We’ve written tier lists about Monster Hunter titles before, and we often feature these towards the beginning of our publishing thanks to prior experience with the title. In the case of Rise however, we started to write about it soon after it’s release, and we like to really take our time with this series, to truly judge it’s hidden depths and nuances before forming a finalised opinion. Thus, we have left it until the end of our series of articles to put the 14 weapons featured in Rise to rights. Our tastes are always going to remain somewhat similar to those written about previous titles in the series, after all hunters tend to fall into a bit of a ‘style’ after a while, but we were quite surprised just how much movement there was in this list during the transfer over from World.
S Tier
- Long Sword
- Insect Glaive
- Light Bowgun
- Hunting Horn
Contrary to the previous weapon tier lists that we’ve written, which for reference are World and MHGU, our S Tier was pretty much set in stone. After thousands of hours with the game, these 4 became our absolute favourites, standing out above the rest by quite the margin. We should preface this by saying that we’re rating these on our personal enjoyment, rather effectiveness with them; by all accounts our quickest and most effective monster slayer was the Great Sword, but it didn’t quite make the cut for ‘most enjoyable to use’.
As ever, the Long Sword remains a remarkable piece of equipment to use. The skills that it’s transferred from prior titles means that not only can it deal tremendous amounts of damage, but it’s defensive options mean that nothing is out of your reach, no attack too deadly for you and no situation cannot be handled. The same is true of the LBG, which was by far our favourite ranged option in Rise, because it’s additions and equipment selection meant it could adapt to any situation whilst remaining immensely enjoyable to use. Similarly, we found the Glaive to be tremendously fun and suspect it had a hidden ‘buff’ of sorts at some point during the life cycle, however the real star of the show has to be the Hunting Horn. We had used the Horn before of course, extensively in World in fact, yet here it feels like a truly ‘complete’ version of itself. Strikes flow from one to the other in such an intuitive fashion that it’s hard not to fall in love with wielding the damned thing.
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A Tier
- Dual Blades
- Switch Axe
- Charge Blade
- Hammer
- Heavy Bowgun
- Great Sword
- Gunlance
Next up is our A Tier, which we’d classify as weapons that we found both fun and effective to use, but didn’t feel drawn to like those mentioned above. They’re solid performers for us and we certainly have fun with them, but the feel and flow of Rise just doesn’t quite chime with us perfectly like the S Tier lot. We’re very aware that the new Charge Blade skills are immensely powerful, and that the Dual Blades can still deal insane amounts of damage, but we just didn’t quite mesh with them quite as much.
Our best example of this would be the Great Sword. It is, far and away, our ‘best’ weapon, the one that helps us to complete hunts in the quickest time possible, yet it also just doesn’t quite feel right. Perhaps it’s the transition onto the Switch, but the Tackle timing feels slightly different, and the additional skills don’t sit too well with us, despite being flashy and powerful in their own right. It’s a similar story with the HBG. It’s charge capability and the breadth of models on offer mean that we often experience hunts that end far sooner than we expected, but we just don’t enjoy it quite as much as it’s Lighter alternative.
In the end, we’d describe the A Tier as those that we’re absolutely willing to accept are excellent choices, but they don’t fit our style. Though, now that we read back our choices for S Tier, we’re not actually sure a single style that we could describe exists. We just like them better, alright?
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B Tier
- Bow
- Sword and Shield
- Lance
To the bottom of the barrel then – the B Tier. As per usual in an article such as this, we must preface this final tier with the notion that these are all excellent choices. Any one of these, in the right hands, can be used to completely decimate opponents, as any quick search on YouTube will show. That said, of all the 14 choices on offer, these three felt quite underwhelming to us, especially when compared to the others.
We’ll start with the Bow. Firstly, it’s something that we found to be great fun and very powerful in both World and MHGU, and we were expecting to do so here in Rise, but it just fell a little flat for us. It’s powerful for sure, after all we’ve been in some hunts with absolute beasts wielding the thing, but in our hands it felt weak. Perhaps this is more indicative of our hands than it is the Bow, but this was our experience. The same is true of the others; despite the depth of equipment available, the Sword and Shield feels a little weak, to the point where we found ourselves pining for the various Oils of MHGU, and we had a similar feeling with the Lance. In previous titles we loved the Lance, World in particular, but it ended up feeling quite out of place in our arsenal. This lower tier was always going to come down to personal preference, and there are likely some of you out there considering our words to be heresy of the highest order, but for better or worse, this is where our experience with Rise settled.
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Categories: Monster Hunter Rise, Top 5