The Flash Paper That Will Be Monster Hunter: Rise PC

Let me preface this post by saying that I am a HUGE Monster Hunter fan. I’ve logged countless hours within franchise since I was 13, starting with the MH4U demo on my 3DS. I eventually bought MH4U proper and played the absolute hell out of it with my best friend at the time; I was so into it that I even convinced my parents to pre-order Generations for my 14th birthday. After Generations died down, I took a break for a few years because I didn’t have a PC or Console that could play Monster Hunter World, the next installment in the series. However, the second I built a PC that could, World became a mainstay. World/Iceborne remains my second most played game on Steam to date, I still love it so freaking much. (Check for yourself, my Steam’s linked in the footer!)

This year, when Rise was announced, I pre-ordered it the second I could, which isn’t something I normally do for games. I’ve become very anti-preorder lately, so that I don’t get disappointed by the inevitable over-promising and under-delivering that big studios do nowadays, but I had enough faith in Capcom and Rise that I put my rule aside for this one occasion. I stayed up the night of release to download and play it, and subsequently finished MHRise’s main village campaign within a week. I played 65 hours of the game in 2 weeks and enjoyed the entire thing. But after getting the meta weapons for each class I actually cared about, (Rampage Agitato V, Scream in the Night, Evening Calm, etc.) I dropped the game and haven’t really picked it up since. Don’t get me wrong, Monster Hunter Rise was a good game! But… I don’t feel compelled to pick it back up.

This feeling of burnout, combined with a few other details that I’ve picked up on from Capcom’s press releases, trailers, and tweets, leads me to think that the PC Port won’t be as successful as the Switch version was. There’s a few points I’d like to hammer down specifically, so let’s get into it, I guess.

1.) Lack of New Content

First off, I feel that there’s a couple sub-populations of the Monster Hunter fan base right now, each expecting for various things from the port. The first group is looking to pick this game up again when it drops on PC and expecting to be so wow-ed that they feel compelled to pick this game up again. The second group is hoping the graphics revamp is going to make it the new Monster Hunter World. The last group is made of players who have been holding on buying MHR since rumors of a PC version existing came out early this year. The only group that I think will really be satiated by this release is the last group. (And maybe certain diehard members of the first group.)

Let’s start by addressing the first and third groups simultaneously.

The game is no different from what it was on Switch. Capcom has not said that they plan on adding any exclusive content to the PC version of the game for whatever reason. The content is exactly the same, the grind is exactly the same. Hell, even the pre-order bonuses are the same. There’s nothing here that would actively attract players who got burnt out on the Switch version.

The most apt analogy I have right now is the Switch OLED upgrade debate.

The Switch OLED is by and large the same red-box console that came out a few years ago, just now with a slightly larger and crispier screen. Yeah, there’s increased NAND storage on the device and the kickstand is better, but that’s about it. From what I’ve seen, most Switch owners who decide to upgrade do so because either A.) they want to flex and show that they have the newest, coolest thing, or B.) the graphics looking slightly better is enough of a selling point to them. That said, the Switch is still limited by its game library, and if you’re bored with all the games that the Switch has to offer, then what was the point of the upgrading after all?

Do you see the comparisons that I’m trying to draw here? If you rework that last paragraph to talk about Rise PC— its HD graphics, ultrawide support, nonexistent FPS cap, and content— the whole paragraph still makes sense.

“Rise PC is by and large the same Monster Hunter game that came out a few months ago, just now with HD graphics. Yeah, there’s ultrawide support and no FPS cap, but that’s about it. […] That said, Rise is still limited by its quests, and if you’re bored by all the quests the game has to offer, then what was the point of the upgrading after all?”

For new Rise players, this argument is nonexistent, and most of them will see this remaster as a steal! For the same price as the original, you can have this brand-new upgraded version of Rise that looks and plays better than the original. Why not go for it, right? But for the existing player who is already burnt out and tired of the game’s current quests and offerings, these minor changes simply won’t be enough to convince them to shell out an extra $60.

