Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak, interview with Ryoji Tsujimoto and Yoshitake Suzuki

Monster Hunter Rise

As promised during the last Digital Event, Capcom then released a series of very short trailers that illustrate some of the new Silkweave and Swap Skill moves for each type of weapon. Not all the news have found the public's favor, but we remind you that the weapons are still fourteen and today we have the official confirmation that in the final code of Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak there will be more skills to unlock. In fact, we had the exclusive opportunity to interview Ryoji Tsujimoto and Yoshitake Suzuki, respectively the producer and the director of the expansion due out at the end of June, and we discovered some interesting information.

Capcom also showed us , in a long gameplay video, two hunts against a couple of monsters that we will face in the expansion. In short, to find out more, all you have to do is continue reading our new preview of Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak.

New gameplay

Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak, you can configure up two rolls of inversion In reality, the thirty minutes of unprecedented gameplay that Capcom has shown us does not reveal who knows what extraordinary information, but should reassure fans of Monster Hunter Rise about the goodness of the combat system, now embellished by the addition of the technique called Swap Skill Reversal. Configurable from the usual personal chest, this dynamic allows you to set two reversal rolls, one red and one blue, and assign each to up to five Trading Skills.

During the hunt, then, just press the appropriate key combination to switch from one inversion roll to the other and, by doing so, swap the Swap Skill configurations on the fly. This way players will have a lot more chances in combat, which should come in handy against new monsters and the Master Rank, which promises much more challenging hunts.

As for the monsters we've seen in action, the first hunt Capcom showed us saw a team of players go in search of the Lunagaron in the Citadel. This map is one of the largest that Capcom has ever drawn, both horizontally and vertically, and includes a great variety of biomes that we glimpsed during a short exploration phase in which the hunter searches for and collects a pair of mutated thread bugs. , which improve the effectiveness of the Wyvern Mount, and a Spiderweb, a new type of Puppet Spider that allows you to grab monsters and crash them into a wall.

Practically a new Monster Hunter World: Iceborne-style claw grapple, we imagine it will become essential in the speedruns of competitive players.

Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak, the enraged Lunagaron gets up on its hind legs We must admit that Lunagaron took a while to surprise us. In the first few minutes of the hunt, the new monster - one of the so-called three lords - moves and behaves like an Oodogaron, arousing a strong sense of déjà-vu that doesn't give a big publicity to a new monster with the recycled skeleton. But once infuriated, the Lunagaron stands up on its hind legs, covers itself in an armor of icy spikes, and takes on the shape that inspired its design: that of a werewolf. At that point he begins to dart across the battlefield, trying to grab the hunters with his icy claws. In this case, the hunter, wielding a light crossbow, switches from an aggressive reversal roll to one configured as defensive, which allows him to take advantage of the more agile Trading Skills to dodge and attack.

The Hunt also shows a brief territorial dispute with the Garangolm, another unpublished monster and one of the three lords, who we have glimpsed using a peculiar ability: this colossal creature can attack both with fire, which covers the right paw, and with water, which covers the left one.

Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak, the first sword ax that is made with parts of the Lunagaron Eventually the hunters defeat the Lunagaron, cutting off its tail for good measure, and return to the Elgado outpost with the necessary materials to make some weapons and armor. Capcom's video, at this point, shows us the manufacture of a complete set of Lunagaron, Rarity 9 and Ice Resistance, and of as many armor for the Felyne and Canyne, as well as an ice element Rarity 9 sword with a good purple thread called, in English, Frostmoon Eclipser. In short, everything is ready for a new hunt, and this time it's up to Seregios. There is a twist, though: it is a Follower Collaboration Mission in the company of Master Arlow, one of the supporting actors introduced with Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak.

For the uninitiated, this new type of missions is exclusive to the single player and sees us face the hunts together with an NPC who behaves like a real hunter, or rather, like a Felyne or a Canyne, but even more efficient. Followers attack monsters, heal the player, set traps and so on: as well as being an interesting variation on the single player theme, they should also offer some additional background information on the narrative.

Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak, Master Arlow is one of the followers For the hunt for Seregios, we return to the Sandy Plains, one of the maps of Monster Hunter Rise. Apparently, in the old maps there will be new rooms and paths in which to find Sunbreak's unedited endemic Fauna, such as the aforementioned Ragnonetta. The Seregios is a flying wyvern introduced for the first time in Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate and then revised in Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate, and that of Sunbreak does not behave very differently: it remains an extremely agile and aggressive enemy that attacks with wide sweeps of the tail and especially with the hind legs and their sharp claws. The peculiarity of this monster is that it can throw its quills at a distance and inflict the status of Bleeding.

