We checked our Star Stable recently for an extended review, a classical theme park style MMORPG where we got to prance around the world of Jorvik on the back of our own pony. It’s important to note we said pony and not “horse” as whilst the distinction between the two is to do with the height, our use is more to ensure you readers don’t envision us on horseback in some far flung fantasy adventure. We were riding ponies, we were a little girl at a pony summer camp; as a fully grown man then I think it’s fair to say I’m not the target audience, but as a journalist we will as ever be diligent in our unbiased reporting.

First logging into the game we got to create our character, which is a quick and easy process with a few options for customization and a name creator with pre-approved names and word combinations to make a surname (we went with Esmerellda Oldbrooke), which extends to your horse as well (Greyjoy; we do not sow). Character creation was made all the more simple by the fact that you can’t play as a male character and only the afore mentioned “little girls” are available. We like to think this isn’t so much the wrong presumption that boys might not want to play this game (and I’m sure plenty do) or that horse riding is for girls, but more due to the fact that the questlines are very linear and directed towards girls in both words and content (such as an early female character telling us that we better not go near the token heartthrob boyfriend). The early quests and characters have a typical high school feeling about them with the prissy (read: bitchy) popular girls snubbing our character early on and us doing our best (pathetically) to try and impress them to join their Wild Bobcat Club.



The other quests revolve around the main early story-arc where one Mr Kembell is a property developer who is apparently looking to tear down the summer camp to build a development on it and according to stable owner Thomas Moorland is trying to do so illegally as Moorland owns the property. What happens is a bunch of objective based quests to progress the story and our character as the main protagonist helping Moorland out. Whilst fun and fine the reality is that parents have been dropping their children off into the care of Thomas Moorland and Co. for the summer who then proceeds to send an army of children off to trespass on building sites on ponies they only just started to learn how to ride, turning off power to lights and machines putting both themselves and the hard working contractors in danger! Similarly one of the camps blacksmiths actually sends our little girl into a mine, alone, to go mine metal for him! Okay, so we’re probably analysing the questline more than the typical audience would, but it did amuse us.

For a younger audience the game is fun, going everywhere on your horse is simple enough and it’s nice to have a mount early in an MMORPG unlike the vast majority of them out there. Your horse goes at various speeds, controlled by the mousewheel or the W/S keys, which can be a little tricky at times but you get used to it as you’re sent around the area to complete quests. We also got the chance to take part in a variety of races, solo tasks with a time trial between various checkpoints, they are repeatable with the best lap time for the day earning rewards. Even with a pretty perfect time ourselves we were still around 15 – 20 seconds off the top and this is down to players of a higher level with better gear and mounts that have higher speed, and unlocking the ability to jump on your pony and taking mini shortcuts; so kind of pointless to even try them again until you are a later level. As well as racing and quests you can also tend to your pony, feeding it, brushing it and watering it to keep it in a good mood and performing better, as well as doing repeatable quests for the other horses at the stable.



The biggest issue with the game is early level barriers; for starters the game is only free to play up to level 5, after that you need to be a subscribing member to get more quests, unlock new areas and basically carry on playing the game (so not REALLY free to play, but free to try). However, even these first levels have blocks on them that restrict gameplay starting with the VIP shop where you need to be a subscribing premium member, which is kind of pointless because the stuff you buy in the shops would be way too expensive for you to buy in the first few levels anyway. However, there’s also a “time” quest where you need to wait until the next real world day to carry on a quest, or you can spend Star Coins to sleep and then the quests are opened up. We hit this at level 4.. so it was already forcing us to stop playing after about 2 hours (as there were no quests left to do) and wait until the next day just to get an extra level of content or spend real cash just to finish off the trial period.

The game isn’t bad as far as MMORPGs go, it definitely has a unique spot that it fills, and whether you love horses or not doesn’t really matter as there’s plenty of quest content and a large world to explore that isn’t just centred on being at pony summer camp. However, the game is far from free to play and players should be well aware of that before loading the game up.



SCORE

• Graphics: 6


• Performance: 9


• Gameplay: 5

• Pros: Your own early mount, plenty of game features, unique theme.


• Cons: Dated graphics, no male player characters, not free to pay but instead “free to try”.

Final Score: 6.5

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2015 at 4:42 pm and is filed under MMO News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.