2.) Lack of “Play” Between Platforms

There’s also a lack of “play” between Switch and PC that’s severely harming the game in my mind. When I say play I don’t just mean cross-play, although that is an issue that the game will have. Play refers to leniency regarding player data usage/storage that allows us control over our saves and our data. As of now, it seems like play will be a serious issue for the game, with Capcom already saying they will not implement cross-play or cross-saving, just weeks after a huge player survey overwhelmingly stated that it was a requested feature. This tweet, which came from Capcom out of the blue, felt like a huge slap in the face to players looking forward to experiencing the game again.

I mean yeah, Nintendo’s super restrictive about what goes on their platform and represents their brand; getting cross-play approval from Nintendo is death by paperwork, and I wouldn’t wish that upon any developer if they don’t want it themselves. That’s fair. But a lack of cross-save, just after teasing players with the survey is almost offensive. Many people, including myself, were looking forward to picking up the game again once we could play on a better platform, but now we’re being told that we have no choice but to repeat the past year’s worth of content if we want to do so. Why even market the game to the those players if you know that the features that they just requested aren’t even possible?

There’s people in the replies to the “no cross-anything” announcement tweet saying that it’s a technical issue, but I’m willing to wager that it’s not. Many parts of the game’s save data will be identical to the Switch’s because of the similarities of the two games; I doubt the dev team would spend time re-engineering the save data format if they didn’t need to. The only part that may differ is the settings save file, considering that some settings differ between the two versions. Manually transferring save data will probably boil down to booting up JKSV on your hacked switch, making a backup of your save, copying it over to the PC’s save data location, and starting the PC version up. That’s the way it works with 90% of Switch/PC save transfers, and I have no doubt this will be similar.

Now, assuming that this save transfer method even works, there’s still another question we have to ask ourselves: Will Rise’s anti-cheat detect that we’re importing a save and ban us? That’s right, MHR is shipping with Denuvo Anti-Tamper which angers me so freaking much. Even if we transferred our save data ourselves to stick it to the man, there’s no guarantee that we won’t be banned for doing so.

The lack of control that we as players have over our own data is so frustrating. I don’t know what else to say here, really.

3.) Rise Is A Console Game At Heart

Lastly, I want to circle back and talk about that second group of people I mentioned earlier. The ones that hope that Rise PC will look and play so good that it’ll replace World as the de facto Monster Hunter game on PC. I’m here to say that Rise PC will not be the next Monster Hunter World because of one reason: compatibility.

Part of the charm that World had originated from the fact that it was the first visually stunning Monster Hunter game. It was the first Monster Hunter game to be on a truly powerful console that could handle detailed worlds and models, and looked absolutely amazing on 4k displays if you had the hardware to do so. It was new, it was novel, it was something that Capcom had never done before.

As for Rise, the game will more than likely aim to have synchronous update streams between PC and Switch versions. (Not confirmed, just speculation) This means that updates and new content have to be able to support both platforms at once, and gives all new content a common denominator that restricts what can be done: the Switch’s hardware capabilities. The game’s models and code have to be able to run on a mobile processor first and foremost, and for stronger systems we can do some visual tricks like texture upscaling to make it look “better.”

Adding higher resolution textures to an old game is a cheap way to make it look better, sure. I mean, Capcom’s already done this before. In World, they had an add-on pack you could download on PC that would replace the standard 1080p textures with 4k ones, to better accommodate players with higher resolution monitors. It looked really good, in my opinion. The models the base game used were already detailed enough that adding higher resolution textures & normal maps were enough to visually improve the game without much re-engineering. But the reason I believe this trick won’t work for rise is because the transition from PS4 to PC is a lot more lenient than going from Switch to PC.

The Switch is under-powered in comparison to its peers in the market. It uses a mobile processor at heart, which is why lots of optimization is required to make games look good on the platform. To be fair, Capcom has done a great job optimizing their RE Engine to make Rise run well on Switch. But this doesn’t change the fact that the Switch is still a mobile platform. The optimizations made for the Switch won’t translate to PC very well, and will instead show as cracks in the game’s engineering.

