Monster Hunter Rise is now available out in the wild. If you've been playing since launch, you've probably run through the early one-star and two-star missions so far and are currently grinding through three-star missions and beyond. If so, there's a good chance you've come up against the franchise title's newest addition: Rampage Mode. Spoilers for the tower defense mini-game follow from here on out; you've been warned.
There's plenty of monsters to hunt in the new Monster Hunter game, and that feedback loop will keep fans of the franchise playing for quite a while in order to check all the boxes and craft all possible gear. However, Rise introduces a new tweak on a familiar idea in which the hunters become the hunted ... sort of.
Rise is thin on story and big on action. The depth of the story is this: Kamura Village and its hunters are more than capable of fending off the occasional monster attack, but they also have a dark history when it comes to surviving monstrous hordes known as Rampages. Years ago, one such Rampage wiped out a significant portion of the village and its people; those who survived vowed never to let that happen again. So, Kamura Village now has state-of-the-art monster defenses (for a world in which science and technology hasn't progressed much past coal-fired industry.) These range from stout wooden and iron (or is it Tatara Steel?) gates to mounted ballistae and cannons, distractions like gongs and explosives, and giant spears known as Dragonators. Not all of this is new to the franchise, but the Rampage "tower defense" mode adds a new wrinkle to a familiar loop, for better or worse.
Here's a fantastic look at how Monster Hunter Rise's Rampage mode is supposed to work, including multiplayer, various strategic approaches to defense and upgrades, and the absolute chaos that ensues:
As you can see in the walkthrough above, area monsters want nothing more than to absolutely wreck Kamura Village and its people, for reasons that become a little clearer as the game progresses. What you'll get is a variety of monsters (quick-strikers, heavy-hitters, flying "targeters," etc.) that assault the established hunting stations in waves. Solo players or teams can defend Kamura Village by setting and bolstering various gate defenses and even by taking the fight to the monsters themselves. You can call in NPCs like Fugen the Elder or the Quest Maidens Hinoa and Minoto to aid in the fight, too. And you should probably do just that when you have the opportunity, since these are limited actions, because while the waves of monsters themselves are relatively easy to deal with, the horde leader often throws a chaos wrench into the works.
But let's back up a moment to talk about the story: Your monster hunting is first interrupted by a Rampage as an urgent quest. This leads you to the staging ground where you'll get some "training" from Master Utsushi (it really boils down to him yelling things at you in a vaguely Californian accent, in the English dub anyway, while he zips to some other corner of the arena.) Then, you're thrown into the seat of a ballista in order to defend the gates. The thing is, you don't have to stay there; you can hop around from station to station or just straight up hit the ground running and fight mons the old-fashioned way. It does, however, get super chaotic on the ground, especially if you're soloing against two or more monsters. (I generally like a little bit of chaos in moments like these, but ... more on that in a bit.)
Once you've successfully defended the town in whatever way you want -- operating turrets, taking the fight to the monster yourself, calling in reinforcements, pure grit and luck, etc. -- you'll be treated to a celebratory cutscene. As cute as that mini-vid is, it also serves to introduce the title's flagship monster, Magnamalo. And what an intro it is! Magnamalo shows up as an apex predator, carrying a wounded Arzuros, who's soon to be food for the much bigger mon. But when Magnamalo gets wind of your hunter and your new companions, he charges, attempting to break down Kamura Village's gate and get to the creamy hunter-filling beyond it.
Luckily, Magnamalo's own size prevents the monster from doing so. But that probably won't keep him out very long. Turns out that, as Fugen tells us, Magnamalo shows up along with the Rampage to feed on the monsters in the horde. Fugen charges you, dear hunter, with taking down Magnamalo once and for all. That'll involve more hunts, more Rampages, and more upgrades along the way before you do just that. And the good thing here is that this is the only part of the story that really feeds back into the hunting/crafting loop.
Rampage Mode isn't just good to break up the gameplay, it also affords you opportunities to upgrade the stronghold as well as your own weapons. You can gather horde materials from the fallen monsters after a successful defense and then use them as more fodder for your nearly endless upgrade trees. These will grant you additional stat boosts to your chosen weapons and can be replaced as you progress through the game. Rampage Mode is basically just an additional loot loop off to the side of the main one. But is this really what monster hunters want?
As far as tower defense games go, I'm usually a fan, but not so in Monster Hunter Rise's Rampage Mode. What's aimed at freshening up the gameplay feels, for me, tedious and detached from the rest of the game itself. Maybe I just need to go a few more rounds with it to get comfortable with the admittedly scattered and chaotic mechanics. But the back-and-forth between hunting quests and the occasional Rampage defense just isn't that appealing to me; I could see it being much more fun in multiplayer mode, however, which levels the playing field against the onrushing monsters a bit.
Monster Hunter Rise also offers increasingly difficult monsters, like the Apex Azuros, for you to battle against, but it's only here in the stronghold of the Rampage Mode that you can do so (for now); no hunting them in the field. That's ... odd. Just as odd is the fact that Rise launched without a baked-in endgame; that will come in April with the promised DLC. So in the meantime, hunters who blaze through the quests and craft everything will be left to rerun the same hunts or slug it out in Rampage Mode just for fun. Here's hoping that whatever's coming next for Monster Hunter Rise will make all that grinding worthwhile.