Recent reviews by Counter-Stoat

Firstly, allow me to apologize in advance for any typos or mistakes I make. I am still crying from that beautiful, tearjerker ending. It will haunt me for the rest of my life. Her last words were poetry. But I won't spoil it for you, this game's plot is too brilliant for that.


STORY:


This game's story has everything. Comedy, tragedy, action, adventure, romance, drama... the lot. Yet somehow, it never trips over itself. You play as a young child fighting for the honour of their father. You do this by raising horses of different breeds to aid you in your quest for the titular magic crystals. Your journey will take you through seasons as you train, breed, race and sell your horses. Come rain or shine, there is no rest. You're fighting for your father's honour.

The characters are all deep and vivid, with brilliant backstories complimenting their individual quirks and mannerisms. While I won't go into depth for fear of treading into spoiler territory, I will say this: not everyone is who they say, so be careful.


GAMEPLAY:


This game may appear simple, but trust me, it's deceptively complex. It will take you hours, days even, to even scratch the surface of what this game has to offer content-wise. There are a few tricks you learn along the way, like that clicking on a rainbow nets you 100 gold pieces, or that clicking a clover brings you luck at the races, or that you actually can lead a horse to water AND make it drink by rapidly clicking on the water until the ungrateful brat takes the hint.

The racing sequences are especially intense; you can't actually see your beloved horse, you see. You can only read the nerve-wracking commentary. You may not want to play this game at night for that reason; the inevitable cries of joy that erupt from your mouth at seeing your horse return with a gold trophy will surely wake your neighbours (or "NAYbours", geddit? Yeah? Eugh, tough crowd.)


GRAPHICS


Yep, you read right; this game's recommended specs list the extremely poweful Intel Pentium 4 running at a whopping 2GHz. If you're one of the lucky few with a computer capable of running this game, you'll see that it puts all 2 of those gigahertz to good use. Crysis? BioShock Infinite? This game makes them look like someone stepped on their discs. This game is gorgeous. It supports resolutions of up to 1920x1080, and makes use of every piece of graphical technology you could think of. Antialiasing? Ambient Occlusion? PhysX? Tesselation? Anisotropy? Advanced DOF? I have no idea, but I think it might use them. This is just the excuse you needed to upgrade your rig.


FINAL THOUGHTS:


I have to say, when I was gifted this game I had my doubts. But now, I'm a changed person. This game has changed my life, allowed me to see things I couldn't before, and I couldn't be more thankful. This is a must play.

11/4 would bang