Almost three years ago, Capcom released the Iceborne expansion pack for Monster Hunter : World, which was a critical and commercial success for the Japanese company. Many fans found the Iceborne expansion to be the pinnacle of the series, adding so much new content and mechanics that it felt more like a new entry than just more quests.
Fast forward three years and Capcom’s next Monster Hunter expansion, Sunbreak, is here, but this time it’s a Switch/PC exclusive Monster Hunter Rise. It might not be fair to compare the two expansion packs, since Rise and World are two very different games, but it’s still hard not to compare, especially since Rise builds on World’s quality of life features, which makes the two The game is easy to pick up even for novices.
For anyone who’s played Iceborne, the content of Sunbreak isn’t all that different. There are returning monsters from classic Monster Hunter games, as well as brand new ones such as Garangolm and flagship monster Malzeno.
has a new hub area called Elgado Outpost, which is a bit smaller than Kamura Village, but still offers players a lot to do. Of course, new master quests have also been added, giving hunters a challenging set of quests to complete and see how the story unfolds.
However, even if players could spend dozens (if not hundreds) of hours in Sunbreak, it wouldn’t be as grand or purposeful as Iceborne. It doesn’t have as many new monsters as it should, and a lot of the quests, especially the early ones, involve hunting monsters the player has already fought in the base game.
Even when the player rolls credits and proceeds to Endgame, there are many duplicate monsters in the hunt list. Later on, players can unlock some quests called anomalous quests, where the targeted monsters are infected with a virus that makes them enraged and sometimes even perform new attacks.
These quests sound cool in theory, but feel no different than fighting monsters in normal quests. It does add a bit of variety to the whole pack, especially since hunters can earn unique materials from infected monsters, but it’s still not one of the most memorable parts of the Sunbreak expansion.
As a seasoned Monster Hunter fan, Sunbreak didn’t tick all the boxes to make it feel like a complete and well-assembled package. Having said that, at the end of the day, Monster Hunter Rising is a brilliant and well-executed experience that deserves credit. With the quality of life updates added in Sunbreak, the Wirebug mechanic feels as good as ever, the new Switch Skill Swap adds more variety to hunter moves, and hunting monsters for new master armor sets and weapons never gets old .
Lots of neat little tweaks here and there that make Sunbreak a fun all-around experience, even without the game-changing Clutch Claw in Iceborne. For Monster Hunter Rise fans who still want to spend a few dozen more hours grinding out some armor, Sunbreak is sure to make a difference in this regard.
But for die-hard Monster Hunter fans who are looking for something slightly different from the base game, there isn’t much new to engage this time around. Sunbreak feels like DLC for Monster Hunter Rise’s Endgame rather than a proper full-blown expansion.
Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak is available for PC and Switch. Game Rant provided the Nintendo Switch code for this review.