Recent reviews by Cosmic Noodle

Incredibly fun game, I didn't expect to like it this much but it's definitely a solid experience. I love doing ultima after seal of blood it's peak. I also enjoy the harder difficulties (Chaos+) quite a lot since they force me to think about my build much more than hard diff.

The loot system is a bit questionable honestly (team ninja moment) but the main issue with the game for me is that it's INFINITELY harder solo seriously, I don't really see a reason why you just don't get Phoenix downs on singleplayer, it kinda feels like an oversight. I play it with my friends 99% of the time and the amount of resources you get from co-op is actually insane, please get a group going and you'll have an even more enjoyable time I genuinely recommend it.

If you enjoyed base rise this is a MUST HAVE as it expands on it absurdly. New switch skills, new monsters (some of the best in the series), the ability to have 2 sets of switch skills during the hunt and a good endless endgame. I currently have 1,750 hours and only 100 or so of those were spent in base rise.

Rise/Sunbreak has definitely been one of my favorite games for the past 2 years. It has a lot of pros for me that I honestly can't even remember any shortcomings in comparison to other games (Now that it's a complete game, it really released in kind of a poor state) that aren't boiled down to "would be cool but i don't care they didn't do it".

It's easy to get into it, weapons have incredible variety by themselves which means you can basically play more than 3 different ways with most weapons and by getting rid of set bonuses it opened up more armor variety throughout the whole game.

If you're playing with friends you can all start the quest together and skip the cutscene if you're not interested, most of them are monster intros and they're short enough to not feel like you're losing time if you decide to watch them.

My only real criticism is the fact it has region lock and with me living in Brazil it kinda messes up matchmaking so I do recommend downloading the Better matchmaking[www.nexusmods.com] mod that just makes it so you can join ANYONE around the globe, and you don't need to worry as the netcode is pretty decent as It won't really disconnect you unless you're really REALLY laggy. (though you still need to change download region to host to a more populated region)

Got into a planet and my 3 friends sunk into quicksand immediately

I wish steam had a "kinda" option, this game is not bad.

Let me preface that I enjoy this game somewhat, most of my playtime nowadays is after I did what I wanted to do so I didn't have to interact with the mechanics I disliked during it, I just wouldn't recommend it unless you're VERY patient. The monsters are cool, the enviroments are gorgeous enough and are very pretty to look at but there's quite a few issues that stack up that frustrated me while I played from low rank to the very end of master rank content and I'll just mention them here, nothing super detailed for each. I'm considering both base world and the Iceborne expansion here.



- Less moveset variety
- No Palico Layered system
- Palico management too minimal
- Time limited stuff
- Bad variety on endgame gear
- Bad weapon designs
- Badly optimized
- Menu and UI
- The menuing is terribly slow for a game i have to item manage after every hunt (Rise, GU and Frontier take 2 seconds for me to refill my inventory, World takes almost 10)
- Paid DLC plastered all over the menus


The first indicator of World's problems, so much stuff is done for the sake of exposition that makes this an annoying experience. Starting off with the first solo hub (Astera), everything is so far from each other that you probably waste a third of your base World playtime going back and forth between floors at the start, I get what they were going for but it gets really tiring to traverse after hours (Iceborne fixes this).

Which brings us to the Gathering hubs, I really don't understand why you have to leave Astera's hub to go forge, check on resources and etc, it's such a waste of time that why would you even bother staying there anyway? Iceborne's hub fixes this a little bit but not by much as their obsession with exposition makes it too big and have a tiny loading screen to get to the forge. Minor nitpick but i should be able to see other players anywhere instead of just the hubs, what's the point of having 16 player lobbies and huge maps if I can only see people on the smallest parts of it?


Hunting with friends and randoms is fun! It's a really cool experience but the way the main story progression was implemented is atrocious. Needing all 4 players to go into the quest and watch the cutscene to then have 3 of them quit and join the 4th so they can hunt together is such a dumb decision that I don't know how it even passed playtest, it makes progressing tedious for a monster that dies weirdly quick, even with the lowest possible gear for that rank.


