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Forums - Gaming Discussion - THE best looking game on the Switch: Monster Hunter Rise Review

curl-6 on 08 April 2021
ZyroXZ2 said:
curl-6 said:

Its monsters and weapon effects, and the amount of chaos happening on screen at once sometimes is indeed very impressive we agree.

When I assess graphics though I'm just personally more about the whole picture rather than what it took to get there, so to me I'd rank a more polished game with less going on over a more demanding but less polished presentation. I guess that's just me though.

At the end of the day, its definitely a strong showing for Capcom, their RE Engine, and the Switch. I just feel a few of the sacrifices necessary to get there keep it just shy of the very prettiest Switch games to date.

While having the fur, lighting effects, and screen-space reflections at the level they do?  This is an incredible level of polish, don't make me dig through my footage for some water fights, lol... I'm wondering if your definition of "polish" is more along the lines of sterility/serenity in a scene.  SM3DW, while graphically good, is also very sterile, or "clean" as some people might put it.  Is that what you mean by "polished"?  For me, polish is a state, ergo, polished graphics is the fact that they have fur, lighting effects, alpha affects, four people, and four dogs, all running together without having to pull anything to make it work on very weak hardware.  I think polish is a state of completeness, a definition of "we took the time to make it all work and put it all together", or in other words, polish it.  Cyberpunk 2077 while graphically VERY impressive (I played it on a PC maxed out) needs a lot of polish.

I DO think you're mixing aesthetics up with graphics, though.  While I actually lump them all together in the "presentation" category along with story and music myself, generally aesthetics and graphics are two different things.  It's THE reason Nintendo fans are so adamant that Nintendo games still look better than "other" games that are often graphically superior across the board.  I think your preference is a sterile scene, something that focuses on the art style and conveys a sense of design direction by the artists as opposed to the more technical aspects.  As a reference point for this: Ratchet and Clank is a very strong combination of aesthetics and graphics.  My bet is if you agree on Ratchet and Clank, then you are definitely more inclined towards the visual appearance as opposed to the entirety of the scene (as in, alpha effects, on-screen action, etc.).

I wouldn't call games like Luigi's Mansion 3 or The Vanishing of Ethan Carter "sterile" in the least, there's plenty of nice flourishes and effects work throughout them, from the SSR and huge amount of physics-driven objects in the former to the latter's PBR materials and dense animated foliage. There's just less rough spots like those parts of the environments in Rise where the landscape is a bit too flat or low-polygon.

Again, I don't mean to imply Rise doesn't look very nice, it does. The SSR, fur, weapon effects, animations, etc all in a large seamless environment is a hell of a feat. The scale just comes at the price of more noticeable rough edges in my opinion.



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ZyroXZ2 on 08 April 2021
curl-6 said:
ZyroXZ2 said:

While having the fur, lighting effects, and screen-space reflections at the level they do?  This is an incredible level of polish, don't make me dig through my footage for some water fights, lol... I'm wondering if your definition of "polish" is more along the lines of sterility/serenity in a scene.  SM3DW, while graphically good, is also very sterile, or "clean" as some people might put it.  Is that what you mean by "polished"?  For me, polish is a state, ergo, polished graphics is the fact that they have fur, lighting effects, alpha affects, four people, and four dogs, all running together without having to pull anything to make it work on very weak hardware.  I think polish is a state of completeness, a definition of "we took the time to make it all work and put it all together", or in other words, polish it.  Cyberpunk 2077 while graphically VERY impressive (I played it on a PC maxed out) needs a lot of polish.

I DO think you're mixing aesthetics up with graphics, though.  While I actually lump them all together in the "presentation" category along with story and music myself, generally aesthetics and graphics are two different things.  It's THE reason Nintendo fans are so adamant that Nintendo games still look better than "other" games that are often graphically superior across the board.  I think your preference is a sterile scene, something that focuses on the art style and conveys a sense of design direction by the artists as opposed to the more technical aspects.  As a reference point for this: Ratchet and Clank is a very strong combination of aesthetics and graphics.  My bet is if you agree on Ratchet and Clank, then you are definitely more inclined towards the visual appearance as opposed to the entirety of the scene (as in, alpha effects, on-screen action, etc.).

I wouldn't call games like Luigi's Mansion 3 or The Vanishing of Ethan Carter "sterile" in the least, there's plenty of nice flourishes and effects work throughout them, from the SSR and huge amount of physics-driven objects in the former to the latter's PBR materials and dense animated foliage. There's just less rough spots like those parts of the environments in Rise where the landscape is a bit too flat or low-polygon.

