When Capcom announced that Monster Hunter Rise would release on the PC, I was on the fence about purchasing the game and running through it a second time. It wasn’t because of the potential grind, but mostly due to my experience with the PC port of Monster Hunter: World. However, my time with the Monster Hunter Rise demo left me more optimistic and interested in double-dipping for a game I already own. With what seems to be great optimization and its ability to run on lower-end machines, this version of Monster Hunter Rise is potentially looking to be a great one.
Editor’s Note: Please keep in mind all screenshots show in this preview have been taken with the High detail setting selected.
I immediately dove into the game, eager to see just how taxing it would be on my PC. I was surprised that I was able to handle the constant barrage of effects from the Magnamalo fairly well. There were some significant frame drops, which caused me to head into the settings and limit my frames to 60 FPS. After this adjustment, I was able to breeze through quests without any major freezing or any further drops. This genuinely stunned me since I’m running on what is now a two year old gaming laptop. I will say that the game does make my machine run a bit hot, but it doesn’t tax it in any significant way.
The PC version of Monster Hunter Rise does feature 4K support and the option to remove any framerate cap. However, I wasn’t exactly able to take advantage of this. Which I felt was fine, since it didn’t impact gameplay in any significant way. The game still looked great, with character models looking improved compared to their Nintendo Switch counterparts. The same could be said about the general look of the environments in the Shrine Ruins.
Some areas in the Shrine Ruins looked more detailed upon closer inspection. Though you can clearly see that the game was originally developed for the Switch in a few choice areas. But other than that, it was easy traveling through the locale. I didn’t have any issues with screen tearing or technical problems vaulting through the air with the use of the wirebug. Since other areas were unavailable to play, it’s hard to gauge how taxing the Lava Caverns will potentially be for people running on older gaming rigs.
From my experience, the only real issue that players could potentially see involves loading. Particularly, the loading time when booting up the game and when heading into a hunt. I installed the game directly onto my hard drive to test loading times, and getting into the game itself would take roughly a minute or two. This is the same for any of the three available hunts. However, having the game installed on an SSD lowered the load times significantly. I almost immediately loaded into the hunts.
Players can change their control scheme at any time. The game does feature controller support. Several control schemes are available to switch through and mess around with. The keyboard and mouse controls are the exact same from Monster Hunter: World, which can be a bit hard to navigate if you’re not already used to them. Regarding accessibility, the font is a lot easier to read this time around.
The demo feels like the PC release of Monster Hunter Rise could be promising. Being accessible to players with PCs and laptops that are on the lower end of things is surprising. But it leaves me hopeful for the full release of the game, and has most of all reinvigorated my interest in Monster Hunter.
PC Specs
- Processor: Intel Core i5-9500 cpu @ 2.4 GHZ
- RAM: 8.00
- Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050
Monster Hunter Rise is immediately available for the Nintendo Switch. The PC version will release on January 12, 2022, with a demo arriving on October 13, 2021.
