Rise feels even better suited for portable play than the earlier games, since you’ll never find yourself wandering around aimlessly in search of a monster. What Rise’s stages lack in complexity they add in verticality, and while your targets are marked on the map from the start this time around, you’ll often find yourself figuring out how to meet them on their level. Traversing around the environments is faster than ever thanks to two new elements: a pet dog called a Palamute that joins you in battle and lets you ride on its back, and a tool called the Wirebug that can be used to zip up walls and hop onto monsters, occasionally even controlling them in large-scale confrontations with other beasts. In fact, Rise goes even further in that regard. Unlike the older games, though, the subsections aren’t broken up by loading screens, which helps Rise play similarly to World’s more free-flowing style. The stages feel more like old-school Monster Hunter games than they did in World, with less elaborate designs and fewer graphical flourishes like dense foliage.
The biggest concessions are the environments.
