Monster Hunter Rise is better on PC, but something’s missing

theverge.com:

Monster Hunter Rise was one of the best games of 2021, taking almost all of the improvements Capcom made to its famously punishing action RPG series with Monster Hunter World and bringing them to an even breezier package on the Nintendo Switch. The series only took off in popularity with its portable entries on the PSP, so this new title tailored just for the Switch felt right at home.

That said, if you were used to World, Rise was a noticeable technical step back. It’s one of the best-looking games on the Switch, but it’s still a game on the Switch — it runs on a TV at roughly 720p and 30 frames a second, and the environmental design is much simpler than in World.

That’s why I was interested to check out the PC version of the game, which is releasing this week. How would Monster Hunter Rise play when liberated from the Switch’s limited hardware? The news is mostly good on that front, but in another way the port represents a missed opportunity.

Capcom’s PC ports tend to be pretty good, in my experience — though I didn’t play last year’s Resident Evil Village on PC, which I know quite a few people had issues with — and Rise is another solid example. There’s a fairly detailed list of advanced graphical settings to tweak, and the game works great on an ultrawide monitor, though cutscenes are still 16:9.

I didn’t find myself diving into the menus too much, because Rise runs on its highest settings at 60fps and beyond at 3440 x 1440 ultrawide resolution with my GTX 1080. Sure, it’s a Switch game, but my PC is nearly six years old, so I’m used to putting in work to optimize performance. While some PC ports — looking at you, Final Fantasy VII Remake — require much more powerful hardware than their original consoles to run