The Legend of Khiimori

Below are my impressions of the game accumulated over several weeks of playing, before the recent Corruption update: This game is like catnip for me having grown up devouring the Lord of the Rings films and video games and playing Shadow of the Colossus over and over, mainly for the feeling of exploring vast landscapes on horseback and forming a bond with your horse. When I saw this game on Steam in mid-June my heart leapt and I instantly purchased it, which is very rare for me. I played 50 hours in the first month, so I clearly LOVE this game! I can’t help wearing a silly grin when galloping across the steppes because it’s so stunningly beautiful and gives a sense of freedom and immense space. Different flowers, different skylines, varied landscape – grasslands, mountains, deserts, lakes. I’ve taken hundreds of screenshots. Trees and flowers bending in the wind. Strong winds and rain feel slightly stressful but exciting too. It's fun changing horses at the stable and riding straight out again – feels like being a real courier. Adventure, peril, need to plan routes. I like it that you can throw pouches to deter predators, rather than being forced to shoot them. Cool snatching resources by leaning out of saddle while galloping. Crafting system is great – you need to prepare for mountain and desert routes by crafting tonics, keeping an eye out for those resources whenever I’m out riding. I love the horse animations – eating, being petted, different riding gaits. Leaping logs is fun. Training pouches to speed up training are fantastic idea. Breath-taking sunrises in the mountains, on plains etc, beautiful colours and texture – grass looks like molten gold. Some incredible locations e.g. desert, discovering oases, climbing really high, rocky hill just beyond the desert where lone herder lives – thankfully discovering water nearby by going offroad when my horse was really thirsty. The challenge of survival creates a real feel of accomplishment, adventure, and some peril. Tantalising glimpses of further areas of map. I can’t wait for the map to be fully extended and to explore further. Sense of wilderness, scattered outposts, deep in history, a completely new landscape compared to the European landscapes I'm used to, travelling for hours without seeing another human being. Gorgeous concept and execution. Interesting items to transport e.g. musical instruments, changeable weather and terrains add challenge. Sense of culture from these items. The clothing & faces of the characters too. A sense of being immersed in another world. Some AMAZING music, especially the desert and mountain music. Game is already performing extremely well. In 80 hours of playing I only had a major bug once. Really looking forward to visiting some of the places shown on the loading screens! I love building a sense of mastery and starting to recognise the areas I’ve passed through multiple times, getting a sense of my bearings from the geography rather than checking the map all the time. I find this a mindful game – you pay active attention to your horse and the terrain, taking in the gorgeous landscapes at the same time. I feel so attached to Aztai and Erleg, my only horses for the first 30 hours of the game as I saved up to buy a rank 6 horse. I love the Akhal Teke red duns so much and enjoy creating family lines of them. It’s so satisfying seeing how far my skill has developed since I started playing the game – the mountain pass to Shaman Altai doesn’t feel unimaginably daunting anymore and I know the best ways to traverse different terrain types after practicing, obtaining a sense of mastery. Survival mode feels relatively simple now (my first and second playthroughs were in Adventure (?)/medium difficulty mode. Note on the Corruption update: It's possible to turn it off, so I don't mind it that much - although I agree with many others that it feels very jarring after playing the pre-update game so thoroughly. I would like to have a go at playing it when the game fully releases, but I expect I will end up turning it off quickly as the appeal of this game for me is the unbroken natural landscape. What I do mind is that the horses the horse merchant offers are now randomised in terms of names, traits and appearance. The horses I felt attached to and was saving up to purchase in my third playthrough - Erleg, Erel, Enkh, Ikh, Goyol, and Gyalbaa - are all gone. It feels like losing old friends. I truly believe this change goes against the overall feel of the game. Having specific horses with permanent traits and names and appearances reinforces the idea of these horses being individuals, which is surely crucial to a game about being utterly dependent on your horse for travel and survival. Randomising the horses removes that sense of individuality and the care and loving attention which is otherwise highly visible in the game. Please bring back the original horses - and add new ones for variety's sake, with a greater range of coats. In addition, please make more varied horses available at lower ranks again, as was the case before the Corruption update. I just spent 15 hours getting to Rank 6 prestige on my third playthrough, started post-Corruption update - hoping to buy some high-rank horses, but nope, the highest rank horse available seems to be a rank 4, with most being rank 0 or 2, all the horses available have quite boring coat colours, and there are no Akhal Teke horses available any more. I've gone back to my second playthrough where I already have my favourite horses and will avoid starting any new games until there is an update to the merchant horses.