most likely play this demo more.

Have you tried the Monster Hunter Rise demo? What do you think of it?

Monster Hunter Rise comes out on the Nintendo Switch on March 26, 2021. The demo is available now and will only be available to download until February 1st!