izigame.me

So, you're done with base Rise and wondering if the expansion is worth it. The short is answer is a "Yes, but..."and that But should determine if you just grab it at full price, wait for a sale, or pass on it entirely. I'm gonna get straight to the negatives:
Tragically, my biggest negative comes not from anything in the gameplay itself, but a devastating save file bug that could threaten to delete your save. There IS a way to recover your save should you encounter the bug, but some of my friends in their attempts to fix the problem have in fact ruined their saves, which has entirely killed one of my friend group's interest in playing this game.
I have also personally experienced this bug myself; I have been able to salvage my save thankfully, but the especially egregious thing on my end is that I've experienced this bug 5 separate times and it is both exhausting and nerve wracking that my save file is being threatened now feels like every other week I boot the game up. For a bug that serious for an expansion that's still being regularly updated, this is frankly disgusting and I won't change this to a positive review until I hear this is dealt with.
Technical issues aside, the added roster/Master Rank being a mixed bag: While some of the new monsters and returning monsters here are actually some of the most fun I've had fighting in MH game, I am A BIT underwhelmed by some others. If rise's roster resembled Yokai and other distinctly Japanese images, Sunbreak's imagery tries to evoke more western iconography which IS cool it's just I don't feel like that it was really explored as much. What it basically translates into here is, have some dragons, dragons, dragons , and then also "the 3 lords." Ignoring the blur of admittedly fun dragon monsters, the master rank versions of existing monsters range from "WOW this is a totally new monster just about!!!" to "wow, it's the same monster, except he has one more follow up in one of his attack chains." and unfortunately the latter is the majority.
Also of note, I genuinely feel that the last boss just doesn't hold a candle to the base game's real final boss. I'm gonna speak very generally here to avoid spoilers, but for the game's conclusion it just felt so underbaked. It's SO massive, anytime it moves you can't tell if it's going to awkwardly slide your character out of position or if it moving is actually an attack and that limb which just gently slid you across the map a second ago is now a massive hitbox for what visibly looks like the same exact movement. It feels less like I'm interacting with a creature and more like a weird series of hitboxes and physics that is *sort of* creature shaped.
If you can get past the save file and these grievances though, consider the following:
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Things in Sunbreak's favor:
Build variety is actually insane. Like, I want to say there is probably close to triple the amount of unique armor sets you can craft here making min-maxing and experimenting all the more dizzying. These new sets aside from being upgraded versions of existing armor sets in HR also include some new skills that drastically alter your moment to moment decisions during a fight. ALSO they have different skins!!! We Fashion Hunting now. And then not only do we have new switch skills to customize our movesets, but we also have the scroll swap system which allows us to no longer agonize over "what's the best overall skill" and instead just bring most of them and switch them around as needed on the fly in the middle of your hunts!
Follower quests and the ability to bring followers into other quests in place of other players! This is a great system for players who are simply exhausted with their teammates dying but are also in the same breathe dreading taking on the monster completely alone. As with any game that relies on its playerbase to extend its lifespan, the addition of competent AI teammates is a great way to shift the game back towards a still-enjoyable singleplayer experience when that playerbase tapers out. Of note, the followers do not scale the monsters' HP like other players do in multiplayer and their AI is SHOCKINGLY GREAT. I would say that in 8/10 cases, the AI is literally just better and smarter than most other players. That said, in spite of this seemingly hypertuned intelligence reacting to everything so much faster than any normal human could possibly, they are programmed with their own little personality quirks that almost resemble real flaws different players and the playstyles they might bring to the table. They might whiff a counter and eat shit, Luchika will LITERALLY never heal herself because shes too busy being a DPS/KO machine, they sometimes leave in the middle of the fight to try and wrangle another monster. They're great; it's like I never left the multiplayer lobbies.
General QoL: We can finally edit the skills and stats of our pets. A hub that has literally every macro managment part of the game inside of it. Layered weapons (this should have been in base game!!! The rampage weapons aren't enough!!!). As of writing on 12/9/2022, more controll over the RNG when it comes to the talisman grind. I'm hesitant to say the addition of Qurios Crafting because of how grindy it is, but I guess it's something for the psycho min-max'ers I guess.
Overall, I'm happpy with just about everything that is new. In spite of my non-save-file related grievances with this game, for an expansion that's priced at 40 dollars, I do feel that that I got my money's worth of content, my issue is more that you could *feel* the development team stretching themselves thin in some areas, while hitting it out of the park in others and my recommendation on weather or not you should get this regardless of the save bug depends on how big the listed positives and negatives are to YOU personally.
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Edit: Damn, I didn't expect anyone outside of maybe my friends to read this. Well since everyone's here INCLUDING THE SAVE BUG STILL, I've come to update this with instructions should the bug happen to you:
1.When asked if you want to replace your save, immedieately force quit the game, DO NOT say yes.
2.Go into this folder: Local disk C, steam, user data, 51502882
3.COPY the folder named 1446780 to your desktop or wherever else is immediately easy to access.
4.With the folder safe in your desktop now, Turn off steam cloud save for MHR. delete the old 1446780 folder that's in the 515 folder
5.Restart steam
6.Launch MHR. It'll find no save, let it make a new one. Go through the beginning cutscene up until they let you loose in the village. Quit the game.
7.Take the copy from your desktop and replace the fresh the 144 folder that got generated with it. I strongly suggest copying over moving in case this bullshit happens again
8.Launch game again, enjoy.
Regarding prevention:
Of note, it SEEMS the cloudsave being on gives a bigger a chance for this bug to happen. That said, I have also encountered it with cloudsave off, however it seems to occur much less frequently when I have it off.