Tracking loses its novelty after around 10 hunts, especially considering the map design (Looking at you Ancient forest and Rotten vale), thank god raider ride is a thing so i don't have to care about actually moving around.

I won't get into issues specific for each monster since most of them are fine besides some questionable hitboxes so i'll just go into some general problems about them. Monsters seem to LOVE just constantly running away in this game, you'll topple them once and they're out of there after stunlocking you with a roar, even worse if some other monster decides to come in and for some reason not leave after you dung pod it (And when they do they leave to the same spot the target is going to???)

Hot drinks and Cold drinks are genuinely irrelevant mechanics, they really just add nothing imo, they even give you a free supply of them anyway at the start of a quest, though the game can randomly decide to just throw you in the monster so better to just bring them instead of relying on that.

The clutch claw would be a fun mechanic if the wound was extra damage instead of basically being the difference between you hitting the monster with a stick when it's not tenderized and hitting it with a nuclear bomb when it is. There are very few weapons where the claw actually feels fun to use because they integrated it into their combos or had a better way to clutch like Hammer, Sword and Shield and Insect Glaive.


RNG decos are a thing for some reason, having a gimped build because you can't roll a decent decoration even after endgame is genuinely ridiculous, the melding options are not good enough to mitigate this. Slot distribution throughout them is also incredibly weird, why is flinch free and earplugs a tier 3 gem while atk boost is a tier 1?


Straight up one of the biggest time wasters in this game, you don't get that many materials and the requirements to upgrade your stuff is really high. Nothing about this mechanic besides the map is enjoyable to me and it sucks that the game expects you to love it since it's the reliable way to raise MR after you beat Iceborne's main quest


This game wouldn't be this popular if it wasn't pretty, because it's all exposition but when you get to it it's very dull to go through unless you have friends mitigating that feeling. Play this game if you really want, because fighting the monster tends to be fun honestly, just be aware of these issues slowing you down.

I'll link some mods that kinda fix a few of these issues for me and some others I didn't bother mentioning like layered armor stuff.

• Skippable cutscenes[www.nexusmods.com]
  
• Extra NPCs in Astera's gathering hub[www.nexusmods.com]
  
• Extra NPCs in Seliana's gathering hub[www.nexusmods.com]
  
• True weapon damage values[www.nexusmods.com]
  
• Souvenir's light pillar for better material visibility[www.nexusmods.com]
  
• Decoration drop rate overhaul[www.nexusmods.com]
  
• Guiding Lands Gathering Indicator[www.nexusmods.com]
  
• Guiding Land Monster Drops Overloaded[www.nexusmods.com]
  
• No Grind Guiding Lands[www.nexusmods.com]
  
• Pre-Guiding Lands Layered Armor[www.nexusmods.com]
  
• Unlock All Layered Armors (Get this with the above if you just want really early fashion, it's just free layered)[www.nexusmods.com]

I don't hate the game, but my main issues are frustrating things in it that feel like they just shouldn't exist in this type of game. A lot of people mention this but the visibility in this game is legit awful, the amount of effects on screen past a certain point of the game is completely unreasonable which leads to another issue I have that a lot of the damage you take feels VERY unavoidable.

HP in a roguelike is a resource that is not easily restored and having that resource taken from you in a way that you feel like it wasn't really your fault is frustrating, they have addressed this by apparently making HP orbs drop a little more in the last update (I could be wrong but it's what I felt), It unfortunately doesn't fix the issue itself.

Another issue I felt is that I've never felt so limited by a roguelike like I do with Skul, having 2 skulls is completely fine by me but 9 items is a very low number and even with a decent build enemies and bosses are very tanky (They even reduced enemy HP in the last patch)

Which brings another issue to the table, It's understandable for some skulls to be a little better than others even with their "Prime builds" but I feel like some skulls should instantly be scrapped if you see them in a run no questions asked. All speed skulls past stage 2 feel very weak, this is especially noticeable when you play with the Reaper and realize the massive power gap.

TL;DR Game does not feel rewarding to play after a few runs since you start noticing bad patterns.