Again, I don't mean to imply Rise doesn't look very nice, it does. The SSR, fur, weapon effects, animations, etc all in a large seamless environment is a hell of a feat. The scale just comes at the price of more noticeable rough edges in my opinion.

Luigi's Mansion 3 (can we just call it LM3) was very sterile...  We'd have to disagree on that one, LM3 is a very "Nintendo"-clean game despite it being graphically excellent.  LM3's animation, though, was top-notch, and when combined with my mClassic, looked leagues better than anything else on the Switch.  That was until now, at least lol

And EC, I'm just not sure we're looking at the same game, those textures were pulled back HARD to nearly mud, and the resolution got really low and blurry, and included pulling back polygonal complexity, too.  I can't see how Switch owners praise this kind of stuff lol

I WILL admit I am spoiled: 4K TV, I even had the midgen upgrades last gen, and I have the current gen stuff.  It makes it VERY easy to see just how much of a gulf in graphical power the Switch is against the XSX.  This is why MHRise is so impressive, because they try so hard to keep up with the Jones, and the only thing that was holding them back was, indeed, the power of the Switch.  They squeezed every last bit out of it to pull off everything, even if, yes: close inspection shows shortcomings.  I don't think there'll ever be another 3rd party game on the Switch that will do everything it sets out to do without obviously parring back really hard.  The fact that I HAVE to look closely to see evidence of parring back is why MHRise impresses me.  At first glance, it doesn't even seem like they had to hold back (even though we all know they did because we've seen RE2R, RE3R, and DMC5 to know what RE Engine is capable of).

EDIT: Typo.

Last edited by ZyroXZ2 - on 08 April 2021

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curl-6 on 08 April 2021
ZyroXZ2 said:
curl-6 said:

I wouldn't call games like Luigi's Mansion 3 or The Vanishing of Ethan Carter "sterile" in the least, there's plenty of nice flourishes and effects work throughout them, from the SSR and huge amount of physics-driven objects in the former to the latter's PBR materials and dense animated foliage. There's just less rough spots like those parts of the environments in Rise where the landscape is a bit too flat or low-polygon.

Again, I don't mean to imply Rise doesn't look very nice, it does. The SSR, fur, weapon effects, animations, etc all in a large seamless environment is a hell of a feat. The scale just comes at the price of more noticeable rough edges in my opinion.

Luigi's Mansion 3 (can we just call it LM3) was very sterile...  We'd have to disagree on that one, LM3 is a very "Nintendo"-clean game despite it being graphically excellent.  LM3's animation, though, was top-notch, and when combined with my mClassic, looked leagues better than anything else on the Switch.  That was until now, at least lol

And EC, I'm just not sure we're looking at the same game, those textures were pulled back HARD to nearly mud, and the resolution got really low and blurry, and included pulling back polygonal complexity, too.  I can't see how Switch owners praise this kind of stuff lol

I WILL admit I am spoiled: 4K TV, I even had the midgen upgrades last gen, and I have the current gen stuff.  It makes it VERY easy to see just how much of a gulf in graphical power the Switch is against the XSX.  This is why MHRise is so impressive, because they try so hard to keep up with the Jones, and the only thing that was holding them back was, indeed, the power of the Switch.  They squeezed every last bit out of it to pull off everything, even if, yes: close inspection shows shortcomings.  I don't think there'll ever be another 3rd party game on the Switch that will do everything it sets out to do with obviously parring back really hard.  The fact that I HAVE to look closely to see evidence of parring back is why MHRise impresses me.  At first glance, it doesn't even seem like they had to hold back (even though we all know they did because we've seen RE2R, RE3R, and DMC5 to know what RE Engine is capable of).

My perspective maybe be different as I don't own a system more powerful than the Switch; to me Ethan Carter looked great with its dreamy lighting, PBR materials, lush vegetation, etc.

I think we are judging graphics by very different metrics; you're looking at it in terms of the complexity of the processing while I'm looking at it in terms of how polished the final image is.

I think we will simply have to agree to disagree as we have such different perspectives.

Last edited by curl-6 - on 08 April 2021

Metallox on 08 April 2021

I don't know if it's the best looking game on the system, in my opinion that title still belongs to Breath of the Wild, but it's close enough. It manages to look reasonably detailed while still maintaining a crisp image, it looks very sharp on docked mode. There are games that surely manage higher polygon counts (I think), like the DOOM games and Wolfenstein II, but look bad because they're blurry as hell.



