Good Stuff
If you're looking for a MONSTER HUNTER game that can be played in Co-Op from the get-go, then you've hit the jackpot! Aside from a couple of urgent Village quests, most of the game resides in the Hub area, which is available right from the start. There are no asinine quest join restrictions like in World, where you had to see a cutscene before other players could join. Now the party organizing is made more simple and fast via the Hunter Connect system. Joining mid-quest is not problematic either!

When it comes to area design, RISE goes for quality over quantity. Within the first couple of hours, you'll likely see most of the maps the game has to offer, but so far these are the most vertical locales I've seen in an MH game. The new wirebug system enables seamless wall climbing and quick jumping across large gaps. If it's not the edge of the map or an immediate hazard, then chances are you'll be able to climb it and explore it! The first area of the game demonstrates this well by having steep cliffs right in the center of the map. On top of that, great wirebugs can be placed in preset locations as a way of faster ascension or travel.

To encourage area exploration a permabuff system was introduced: collect 4 types of different birds that reside throughout the map to permanently boost your character's stats for the rest of the current quest's duration, even after a K.O. It's a polarizing mechanic, since some might see it as a waste of time, but I would say that considering the game is on the easier side, there's no need to gather them if you don't feel like it. On the other hand, if you like to explore and/or gather resources efficiently along the way, then this is a case of killing two birds with one stone. This way you can become more familiar with the map, learn routes that suit you best, and find some helpers that'll help you out! For arena type quests, you get a single permabuff bird that boosts all your stats to the max.

Quality of life improvements have been inherited from Monster Hunter World and are expanded upon. The game is leaning towards the convenience of game play rather than the tediousness of surviving in harsh lands. There is no sudden realization that you forgot to pack your essentials or picked the wrong gear, radial menus from World give immediate access to any item at your fingertips and the inventory space doesn't need to be cluttered with pickaxes or nets. No need to guess what kind of mission objectives you're after, as now they're simply marked on the map. The real focus now is on the combat experience and exploration.

Neutral Stuff
RISE is the easiest MONSTER HUNTER game I've played. With increased player mobility, various quality of life improvements and tweaks done to the monster attack patterns, the game gives enough headroom for slip ups. If you're familiar with basic MONSTER HUNTER mechanics, then you'll be right at home.
Despite the intimidating introduction of the wirebug system, it's easy to learn and it and use it as an inseparable part of game play. Not only wirebugs expand your weapon moveset, but the game also allows tweaking of weapon behavior, providing more play style variety. Palamutes allow fast traversal and safe ways of sharpening, healing, buffing.
With all of this in mind, it's not too hard to shred through everything the game keeps throwing at the player. By the end of the Hub quest story, there are higher difficulty monsters all around, but they still do not push you against the wall. Sure, there are event quests that take currently existing end-game monsters and buff them to deal far more damage, but all this means is that the player needs to do some extra preparations and maybe have a more careful approach during the fight. Even with those special events in place, the excitement of facing a difficult challenge still wears off rather quickly.
MONSTER HUNTER is known to be a difficult game, so whether RISE being an easier game is a good or a bad thing falls on your own personal preference.

Bad Stuff
Some things never change, and the overwhelming amount of tutorial messages is one of them. The moment the game starts, the player is greeted with seemingly never-ending slew of pop-up windows that appear as soon as you dare to talk to someone or open a new context window. Veterans of the series will likely just mentally block them and dismiss these instantly, while knowing exactly how a MONSTER HUNTER Village works, but I do find that this presentation of having hundreds of tutorial pages being thrown at a newcomer is still overwhelming. On a positive note, there's an option in the settings that decreases the amount of messages to only include the "important" ones.

