2019-04-26

Being the masochist that I am, I'm trying out even more freemium mobile games. I am a sucker for these things because, well, I can't afford normal games that often and these give me that sense of 'new' and like a Skinner box, they make me happy with numbers that go up and up.

A big shift from Blades, this time we're playing Rival Stars Horse Racing. I love animal husbandry and breeding games, so when I saw this with its nice-looking graphics in the pre-register section of the Play Store, I clicked it.

The game is a mobile version of a PS4 game called Phar Lap, or from what it seems, Phar Lap is a console version of this game.

Anyway, let's just get into the game.

The first thing I want to point out is that the graphics are really nice for a mobile game. Everything is really pretty, and even on my old Galaxy S7, it runs great with the highest graphical settings turned on.

This game focuses largely on the racing -- everything else is just timers and RNG -- which is pretty simplistic. Your horse will have a preferred place in the pack, and if you stay in that place, you'll charge up your sprint meter, which you'll need for the final stretch. At any time, you can swipe left or right to move your horse that way on the track, slow down a bit, or sprint to speed up. In longer races, you'll have to manage slowing and speeding up to get your horse's sprint meter full without falling too far behind.

It's simple but it's pretty fun, especially for a casual mobile experience.

Outside of racing, you'll be tapping on little icons to train and breed your horses and upgrade stuff. Breeding is probably the next most interesting aspect of the game, though it's more frustrating than fun. Basically you tap on the two horses you want to breed (if you don't have a suitable stud, you can choose from some outside stallions but it will cost you in-game currency) and then a baby appears and you have to wait for a timer for the baby to be born.

Even though the parents have preferences on distance and track surface and position, the resulting baby horse seems to just have completely random preferences, as far as I can tell. But that's not that bad since you start with just one horse so you'll want different stats than just those same ones over and over.

The frustrating part is in how random your offspring will be. I'm sure later when you're wanting a very specific set of preferences, you'll be crying as you spend weeks or months waiting for the right baby to pop out. Early on, though, this frustration manifests in getting horses of higher star ratings.

For example, when breeding two 2-star horses, I had a 45% chance of getting a 3-star horse, or a 55% chance to get another 2-star horse. It took me four tries to get a 3-star horse. Because higher star ranking horses can be trained to higher levels, this is the only way to progress in the game. And then once you start reaching higher star ratings, each breeding session will make you wait like 7 hours and stuff like that, so you'll be sitting around forever just to learn you failed and have to wait all over again.

Your horses will gain experience points as they race, which allows them to level up. The higher their level, the more they can be trained. Training is simply pushing a button and waiting for a timer, which results in the horse's actual stats raising. You'll be going back and forth between racing to level up and training to get higher stats.

You'll also be managing resources as training costs money and items, and racing costs stamina and money.

It's pretty much what you would expect from this kind of game.

One thing I really appreciate about the game is the amount of flavor text and stuff that has been added. When you finish a race, you can watch a video to earn more money. Most games would just say "Watch an ad to get more money!" but this game says that you're appealing to a sponsor who saw you in your last race. And by watching that sponsor's ad, you get some bonus cash. It's still the same old watch-ads-to-do-stuff or pay-money-to-do-stuff, but it's given little explanations that make it just a tad more interesting, which is a breath of fresh air in this game's market.

Another great thing about the game is the horse naming system, and the announcer voices. There's a huge list of words that the announcer can pronounce, and as long as you name your horse with two of those words, your horse's name will actually be said aloud during the races. The announcer voice actor even recorded multiple ways of saying each word so that it sounds proper at the beginning or end of a name, and even saying them that way in a more excited way for the end of the race. It's super cool and one of my favorite parts of the game.

Horses' names are generated randomly by choosing a first word and second word from the big list (you can keep re-rolling or type in your own name if you want for your own horses) so you get some really weird names like "Dead Donut" and "Ridiculous Spaghetti." My only "gripe" about this system is that we can't just choose from the list; if you want to name your horse a specific thing, you have to type it in and see if it's compliant, without knowing what all is actually acceptable or not. You can go by other names you've seen -- like if you see "Calico Caffeine" and "Wednesday Push" you know you can name your horse "Wednesday Caffeine" or "Calico Push." But I want to know all my options, and that's probably the saddest missing feature of the game so far.

There's also a bit of "story" to the game, with most of it being in the introduction to explain why you started your horse career in the first place. The character portraits are again really nice looking, like everything in this game. There's even a cute old guy who helps you out throughout the game.

Outside of what I mentioned, there's also time trial leaderboards that award you with roses which you can use to buy special horses and stuff, as well as see how your horse ranks alongside other players. You can customize your jockey by choosing one of four different skin tones and a gender, as well as choosing the color and design of their silks.

The worst part of the game is the freemium part. I mean, that's the worst part of any freemium game, but it's pretty bad in this one. Wait timers are long. For example, it takes 20 minutes to regain one stamina, and it can cost multiple stamina just to race one time. Breeding will take several hours, and probably days once you get to higher levels. Upgrading your facilities takes hours, too, and you get limited ads per day to lower the timers by a few minutes.

The cost of premium items and subscriptions are ridiculously high. You can pay like $20 to get enough gold to buy a horse that you'll be able to get through breeding in a day or two. You can also subscribe with a recurring membership that gives you basically nothing. You'd have to be stupid rich (and by that I mean 'very rich' and 'rich and stupid' at the same time) to actually spend money ont his game.

But then if you're not spending money, you're going to sitting around and waiting on long timers and RNG to progress in the game, which gets boring and frustrating fast. So you'll either have to be very patient or willing to drop hundreds of dollars to see a different colored horsey appear on a screen now and then.

I like supporting good freemium games by buying some kind of cheap $1-$5 pack (or, uh, like $200 worth of bs *cough*Star Trek: Timelines*cough*) to support the devs and support decent, well-designed freemium practices. But this game I actively discourage anyone from spending money on.

GOOD THINGS

• Stellar graphics for a mobile game
• Flavor text is nice and actually adds to the game
• Racing is fun enough
• Pretty horsies
• Cute characters

BAD THINGS

• Ridiculous wait times
• Freemium cost is stupid high
• No mustaches

The 'bad things' are pretty bad (especially no mustaches), so unless you're just wanting to pull up the game now and then casually to get in a few races and start a few timers just to come back much later, you'll probably want to stay away. But if you're just looking to play now and then like that, it's a pretty good experience for a freemium mobile game.

I'm hoping in the future we'll get a "team" (guild) system where we can link up with friends to do like team time trials and more for roses or other rewards. Plus in this kind of game, everyone wants to share their horsies with each other, so even just a friend system would be nice. But you know I love the guild junk.

I dropped Blades pretty much immediately after writing the review for it, though I do go back to it like once a week. Rival Stars has me checking in multiple times a day, and I even put off writing this review because I was playing more of it. Now that the timers are getting really bad, I don't know how long I'll last, but for now, I intend to keep playing the game in hopes of seeing new features added.

#rival stars horse racing #reviews