My bet with The_Liquid_Laser: I think the Switch won't surpass the PS2 as the best selling system of all time. If it does, I'll play a game of a list that The_Liquid_Laser will provide, I will have to play it for 50 hours or complete it, whatever comes first. 

ZyroXZ2 on 08 April 2021
curl-6 said:
ZyroXZ2 said:

Luigi's Mansion 3 (can we just call it LM3) was very sterile...  We'd have to disagree on that one, LM3 is a very "Nintendo"-clean game despite it being graphically excellent.  LM3's animation, though, was top-notch, and when combined with my mClassic, looked leagues better than anything else on the Switch.  That was until now, at least lol

And EC, I'm just not sure we're looking at the same game, those textures were pulled back HARD to nearly mud, and the resolution got really low and blurry, and included pulling back polygonal complexity, too.  I can't see how Switch owners praise this kind of stuff lol

I WILL admit I am spoiled: 4K TV, I even had the midgen upgrades last gen, and I have the current gen stuff.  It makes it VERY easy to see just how much of a gulf in graphical power the Switch is against the XSX.  This is why MHRise is so impressive, because they try so hard to keep up with the Jones, and the only thing that was holding them back was, indeed, the power of the Switch.  They squeezed every last bit out of it to pull off everything, even if, yes: close inspection shows shortcomings.  I don't think there'll ever be another 3rd party game on the Switch that will do everything it sets out to do with obviously parring back really hard.  The fact that I HAVE to look closely to see evidence of parring back is why MHRise impresses me.  At first glance, it doesn't even seem like they had to hold back (even though we all know they did because we've seen RE2R, RE3R, and DMC5 to know what RE Engine is capable of).

My perspective maybe be different as I don't own a system more powerful than the Switch; to me Ethan Carter looked great with its dreamy lighting, PBR materials, lush vegetation, etc.

I think we are judging graphics by very different metrics; you're looking at it in terms of the complexity of the processing while I'm looking at it in terms of how polished the final image is.

I think we will simply have to agree to disagree as we have such different perspectives.

I do think you should see some of the things outside the Switch world lol... If you think EC is "polished" as a final image, you are going to be absolutely blown away by Cyberpunk 2077 running maxed out on a PC, hahaha!  I'd post the pics I've taken, but those are long deleted since I only took those screenshots for posting on Twitter/YouTube, and my original review of the game was on XSX instead of PC (I later bought it for PC to enjoy ray tracing).

I'm beginning to think that our disagreement won't be coming from perspectives, it's that you might not have seen things that change your standards for what "polished" is.  I still put that in quotes because what you described tells me you are definitely a person who leans towards aesthetics, and by that I can see why some maps in MHRise look "rough" to you.  The background of the video I just tweeted for you would be considered "rough": there's no dressing on it, the lighting angle is poor and makes it look low quality, etc.  No "still" of the video I tweeted can be taken that would look good, and that's where your definition is.  It's that video in motion that's impressive which encompasses more than just the final "image".  I think you find screenshot worthy games to be "polished", and of course, that's in great contrast to the idea that games are mostly productions of motion, or a compilation if a very high rate of images controllable by the end user :P



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curl-6 on 08 April 2021
ZyroXZ2 said:
curl-6 said:

My perspective maybe be different as I don't own a system more powerful than the Switch; to me Ethan Carter looked great with its dreamy lighting, PBR materials, lush vegetation, etc.

I think we are judging graphics by very different metrics; you're looking at it in terms of the complexity of the processing while I'm looking at it in terms of how polished the final image is.

I think we will simply have to agree to disagree as we have such different perspectives.

I do think you should see some of the things outside the Switch world lol... If you think EC is "polished" as a final image, you are going to be absolutely blown away by Cyberpunk 2077 running maxed out on a PC, hahaha!  I'd post the pics I've taken, but those are long deleted since I only took those screenshots for posting on Twitter/YouTube, and my original review of the game was on XSX instead of PC (I later bought it for PC to enjoy ray tracing).

I'm beginning to think that our disagreement won't be coming from perspectives, it's that you might not have seen things that change your standards for what "polished" is.  I still put that in quotes because what you described tells me you are definitely a person who leans towards aesthetics, and by that I can see why some maps in MHRise look "rough" to you.  The background of the video I just tweeted for you would be considered "rough": there's no dressing on it, the lighting angle is poor and makes it look low quality, etc.  No "still" of the video I tweeted can be taken that would look good, and that's where your definition is.  It's that video in motion that's impressive which encompasses more than just the final "image".  I think you find screenshot worthy games to be "polished", and of course, that's in great contrast to the idea that games are mostly productions of motion, or a compilation if a very high rate of images controllable by the end user :P

I do plan on getting an Xbox Series X if games like Halo Infinite and Hellblade II turn out to be good, but for the moment I have too much to play on Switch still to need another system. And I know what better graphics than Switch look like, I've seen plenty of PS4/5/PC etc games both online and in person, even played some at friend's places and such.

