Windstorm: Start of a Great Friendship - Remastered

I never thought I'd compare a horse game to Assassin's Creed, but if you remember the original game from Ubisoft, you'd know it was a fleshed out world full of possibilities and places to explore, but when it came to plot and actual progression, they'd sort of forgotten about that, and gave us a bunch of mini games (like sitting on a bench); some of these missions made the most of the game, others... well, most, did not. And so comes Windstorm in a very similar state. The world is quite wonderful to explore, and if you're the type to just enjoy riding a horse aimlessly, you'd probably find a lot to like here. But when it comes to story, and missions, the game falls flat. What there is of the story (and I understand its based on a movie, but there doesn't seem to be much plot at all here) is presented in a series of quick dialogues like a visual novel, and they're almost always a prelude to get you to do some work. The game is at its best in the open world mode, but after 6 hours and leveling up the horse, Windstorm, I realised the game had no more to offer me beyond more terrible missions, and collectables. I'd recommend it (especially heavily discounted) for a few hour of trotting about a serene country side, and I may come back to it, but I'll put my pros and cons here: + Gorgeous world, quite lovely to just ride about in. + Despite some stilted dialogue, the characters are acted wonderfully, and I found myself growing attached + Maintaining Windstorm's health through a series of mini games are done well, and never drag on long enough to be more than a quick distraction. + Music is well done with some lovely motifs. + The best missions are the photo missions that require you go out in to the world and take a picture of something. The nice thing is there are no quest markers or any indication where to go other than the mission brief, and no prompt whent to take the picture until you're within 100m of the target. It's quite a neat way to encourage you to explore. - LOADING. The bulk of this game's progression is, despite being advertised as Open World, done through a menu system. There you can select the kind of missions you'd want to do. All fine except that every option brings up a rather long loading screen. Different machines will load at different speeds, but I expected better on a Steam Deck. I realised the game just loads the WHOLE world each time. And when you fail a mission? Well, back to the menu screen (LOADING) and then click try again (LOADING). It demonstrated a lack of experience in the game engine that the developers can't just reset the script in the world, and have to instead reload a kind of world state. - Jumping can be pretty important for a horse game featuring jumps. Unfortunately nobody bothered to test what happens if you're too late for a jump. Basically you just stand there in front of the jump, unable to turn, unable to move forward or backaward, and if you hit the correct random sequence of buttons, Mika and her Horse propel themselves over the jump from a stand. Very frustrating when you have a countdown. - Sprinting requires holding down the A button, which is unfortunatey because the camera is terrible. If it automatically turned with you that would be something but it does not. If on Steam Deck I recommend mapping A to the R4 and L4 paddle buttons at the back, as they'll free up your thumb. - Very repetitive missions, with no rewards beyond leveling up the horse and the occasional photo you'll never look at again. - Catching escaped animals is both hillarious and frustrating. Every animal, despite not being the highly trained lightning-quick horse you ride, zooms about the countryside as though on wheels. Cattle secretly harbour v8 engines, other horses don't so much as jump obstacles as appear higher in the air for a moment (when they aren't just no-clipping). Oh, and don't miss a jump, it's an instant fail. - Not a great performer. I managed to get it running between 35-40 on Steam Deck and still look good, but there didn't seem to be a whole lot going on to justify the sacrifice.