We learn, however, that Bleeding has changed a bit compared to previous Monster Hunters. Instead of dealing damage over time, Bleeding is an anomalous condition in which each action charges a kind of gauge that causes a certain amount of extra damage when hit. As in the past, however, just put away your weapon and crouch for a few seconds or consume a well-cooked Steak or an Immunizer.

Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak, the Seregios inflicts Bleeding The two hunts Capcom showed us they do not seem to revolutionize the established gameplay in Monster Hunter Rise, but they demonstrate the effectiveness of the new dynamics, especially the Reversal skill exchange which actually seems to make the battles even more frenetic and engaging. It remains our doubt that all these mechanics could unbalance the difficulty level in favor of the players, who would end up with a much more varied and efficient arsenal, while the monsters remain for good or bad the same. We asked Ryoji Tsujimoto and Yoshitake Suzuki what they think of our perplexities, and in the interview below you can read their answers.

Our exclusive interview

Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak, we will also be returning to old maps such as the Desert Plains Don't worry that the Swap Skill Inversion can unbalance the gameplay in favor of the players and make hunts too easy?

When adding new moves, you can't add more and more options to the game without thinking about how they will affect the experience. Considering that there are fourteen different weapons, it is indeed very difficult and tiring for our team to balance every aspect of the game, but we take this moment of development seriously. What we did was take Monster Hunter Rise as a base, where it was already possible to combine the different trading Skills, and add more, but thanks to the new dynamic of the Swap Skill Reversal you get to have practically double the options. We believe that players will have much more flexibility and will be able to become even more creative with the new combinations, but at the same time we are sure that the game will still represent an important and exciting challenge for everyone.

You have increased the difficulty of the games. hunts, for example by increasing the health of monsters or their attack power? We calibrated the difficulty of the new missions based on Monster Hunte Rise's Low and High rank hunts, but we didn't want to schedule hunts that were impossible to complete. With the addition of the Master Rank and the new combat skills, the game has certainly changed, but the difficulty will gradually increase as in the past and, once the first Master Rank monsters are defeated, players will return without noticing it into the usual gameplay cycle. - hunt, collect, craft and start over - which characterizes the series.

Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak, follower missions are single player only Will the Apex or Hardened monsters return? The Apex monsters were related to the Fury and the story of Monster Hunter Rise, but Sunbreak will lead players into a new region where the Fury does not exist and therefore there are no these types of monsters, but a large variety of unreleased creatures and subspecies. br>
Have you ever thought of moving to a live service model instead of staying on the classic model with free updates plus cosmetic microtransactions?

We have already worked on this type of titles with Monster Hunter Online, which lasted for almost ten years even if only in Asia, but now that the franchise has reached its twenties, we have decided to focus on our modus operandi: create each new title based on our idea of ​​the gameplay and eventually develop an expansion like Sunbreak that emphasizes that concept. I think it's a style more suited to action games like Monster Hunter, because if you want to program action gameplay that works really well, it's much better to formulate it one game at a time. If you publish a game and then you have to manage it as a live service, that is, in the long term, you end up adding more and more mechanics to keep it alive and in the end you end up with a product that is no longer the initial one. What's the point of continuing if the game has changed? Instead I think our approach to Monster Hunter is more genuine, because with each new release we ask ourselves: where do we want to go with this new episode? What are the dynamics we want to focus on? Once we have found our answers, we propose it to players who at each new release can say: I preferred the previous one, I prefer the new one, and so on, and this allows us to work differently on subsequent titles.

Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak, the Seregios is an old glory of Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate Will Rise's fast-paced and so dynamic gameplay affect the future of the series, or will we sooner or later return to the slower, heavier and more realistic combat system of the previous titles?

As I said, every time we create a new game we set the tone, the philosophy and the objectives, and this brainstorming phase then influences its development. This is how the game then ends up positioning itself at a specific point on some kind of imaginary graph. The combat system could be more frenetic or not, but we don't set ourselves this starting goal and rather we ask ourselves what we want to convey to the players. With this approach, we don't feel limited by the legacy of the series, which means we don't have to make Monster Hunters more frenetic or slower than the previous ones. The next Monster Hunter will likely be neither Rise-like nor World-like but a Monster Hunter in its own way.

Are you planning to make significant changes to the endgame or will it still be focused on finding the best amulets?

We cannot speak openly about the endgame yet but we are sure that the news that we will divulge in the coming weeks will please you. Our advice for now is to focus on the start of the game, not the end!

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