Following the success of Monster Hunter World, RISE inherits the business-side practices as well. In my MHW review I pointed out the eyebrow-raising amount of DLCs (174 at the time, now at a lovely 200) that were put on sale alongside the game, so now that part of the review gets a sequel where I mention that RISE currently has 116 DLCs, a list of which is likely to grow once the content expansion drops. Since this is happening again, I can assume that "whale" hunting did work out, but it's not the type of future that I'd like to see.

PC Version Specifics:
The launch of RISE was relatively smooth - a day and night difference between Monster Hunter World. Considering that it's a Switch game, the PC port runs and looks well even on aging hardware. So far, all Reach for the Moon Engine games have had impressive PC versions, aside from that DRM blunder with Resident Evil Village. It's the same for this release: the menus are option-rich, with various settings for both visual and technical tweaks.

One particular oversight in this version is that polling rate of a player's position seems to be tied to your current frame rate. The higher the FPS, the more accurate monster attacks track, increasing the difficulty. As people already pointed out, this sounds similar to how Dark Souls II had faster weapon degradation due to the game running at 60 FPS. It's unknown if this will be ever fully addressed, but currently 60 FPS is the sweet spot. Feel free to go above, but expect that you won't be able to avoid vertical attacks by just walking to the side.

The recent v3.9.0.0 patch has fixed the image quality scaling option, meaning that the game will now calculate its internal output based on what screen resolution you have selected. I've been running the game at 1440p and 150% scale, thinking that it's running at stable 4K60, but boy the game sure got me there: after the update it wasn't stable anymore and, fortunately, I figured out that it couldn't have been the new dynamic pet shadows tanking the performance and that the image scaling was the culprit (now confirmed on Steam forums by the devs).

Overall, the game treats me well and runs stable. There were no network issues like during the launch of World.

Conclusion:
The fun and addicting cycle of MONSTER HUNTER is brought to the next level thanks to RISE's fast-paced game play: wirebugs are excellent for combat agility, palamutes greatly enhance general movement and no Co-Op gate keeping creates an exciting recipe for a good carting time with friends and strangers. This is the best platform to experience RISE and a great starting point for those that have never played a MONSTER HUNTER game before.

