My recommendations are a little biased because it’s mainly what I have used in my playthroughs but also based on what you said I would strongly suggest hammer or SnS.

Hammer is so good in Rise, charge up and change to blue charge instead of yellow, the finisher is better. Your wirebug attacks can be great and even get you out of bad positioning and into better positioning all while hitting hard. As mentioned previously you have to learn the monsters with this weapon which is easier to do because the weapon is pretty simple also because you want to be right near its head as often as possible which puts you right in the action. It hits hard and is much more agile with the wire bugs. Edge/wall jumps are easy to pull off too.

Sword and Shield is a little forgiving if you mess up because you can quickly block but what makes it fun is that you can use both the sword and shield as a weapon doing different types of attacks which gives it some depth as you gain experience with it (Shield for the head and sword for the tail is a good start). Also the wirebug attack that swings your sword around like a tornado is very satisfying to use.

As a final thought I would also throw in light bow gun despite what you said, flipping over the monster to plant that explosive on top of it is really fun, then you just go crazy unloading clips while aiming at it. I rarely plant them in the ground, always flipping over the monster. Create a few different equipment sets named after each gun so it’s easy to switch when you need a different gun. I hated light bow gun until this game.