Monster Hunter Rise's PlayStation 5 version brings the joy of the PC version to consoles

This will be my 3rd time writing about Monster Hunter: Rise’s basegame, and the first time I’ll have revisited it since the Sunbreak expansion’s launch last year. Leading up to the upcoming PlayStation and Xbox launch for the game, Capcom reached out and asked if we would be interested in covering these new ports, well aware that at this point we’ve already covered the game to death by this point. If you want to know how we felt about Monster Hunter Rise itself, you can check our original review for Switch; if you want to know our thoughts on the upgraded tech specs of the PC, and now PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X versions, we’ve got an article for that too. We’ve even got videos going over, and showcasing, both.

Booting up Monster Hunter: Rise on my PS5, the first thing I was curious about was how the game would handle its various performance modes. Capcom confirmed that the game would support both 4k60 output on PlayStation 5, as well as an option to run the game at a higher framerate, albeit at a lower resolution. Shockingly, Capcom has buried the lede with their marketing - as beyond the inclusion of 3 graphical and performance presets, players have access to almost the entirety of the PC version’s graphics settings menu. 

For most players, this won’t matter much, but this does mean that players can decide exactly how they want the game to run on their console, while still including the bespoke presets for those of us that won’t want to tinker with settings on a console. For anyone that had previously played the game on Switch, and has yet to pick up the PC release, these new console versions offer the same fidelity, and much of the same performance, that players could find on high-end desktops.

Of course, for someone who has been playing the game on PC for the last year, these upgrades might seem underwhelming, but it’s a genuinely great thing that the game can be enjoyed in this state by a much larger audience of people. Similarly, many of the quality-of-life changes that Sunbreak brought to the table on PC and Nintendo Switch are already present in this new release; revealing that despite the expansion’s later planned release for PlayStation and Xbox, it’s likely that these versions are already running the same codebase under the hood. For example, players can merely run up to a wall to start wall-running, which was a change added with Sunbreak’s update on prior platforms.

As far as PlayStation 5 exclusive features go; Capcom has marketed the port as supporting Gyro aiming, adaptive triggers, and haptic feedback. While those all are indeed present in the game, haptic feedback in my experience has been a bit of a dud - not appreciably different from the same rumble feedback on PC with an Xbox controller. Gyro aiming and adaptive triggers fare notably better, and combined with the game easily maintaining a locked 4k60 on the standard preset, these might just be the selling point for those deciding between picking up the game on PlayStation 5 and Series X.

All things considered, Monster Hunter: Rise’s PlayStation port at least does all it needs to in order to justify its existence. It’s an excellent version of an already great game, and for anyone who played Monster Hunter World on the platform that has been itching to get back into the hunting action, they now have the means to do so. I’d assume the same should be true for Xbox players, though with the game coming to Game Pass, we opted to cover the PlayStation 5 release, as realistically it’s the version more players are going to be handing over their hard-earned cash for.

As Sunbreak continues to receive support, with yet another Title Update scheduled for next month, seeing Capcom’s continued support for Rise as a whole extending to additional platforms has me feeling confident - and a little bit curious - for exactly how long the company plans to keep supporting the title.

Review Copy supplied by Capcom.