The main thing that looks "rough" in MHR to me is some of the low polygon environments, where rocks or the general landscape has obvious angular corners. I realize its a necessary sacrifice for a game to be both this open and this nice looking on a 2017 mobile device, it just makes the game look less polished than some others to me.



ZyroXZ2 on 09 April 2021
Metallox said:

I don't know if it's the best looking game on the system, in my opinion that title still belongs to Breath of the Wild, but it's close enough. It manages to look reasonably detailed while still maintaining a crisp image, it looks very sharp on docked mode. There are games that surely manage higher polygon counts (I think), like the DOOM games and Wolfenstein II, but look bad because they're blurry as hell.

We'd also have to disagree on BotW lol... Mind you, I gave the game a 9.5/10 also, but that game is one of THE defining "artstyle to mask graphical shortcomings" games on the Switch.  Put it side-by-side with MHRise and the difference in level of detail becomes super obvious.  Even though MHRise's textures are blurry up-close, they're often near non-existent in BotW.  BotW is beautiful because of its aesthetic and superior artistic design, but graphically speaking, it just has better grass... xD

And yea, you already said it: those games that pushed harder had such a blurry appearance that, and I might sound repetitive now, they were obviously parred back very hard to get it to run.  That's why I will die on this hill that MHRise is the best looking game on the Switch, even if people prefer the artistic design or artstyles presented by other games, or that other games contain certain superior rendering pipelines.

You didn't ask, so this is more for curl, but the game I think comes the next closest is Astral Chain.  But even Astral Chain uses artstyle techniques and has major shortcomings in both resolution and open area detail in an effort to support its graphical targets.  MHRise is the first game where I don't see obvious "we dialed this wayyy the hell back to make this work" details.  The Witcher 3 looks terribad on the Switch, and I was MORE shocked when I saw Nintendo fans saying how good it looks for being on the Switch.  I... I just couldn't... lol

curl-6 said:
ZyroXZ2 said:

I do think you should see some of the things outside the Switch world lol... If you think EC is "polished" as a final image, you are going to be absolutely blown away by Cyberpunk 2077 running maxed out on a PC, hahaha!  I'd post the pics I've taken, but those are long deleted since I only took those screenshots for posting on Twitter/YouTube, and my original review of the game was on XSX instead of PC (I later bought it for PC to enjoy ray tracing).

I'm beginning to think that our disagreement won't be coming from perspectives, it's that you might not have seen things that change your standards for what "polished" is.  I still put that in quotes because what you described tells me you are definitely a person who leans towards aesthetics, and by that I can see why some maps in MHRise look "rough" to you.  The background of the video I just tweeted for you would be considered "rough": there's no dressing on it, the lighting angle is poor and makes it look low quality, etc.  No "still" of the video I tweeted can be taken that would look good, and that's where your definition is.  It's that video in motion that's impressive which encompasses more than just the final "image".  I think you find screenshot worthy games to be "polished", and of course, that's in great contrast to the idea that games are mostly productions of motion, or a compilation if a very high rate of images controllable by the end user :P

I do plan on getting an Xbox Series X if games like Halo Infinite and Hellblade II turn out to be good, but for the moment I have too much to play on Switch still to need another system. And I know what better graphics than Switch look like, I've seen plenty of PS4/5/PC etc games both online and in person, even played some at friend's places and such.

The main thing that looks "rough" in MHR to me is some of the low polygon environments, where rocks or the general landscape has obvious angular corners. I realize its a necessary sacrifice for a game to be both this open and this nice looking on a 2017 mobile device, it just makes the game look less polished than some others to me.

I mean, unless you specifically say you've seen PS5 Demon's Souls in cinematic mode on a 4K HDR TV... ... ;P  Though DS does lack ray-tracing, some scenes looked downright CG, it was absolutely bonkers!

Well, we agree that close inspection in MHRise definitely doesn't stand up, but as I said above: I'll die on this hill.  I've played just about every exclusive on the Switch, and each game has obvious "methods" used to accommodate the Switch even if they use graphically superior rendering (aka TLoZ:Link's Awakening as mentioned earlier).  MHRise instead looks built from the ground up for the system (despite it running on RE Engine) in which "we pushed the Switch, and we didn't miss a beat".



