Alright, what I’m about to say might be an unpopular opinion. While I’m sure, others will agree with me, 100%. Capcom is doing a significant disservice for Monster Hunter Rise for the PC by not enabling cross-saves. The same thing could be said for cross-play, but I don’t feel that it is as essential as cross-save. Why? Well, let me break it down for you!
With Monster Hunter Rise dropping for PC in less than three weeks, there’s going to be one drastic question that’s going to be asked. That being, should I double-dip on the game. While double-dipping has several meanings, in this case, it means to purchase the same game for another platform. For Monster Hunter Rise, the game was once a Nintendo Switch exclusive title leaked as a PC title early in 2021. As such, I had stopped any progression on the Switch version because I wanted to play it on the PC. Now, don’t get things twisted. I enjoyed the title on the Switch, but if you’re asking me if I’d wanted to play this sort of game on either platform, I will opt for the PC version every time.
We’re getting lots of nifty enhancements such as 4K resolution, ultrawide monitor support, with uncapped frame rates to round things out. It all sounds great, and if you’ve bothered to check out the demo — yes, there’s a demo. Seeing the game in action on the PC is a thing of beauty.
But, there’s a downside, progression. For those who’ve played the game on the Switch and invested hours in the game. Those who’ve crafted gear hunted the toughest of monsters and wanted to continue that journey on the PC. Well, they can’t. Instead, they’ll be starting anew as there’s no way to import those saves; this could pose a slight problem for the PC version. This very thing happened with Monster Hunter World, where I had over 400 sum hours. I eventually made the jump to the PC version, but I was highly upset about leaving everything behind.
Not that I’m worried about the PC version, or is Capcom, for that matter. It will sell and will go on to make Capcom lots of green stuff. However, I do feel this will hurt the fanbase. It will cause some who have invested those hours already and cause them to ponder if making the jump to the PC is worth their time. And there goes the magic topic; time. For many, doing it all over again may not be worth the effort. We saw this with Monster Hunter World when it first arrived on the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, eight months ahead of the PC version.
Sure, to many, it won’t be a big deal. To me, it doesn’t matter either. For the countless others out there, I do think that Capcom should have made a conscious effort to allow anyone who decides to migrate from the Switch version of the game to the PC. Or even better, cross-save and cross-progression so they can go between the versions at their leisure. It does bother me when I think about what could have been possible. It would be short-sighted to say that Capcom didn’t care. Yet, at the same time, the question is, why not, Capcom?
Dauntless, Fortnite, Dead By Daylight, Among Us, Apex Legends, Genshin Impact, a few games that come to mind. With more developers and publishers realizing that cross-play and cross-save are the future, you’d think this would be an upward trend. Yet, here we are with one questions, “what the hell is Capcom thinking?”
Of course, there’s a side to all of this. Even though Capcom hasn’t done the right thing in my mind, there are bound to be several trainers that will let people quickly catch up to where they left off on the Switch version of Monster Hunter Rise. I hope they don’t go overboard using them. The whole thing of absolute power corrupts and all that.
Monster Hunter Rise PC releases on January 12, 2022, and is available for preorder on Steam.
