Oh boy. Where to begin.

First and foremost - this game is not worth the asking price. It just sucks, to be honest. I wouldn't even bother with it on a discount. This is essentially an early-access title dressed up to parade as a “complete” game and I could be here forever writing an essay on what this game does poorly (a lot of things).

If you are wanting this game for a child, or to just chill out for a few evenings, avoid it. Go and get Horse Club Adventures 2. Please. Do your kid or yourself a favour.

I literally waited 2 years to stew on this game to give the developers a chance at redemption. As of April 18th 2024, further development has stopped completely. I understand there is some level of “we shouldn’t expect every game to get DLCs and be live service etc” here but for the sheer lack of content and the broken-ness of the game on launch (and that the game LAUNCHED with DLC) - it was all but expected we would get further updates or for the bugs to AT LEAST BE FIXED.

The DLC content is broken with various visual glitches among others. It has not been fixed.

In terms of horse games - The Ranch of Rivershine *DEMO* is more complete, has more content and is less buggy than this game. And as of writing (17/8/24) the Ranch of Rivershine EA (made by one person btw!) is more complete and less buggy than this game.

I wish I refunded this game when I had the chance rather than trying to see it through to see if the game improved (it didn’t).

The game is STILL incredibly buggy, and to my knowledge still absolutely broken and nearly unplayable performance-wise on Switch (as well as looking absolutely AWFUL). Any bug-fixes that DID eventually come after a year of radio silence fixed 1 bug and added 3 more.

~~Anyway, onto the Actual Review rather than my “Stay Away!” warning. I could write an essay here and I’ve honestly cut it down because I’m lazy but I’ll try to be as concise as possible.~~

Really my biggest gripe with the game is just the lack of content and apparent lack of.... anything? It’s completely disingenuous games design that took a haphazard pile of unrelated games as inspiration and made a weird broken mess.

The map is not accurate and doesn't show where you are properly. There are a total of about 6 NPCs in the game and they just stand still and don't do anything - the entire island feels like a weird ghost-town purgatory.

Foals are a DLC option despite breeding being a main premise of the game. Speaking of breeding - the devs had to leave a bug in the game to get a certain food item because otherwise breeding is functionally impossible with the amount of grinding you need to do. Buildings are just boxes to look at - you can't go inside nor see your horses in pastures (I think this was added in a DLC or update?)

The camera - that has since been updated iirc - was absolutely horrendous and made people motion sick.

The entire “story” of this game is 10 vaguely related missions that have little to no overarching narrative between them. Every single mission honestly feels like it was something made in the testing phases to make sure if they could do (insert game mechanic here) and shortly before release the team when “OH F*&K WE DON’T HAVE A STORY” and just put all those test missions AS the story.

This is the entire story:
1. You arrive on the island and get a horse. You are taken to your dilapidated ranch.
2. You go to the Carpenter NPC and call your family to find out what's going on. This is the 1st of TWO times they "appear" in the story.
3. You meet a generic NPC who shows you how to build stuff. You unlock the first race.
4. After completing the first race you meet a generic Rival NPC. You beat her in a horse race. (A good majority of people are stuck here due to a mixture of bugs and the game being RIDICULOUSLY difficult - this is a KIDS GAME and ADULTS are struggling with this!)
5. You go with Generic NPC to find his missing sister and follow him around in the Woods ( Not The Creepy Woods) for a bit.
6. Rival NPC goes missing. She has to sell one of her horses. You find Rival NPC, and the horse, in the Creepy Old Woods. (This is probably the only decent mission in the game).
7. Rival NPC shows you around the Rival Family estate. You're now friends with her?
8. Your family “appears” for the second and final time by sending a letter. She tells you to throw a party for all your new friends (which you met on the same day it feels like). Nobody shows up. You're now sad.
9. Carpenter NPC apologises to you and tells you he's cleared the landslide blocking access to the west of the island. He gets you to catch the Emerald Valley Devil - a rare and exotic wild horse. He takes you to two locations where the horse is and leaves you to "do it your way". You catch the horse with no effort.
10. Rival NPC’s brother, who you’ve never met before, has shown up. He takes you to a surprise party the NPCs have thrown for you.

Story ends. That's the entire story. There are some side quests, but they are equally as surface level and mind-numbingly boring and literally only serve as tutorials to learn how to do stuff.

The “rebuild your ranch” is perhaps the most tired cliche in horse related media.

Oh well, there must be environmental storytelling, no? Nope. There’s a bunch of cool stuff to look at, I guess, but that’s it. Anything you find that you think is cool is completely empty (such as the pirate ship or giant French-style town with Two people living in it.)

You can’t interact with the world in any meaningful way except to open chests, and you can’t explore because the game is FILLED with invisible walls and ‘reset points’ to the point where half the map is inaccessible. And if you do stray into those invisible walls/reset points, you encounter a Looney Tunes style fade-to-black and are reset.

There are 5 competitions which are varying levels of frustrating, because if a single pixel of your horse touches a jump you get the same Looney Tunes Reset and your horse eventually becomes so dirty and stressed it either has no stamina or won’t run anymore.

Maybe this is a bit petty. But I find it poetic irony that the developer Alice Ruppert - the game director and a person who became “internet authority” (their words!) on horse games - criticised every horse game out there for relatively minor things and then the game they worked on released & is… not good.