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Spindel on 09 April 2021

While I currently enjoy MHR greatly I do not share your opinion on how it looks. It’s not bad just not good either. BotW looks better in my eyes, so does SMO, Mario vs Rabbids, and Splatoon 2 for that matter (I see a trend towards stylized graphics in my comment).

Having played Dragons Dogma on the Switch I can’t shake the feeling that (in particular) character assets are just straight up re-used with a shader slapped on (doesn’t help that my MH avatar ended up looking almost exactly the same as my DD:DA character).



ZyroXZ2 on 09 April 2021
Spindel said:

While I currently enjoy MHR greatly I do not share your opinion on how it looks. It’s not bad just not good either. BotW looks better in my eyes, so does SMO, Mario vs Rabbids, and Splatoon 2 for that matter (I see a trend towards stylized graphics in my comment).

Having played Dragons Dogma on the Switch I can’t shake the feeling that (in particular) character assets are just straight up re-used with a shader slapped on (doesn’t help that my MH avatar ended up looking almost exactly the same as my DD:DA character).

Yea, from discussion with curl, and the way my own fanbase is responding, I'm recognizing that Nintendo fans are used to the good-looking games being the stylized ones, or at least ones that focus on visual appeal more than technical prowess.  This isn't mockery, by the way, I just mean that's what Nintendo-focused people have become accustomed to having.  Thus, I, too, agree that Mario+Rabbids is a good-looking game.  But if I asked you on a technical scale if you think it looks better than Ratchet and Clank, I would bet you'd be reasonable enough to say "well, no", and that's simply because while Ratchet and Clank is also highly stylized, it's also graphically superior.

Thus, this is my take on MHRise.  It's a perfect balance between stylization and actual technical prowess on the Switch, something not commonly seen on the platform.  BotW falls drastically short in the technical aspects (I mean, as I said to the other person, the textures are almost non-existent!), and makes up for it with art style (don't get me started on BotW, I can tear that game's graphics apart SOOOO easily, and I love the game to death!... I even have pics of completely borked lighting in the engine!).  Same for SMO, one only need to look at New Donk City and realize that when the design aesthetic requires realistic (or quasi) appearances, it looks rather... dull.  Splatoon 2 suffers similar issues.  Nintendo has always been intelligently using art style to mask this, and I appreciate that.  I just don't think that they can hold a candle to how much MHRise actually pulls off on a technical scale, and yet it's still stylized with a very clear design aesthetic (ergo, "cartoony" and "unrealistic" as the other platform tryhards would call it).

I do admit, even in my review, that I do play it enhanced with an mClassic.  This does provide me with a drastically sharper image, as I did turn it off in response to curl and realized just how much worse the environments looked.  Of course, when all the action is popping off like fireworks, there's no time to notice this, but perhaps I skewed my own perception unfairly to everyone else.



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curl-6 on 09 April 2021
ZyroXZ2 said:
curl-6 said:

I do plan on getting an Xbox Series X if games like Halo Infinite and Hellblade II turn out to be good, but for the moment I have too much to play on Switch still to need another system. And I know what better graphics than Switch look like, I've seen plenty of PS4/5/PC etc games both online and in person, even played some at friend's places and such.

The main thing that looks "rough" in MHR to me is some of the low polygon environments, where rocks or the general landscape has obvious angular corners. I realize its a necessary sacrifice for a game to be both this open and this nice looking on a 2017 mobile device, it just makes the game look less polished than some others to me.

I mean, unless you specifically say you've seen PS5 Demon's Souls in cinematic mode on a 4K HDR TV... ... ;P  Though DS does lack ray-tracing, some scenes looked downright CG, it was absolutely bonkers!

Well, we agree that close inspection in MHRise definitely doesn't stand up, but as I said above: I'll die on this hill.  I've played just about every exclusive on the Switch, and each game has obvious "methods" used to accommodate the Switch even if they use graphically superior rendering (aka TLoZ:Link's Awakening as mentioned earlier).  MHRise instead looks built from the ground up for the system (despite it running on RE Engine) in which "we pushed the Switch, and we didn't miss a beat".

I guess we'll simply have to agree to disagree, but it seems we do agree that it was nice to see a third party game built from the ground up for the Switch rather than ported from either weaker or more powerful hardware.

I hope we see more RE Engine games made for Switch; since apparently they had to make a new branch of the engine to support the hardware as the standard RE Engine wasn't a good fit for it, it'd be a shame not to make the most of that investment.