It's been about a month since the massive expansion to Monster Hunter Rise was released, and after doing pretty much everything base Sunbreak had to offer, I was ready for more new shit. Well, here we are. BACKGROUND:
Before Sunbreak was released, Capcom revealed that there would be numerous post-launch updates adding new content periodically for people who purchase the DLC. The earliest of these updates was set for August, and Capcom ended up teasing a little bit of what was coming throughout July (a lot of which I found interesting). I took great care to pace my playthrough of Sunbreak and not rush through all of the game at once. I spent most of July playing at a leisurely pace and had a lot of fun along the way. By the time I'd cleared every new thing and did everything I wanted to do, it was close to the end of the month. The timing was far from intentional, but perfect nonetheless; I was now ready to get hyped about the new stuff. WHAT'S NEW: New Monsters (sort of) This update adds four new variants/subspecies to the game:
Naturally, new monsters bring with them new weapons and armor. The weapons are neat side-grades to the original weapons (e.g. the metallic Rath weapons have much higher affinity than the originals, while Lucent Narga boasts extra poison damage at the cost of affinity), and the Seething Bazelgeuse set is more or less a full upgrade for the Bazelgeuse weapons. The armor sets are where things get super interesting, as every armor set features brand new skills that I'm dying to build around. Element Exploit in particular speaks to me since I like to play around elemental weaknesses, but I do find the other new skills (like Status Trigger and Adrenaline Rush) worth experimenting with. In addition to all that, the materials you get from beating the shit out of these new monsters will allow you to craft new Decorations. These include upgraded Lv 4 Decorations for old skills (like Partbreaker, Rapid Morph, or Quick Sheathe), as well as a couple of new Decorations for skills new to Sunbreak (Charge Master, for example). It's great to have all these options since it allows for more flexible builds. Anomaly Investigations Base Sunbreak introduced Anomaly Quests, where you fight Afflicted versions of existing monsters, which spice up old fights in a meaningful way (having you target specific spots for extra damage and having you worry about getting hit with Bloodblight). These fights reward you with afflicted materials, which are used to craft the fully upgraded versions of weapons. It's a bit of a grind since each Anomaly Quest gives only a few of these materials, but I found it engaging for what it was. Now, we have the endgame to end all endgames with Anomaly Investigations. These are much like the existing Anomaly Quests, except there's an element of randomness to everything. For one, the selection of these investigation quests changes regularly, and each individual quest has its own set of variables (from time limit, target monsters, number of faints allowed, and even the maximum number of people allowed for multiplayer). Each of these quests also have a corresponding level, which pertain to its difficulty (what exactly makes the quest more or less difficult, I've yet to determine), and the more investigations you clear, the higher the level of new investigations rise. It takes a little bit for the randomness to kick in, but once it does kick in, it's a more interesting way to grind for those afflicted materials. My grind routine before the addition of investigations was simply repeating a small set of Anomaly Quests over and over, and while I do switch weapons each time, it does get a bit stale after a while. The additional variables do a lot to keep things fresh. Plus, there are various ways to add new investigation quests as you play. Completing Anomaly Investigations earns you Anomaly Research Points, which raise your Anomaly Research Level. Leveling up here increases the level cap for Anomaly Investigations, as well as unlock Anomaly 5-Star Quests, which feature a new set of Afflicted monsters to fight (all of which are plenty challenging and fun). You also get a bunch of exclusive materials in these investigations, which can be used in the new feature I'll discuss in the next section. You can also earn Investigation Coins, which can be exchanged in a brand-new store of sorts in exchange for some useful items (like MP Accelerants, Outfit Vouchers, and even Mantles of various monsters). It takes forever to earn these coins, though, but you can expedite this by taking on Research Requests, which instruct you to hunt a specific Afflicted monster under certain conditions in an Anomaly Investigation. Completing one of these requests provides bonus Anomaly Research Points, and completing ten requests total rewards you with even more stuff (like a ton of Investigation Coins). Qurious Crafting So, what's the point of doing Anomaly Investigations? This is the point. With the special materials you get in investigations, you can go to the blacksmith to partake in some Qurious Crafting. This is available for both weapons and armor. Qurious Crafting for weapons has you spend materials and money to unlock Anomaly Slots for fully upgraded weapons, which you can fill with one of or a combination of the following: additional attack, additional affinity, additional element (if the weapon has element), additional sharpness, and an upgrade to the Rampage Decoration Slot. Each of these perks is worth a specific number of slots, and there are only a limited number you can work with, so you'll have to pick and choose what you want. I think this is a great way to power up your weapons, even if the benefits aren't significant. The bonuses you get by equipping stuff on a weapon's Anomaly Slots won't break the game, but they do enough to either make excellent weapons better or make suboptimal weapons more viable. It's in the latter that I see the most potential; being able to extend sharpness just a little bit, mitigate the negative affinity of certain weapons, or open up a weapon's Rampage Slot Decoration options does a lot to allow one to play with whatever weapon they want without feeling like they're tying one hand behind their back. I don't really care about using the meta weapons, so I'm quite happy about this. Upgrading armor pieces with Qurious Crafting is drastically different. For each armor piece, you can spend specific materials to roll new upgrades onto the armor. These can range from added defense, changes to elemental resistances, and most notably, added armor skills. What you get is completely random, which makes minmaxing your armor a complete crapshoot (though this is mitigated by the fact that you can choose whether to apply the new upgrades into the armor or keep whatever buffs you have as is). Sure, you could get lucky and get crazy additional skills like Chain Crit to an already great piece of armor, but you can just as easily get next to nothing, or worse: penalties to what you already have (that is possible, for some wild reason). You're at the complete mercy of RNG here, which, like talismans, makes the perfect build a fucking pain to get. I personally don't lose sleep over this aspect of optimizing builds (I'm content with additional defense since I have a good handle of my armor skill builds), but I can definitely see the frustrations of this system. This is all exciting, but it's important to remember that the materials that let you do Qurious Crafting can only be obtained via Anomaly Investigations, and you'll have to grind a fair bit to get everything you may need. This is 100% meant to be an endgame grind for mostly marginal upgrades. I think this will be a fun way for me to kill free time and get something out of it, but I recognize that some players may not find a grind such as this worthwhile. Also, it may be more fun to go through the investigations in multiplayer with friends. VERDICT: While this update to Sunbreak is modest in terms of actual new fights, those four variants overall come together to be quite distinct from their original versions and pose a respectable challenge. The meatier addition of Anomaly Investigations gives the game virtually infinite replayability with randomly-generated quests and a bevy of materials to further optimize one's endgame builds. That's not even covering the return of weekly Event Quests starting next week. All I can ask for with these updates is more new experiences and more stuff to do, and this update gives me plenty of reason to do a couple of hunts during downtime. My hope is that future updates will spice things up a bit more with the new monster additions. I'm technically still a newcomer to the series, so any returning or brand new monster they bring in will be equally fresh to me. As for the endgame, I'm currently content with what it has to offer, and I'll be fine with incremental updates. - end -
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June 2024
Derryck
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