Good Stuff If you're looking for a MONSTER HUNTER game that can be played in Co-Op from the get-go, then you've hit the jackpot! Aside from a couple of urgent Village quests, most of the game resides in the Hub area, which is available right from the start. There are no asinine quest join restrictions like in World, where you had to see a cutscene before other players could join. Now the party organizing is made more simple and fast via the Hunter Connect system. Joining mid-quest is not problematic either! When it comes to area design, RISE goes for quality over quantity. Within the first couple of hours, you'll likely see most of the maps the game has to offer, but so far these are the most vertical locales I've seen in an MH game. The new wirebug system enables seamless wall climbing and quick jumping across large gaps. If it's not the edge of the map or an immediate hazard, then chances are you'll be able to climb it and explore it! The first area of the game demonstrates this well by having steep cliffs right in the center of the map. On top of that, great wirebugs can be placed in preset locations as a way of faster ascension or travel. To encourage area exploration a permabuff system was introduced: collect 4 types of different birds that reside throughout the map to permanently boost your character's stats for the rest of the current quest's duration, even after a K.O. It's a polarizing mechanic, since some might see it as a waste of time, but I would say that considering the game is on the easier side, there's no need to gather them if you don't feel like it. On the other hand, if you like to explore and/or gather resources efficiently along the way, then this is a case of killing two birds with one stone. This way you can become more familiar with the map, learn routes that suit you best, and find some helpers that'll help you out! For arena type quests, you get a single permabuff bird that boosts all your stats to the max. Quality of life improvements have been inherited from Monster Hunter World and are expanded upon. The game is leaning towards the convenience of game play rather than the tediousness of surviving in harsh lands. There is no sudden realization that you forgot to pack your essentials or picked the wrong gear, radial menus from World give immediate access to any item at your fingertips and the inventory space doesn't need to be cluttered with pickaxes or nets. No need to guess what kind of mission objectives you're after, as now they're simply marked on the map. The real focus now is on the combat experience and exploration. Neutral Stuff RISE is the easiest MONSTER HUNTER game I've played. With increased player mobility, various quality of life improvements and tweaks done to the monster attack patterns, the game gives enough headroom for slip ups. If you're familiar with basic MONSTER HUNTER mechanics, then you'll be right at home. Despite the intimidating introduction of the wirebug system, it's easy to learn and it and use it as an inseparable part of game play. Not only wirebugs expand your weapon moveset, but the game also allows tweaking of weapon behavior, providing more play style variety. Palamutes allow fast traversal and safe ways of sharpening, healing, buffing. With all of this in mind, it's not too hard to shred through everything the game keeps throwing at the player. By the end of the Hub quest story, there are higher difficulty monsters all around, but they still do not push you against the wall. Sure, there are event quests that take currently existing end-game monsters and buff them to deal far more damage, but all this means is that the player needs to do some extra preparations and maybe have a more careful approach during the fight. Even with those special events in place, the excitement of facing a difficult challenge still wears off rather quickly. MONSTER HUNTER is known to be a difficult game, so whether RISE being an easier game is a good or a bad thing falls on your own personal preference. Bad Stuff Some things never change, and the overwhelming amount of tutorial messages is one of them. The moment the game starts, the player is greeted with seemingly never-ending slew of pop-up windows that appear as soon as you dare to talk to someone or open a new context window. Veterans of the series will likely just mentally block them and dismiss these instantly, while knowing exactly how a MONSTER HUNTER Village works, but I do find that this presentation of having hundreds of tutorial pages being thrown at a newcomer is still overwhelming. On a positive note, there's an option in the settings that decreases the amount of messages to only include the "important" ones. Following the success of Monster Hunter World, RISE inherits the business-side practices as well. In my MHW review I pointed out the eyebrow-raising amount of DLCs (174 at the time, now at a lovely 200) that were put on sale alongside the game, so now that part of the review gets a sequel where I mention that RISE currently has 116 DLCs, a list of which is likely to grow once the content expansion drops. Since this is happening again, I can assume that "whale" hunting did work out, but it's not the type of future that I'd like to see. PC Version Specifics: The launch of RISE was relatively smooth - a day and night difference between Monster Hunter World. Considering that it's a Switch game, the PC port runs and looks well even on aging hardware. So far, all Reach for the Moon Engine games have had impressive PC versions, aside from that DRM blunder with Resident Evil Village. It's the same for this release: the menus are option-rich, with various settings for both visual and technical tweaks. One particular oversight in this version is that polling rate of a player's position seems to be tied to your current frame rate. The higher the FPS, the more accurate monster attacks track, increasing the difficulty. As people already pointed out, this sounds similar to how Dark Souls II had faster weapon degradation due to the game running at 60 FPS. It's unknown if this will be ever fully addressed, but currently 60 FPS is the sweet spot. Feel free to go above, but expect that you won't be able to avoid vertical attacks by just walking to the side. The recent v3.9.0.0 patch has fixed the image quality scaling option, meaning that the game will now calculate its internal output based on what screen resolution you have selected. I've been running the game at 1440p and 150% scale, thinking that it's running at stable 4K60, but boy the game sure got me there: after the update it wasn't stable anymore and, fortunately, I figured out that it couldn't have been the new dynamic pet shadows tanking the performance and that the image scaling was the culprit (now confirmed on Steam forums by the devs). Overall, the game treats me well and runs stable. There were no network issues like during the launch of World. Conclusion: The fun and addicting cycle of MONSTER HUNTER is brought to the next level thanks to RISE's fast-paced game play: wirebugs are excellent for combat agility, palamutes greatly enhance general movement and no Co-Op gate keeping creates an exciting recipe for a good carting time with friends and strangers. This is the best platform to experience RISE and a great starting point for those that have never played a MONSTER HUNTER game before.