For example: Sure, these optimized, low tri count models may look good on the Switch’s 720p display, but when you put it on a 4k display with nine times the pixel count, you start to see some edges even with high resolution textures. Like, look at the game’s terrain. Do me a favor and watch the MHR PC Trailer and take a close look at the terrain in the background and the actual models of monsters. You may see what I mean.

There are very clear jagged edges in terrain and models that don’t exist in World, simply because the common denominator for World was much more powerful.

You cannot create detail from data that doesn’t even exist. Even newer tools like AI and DLSS don’t truly solve this fundamental issue in computing. So with this in mind, combined with knowing that the game has to use low-poly models/maps to support the common denominator, then we can conclude that there was never a way that Rise would look better than the Switch, realistically, from any standpoint other than texture resolution. That is, unless the devs decided to replace the models in the PC version with more detailed ones solely for that branch, which just isn’t feasible.

Enough ragging on the models, let’s talk UI real quick.

Surprise! It’s also exactly the same as the Switch’s, but with higher res textures.

It’s clear they put minimal effort into this, at least as of writing. I mean, they didn’t even consider changing the scale of the UI, which should be a given considering people will be playing this on their high resolution monitors to really admire the new 4k textures. The HUD is just the 720p one from the switch upscaled to 4k, and it takes up way too much space for a screen this size. I guess this is where our ultrawide monitor friends get a bonus: Rise PC does have an ultrawide UI offset setting, so you can at least try and hide these humongous HUD items in your peripheral vision. As for us 1080p HFR monitor users, we get nothing for now. Really astounding, I genuinely hope that they work on this before release.

So, Rise will not be the new World because it is not a Triple-A console game being ported to PC. It is a mobile game being ported to PC. The only apt comparison you can really try and make to gauge potential success of Rise PC is comparing it with its parent on the Switch. And if people got bored with it on the Switch, then they definitely will here too.

Summary

I don’t really know what to say here, I’m just disappointed as of now.

I want to toss myself into the first group I mentioned, but I also don’t because I know I’ll just be disappointed later. This game deserves to be better. I’ll toss the HD graphics argument from earlier aside for a second, it’s clear they’re still missing essentials like UI upgrades and whatnot. It’s frustrating. Capcom has less than 3 months to get it better, and I really hope they take feedback from the demo to heart and make the game better.

My message to Capcom if they ever read this: Please listen to the community. If cross-save isn’t possible, at least look into save transferring. Please look into updating the UI. Make the game feel like it isn’t just a cash grab, make it feel like it belongs on PC, and listen/support the players who want the game to be just as successful as you do.

That’s all for now. As always, thanks for reading.

Epilogue: After The Demo

It’s been a day or so since I finished word vomiting the above few sections and I have since been able to get my grubby hands on the demo and give it a whirl. And let me tell you, Rise PC is the definitive way of playing Rise, and I wish I had waited.

The game plays looks better and plays well because of the lifted FPS cap and the raised texture resolution, but like I said above, edges as a side effect of the game’s low polygon count can be very clearly seen. Like, looking at this random screenshot I took while playing the demo, you can very clearly see straight edges where the water meets the land.

Sure enough, the UI scale is not scalable, and this particularly sucks for a hunting horn main like me because the upper left-hand quadrant of the screen is pretty much always obscured by the HUD. Sure, I could go into settings and hide certain aspects of it to clear up space, but I still want to see the information that the HUD tells me, just not in 2x scale.

Regarding the save data assumption: I still think I’d win that bet.

File names are the same, but file size is a lot larger. Similar file architecture I’m betting, just differences in details. I’m sure there’s a team of homebrew devs working on a converter as we speak.

Overall, I think my points still stand. New players are in for a real treat as the quality of life changes made for PC make the game look and play better than it did on the Switch. But those changes are the only things that might even attract old players as well, and I don’t think graphics alone are enough to get people to abandon their existing 100+ hour savefiles.

Anyways, I leave you with 1 minute of me playing the new demo, coming straight from Nvidia Shadowplay’s instant replay buffer. Enjoy watching me struggle to relearn hunting horn.

I’ll see you in the next one. :)