Monster Hunter Rise Sunbreak’s time is coming to end – so there’s no better time for Monster Hunter World 2

Monster hunter it’s a mainstream game now. As big as Capcom’s other major franchises, Resident Evil, Street Fighter. As big as other multiplayer stalwarts, even, hot on the heels of Destiny 2. Anecdotally, I know a lot of players who got bored of the D2 grind and migrated to Monster Hunter World on Xbox One and PS4, because it felt like a similar game in a way. ; Shared global action with a penchant for on-trend, hard-core extreme and regularly updated with seasonal content.

Many of those players never came back, actually. And that’s the power of Monster Hunter World: a huge and unexpected success from a game that Capcom, I’m sure, would like to replicate the success.

But right now we are in a post-world state. Coming to PC after a brief period of Switch exclusivity, and more recently to Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation, the most recent release for Monster Hunter was Rise. A success in its own right (12 million sales of the base game and over 4 million for the DLC attest to that), Rise is nonetheless considered a bit of a watered-down game compared to its bigger, cross-platform, multiplayer sibling.

Rise was great, if you’ve been on this site for the last two years you’ll know my feelings on it, but it’s not World. It lacks a proper robust multiplayer heart; yes, there is co-op capable of supporting up to four players, but World did it differently. Rise is a bit like ‘My First Monster Hunter’; a smooth, plastic Fisher-Price take on the rough edges and hard scales of World. Hopefully, this latest title has served as something of a tutorial for many new players to the series, and now Capcom feels emboldened again to sink its teeth into the satisfying, bleeding heart of the series. TRUE Monster hunter experience.

Real social spaces, raids, endgame content that’s virtually impossible to complete solo, an ever-expanding world that really took advantage of game-as-a-service models without getting too greedy or overpowered – this is the Monster Hunter way. . to come, in my eyes. Rise, once shackled and constrained by older Switch hardware, has done an amazing job of modernizing, spitting, and polishing while veering toward better hardware… but it’s still a Switch game at heart. The shine starts to wear off, the edges start to show.

But, like many heavy carnivores you’ve brought down with your comically oversized greatsword, the time has come for Rise. Yesterday we got the news that the next game update will be the last one. To the elephant graveyard with you, brave beast, your time under the broken sun has come to an end. It’s time for something new to emerge, something bursting with fresh energy and raging at the world. And I think Capcom would be remiss if they didn’t capitalize on the success of Monster Hunter World.

Think about it; there hasn’t been a proper Monster Hunter game released for this generation yet – World and Iceborne are still selling very well (and really feel at home on the Series X/S and PS5) and Rise scales up nicely to take advantage of the hardware …but neither game is really taking modern technology for what it’s worth. With Capcom releasing amazing-looking RE Engine-based titles like Resident Evil 4 and Street Fighter 6, it seems like a bigger, badder, and fiercer open-world game is crying out to be tackled next.

We’ll most likely never see another Lost Planet game again, so Monster Hunter World 2 is the next best bet; in fact, we’ve had quite a bit of legwork for such a title in world history lessons. are getting through the Sunbreak story. We could even go all the way to Pokémon Gen 2 and see various settings from previous games all tied together into a cohesive world map: Capcom has the technology, the audience, and (forgive me) the world.

Capcom’s hot streak doesn’t seem to be ending anytime soon; Street Fighter 6 became a modern classic overnight, Dragon’s Dogma 2 looks even better than the first, and even the unexpected Dino Crisis contender at home, Exoprimal, looks set to inhabit a strong Mesozoic niche. The perfect complement to all of that, a service game to bolster them all and live for years and years and years, would be Monster Hunter World 2. You know I’m right.