rating Emerald Valley Ranch
Emerald Valley Ranch is a frustrating game because you can see in every corner of the game that it could have been good. It was almost good. but somewhere along the way, production must have been rushed, or people must have been underpaid, or something had to have gone wrong. there’s glitches. there’s so many glitches. looking past the glitches, there’s bad game design. there are several paragraphs of negative things in a row here, but there are positives afterwards!
there's very few NPCs with very little character to them. most if not all of the quests are just riding to a destination, talking to someone, and then riding somewhere else. a lot of the design choices make me wonder if they had any playtesters. for example, the button you hold down to get off your horse is the same button that you use for reading signs or picking a dialogue option if a sign or a person is nearby. speech bubbles float above people’s heads, but if it’s their last dialogue before they need to start riding away, they will just ride away with the bubble following them away, making it harder to read. there’s no button to press when you’re done reading, so if you read slow you inevitably miss things and if you read fast you gotta wait for the bubble to vanish and for the screen to fade to black so the NPC can teleport away. you find outfits and tack everywhere, but you can’t put on any clothes until you finally get a house at the END of the main plot, and you can’t change your tack until you build a Medium Stable. not a small one. has to be Medium. the game doesn’t tell you this.
construction requires the collection of lots of specific different resource types, but in the construction menu, they’re not named. it’s just a symbol, and lots of the symbols are just recolored versions of other symbols. you can go into your inventory to look at your list of resources and that Does tell you what each thing is and where to find it, but it doesn’t list the processed resources like Planks and Bricks, so when you need those to build something and you don’t know what it is or where to get it, you end up going to the wiki. and then there’s only one forge in the entire world and you gotta ride all the way there because there’s absolutely no fast travel besides teleporting back home.
there’s a map in your inventory menu, but no minimap, so you gotta keep opening your bag to look at the map, and if your horse has any active traits opening your bag takes you to the Horse page and you gotta tab over to the map EVERY TIME YOU OPEN IT. and the cursor that marks where you are on the map is off-centered quite a bit, such that the map will tell you you’re in a river when you are a decent ways away on a road. there is no minimap. there are quest markers that tell you what direction to go in and how far away you are, like in skyrim, but unlike in skyrim there are strict paths you have to follow with no riding through bushes or climbing mountains, so this is useless and unhelpful. you have to keep opening the map to make sure you’re on the right path, and even then, the offset cursor makes this difficult.
a large part of the gameplay is breeding and catching horses to get better stats. you can’t really partake in this until you construct enough stables to have multiple horses, and even then you have more work ahead of you. but before i even got to having multiple stables and horses, the main plot had me catch the Legendary Horse with absurdly high stats, so there’s no reason for me to try and breed a Better horse. i have the Best Horse. it was practically handed to me.
early on, you will discover that your horse is dirty from all the obstacles you crashed into. it will tell you that you can groom your horse with a washing shack or a grooming station. there does not exist a washing station in the entire world until you get the blueprints for it, which happened about six hours into the game for me. there is 1 grooming station and it’s a long enough ride from the ranch that by the time you get back from grooming ur horse, it might already be dirty again. the only way to wash your horse outside of these 2 very inaccessible methods is to run fast through shallow water, which does not work well. you’re also not informed of this method at all and i only found out about it when i was looking around on the Emerald Valley Ranch wikipedia to figure it all out.
every single time you mess up a jump, the screen fades to black and puts you down a little ways back from the obstacle. however, messing up a jump includes touching a log with 1 foot, trying to jump into a bush, touching a part of an incline that isn’t designed to be walked on but also isn’t steep, falling too far even if you haven’t hit the ground yet, landing in water that is deemed too deep, walking into water that is suddenly deemed too deep, and beyond.
so the game is fundamentally not designed like a game. it’s also full of glitches in every area. if you squat while wading in water, the camera goes into your head and you can see your face from the inside.
if you dismount while your horse is still moving a little, your character might collapse to the ground behind the horse before teleporting back to its side. frequently, for things like clipping a lead to your horse or demolishing a pile of rubble, the screen fades to black and then fades back and then the lead pops into existence or the rubble vanishes. it’s timed wrong, so you have to wait for the fades to black only for it to be visible anyway. if you reverse with a person or a pole behind you, your horse can suddenly be standing perpendicular to the ground. i reblogged a video of someone who tried to ride into their stable and ended up stuck on the roof instead. there’s a house that they ?? forgot to put in ?? and it’s just floating windows ???
with my graphic settings at the lowest possible, several hairstyles have prominent bald spots. i have yet to discover if higher graphics settings fix this. the braided pigtails have no regard for the laws of physics, but that might be considered a perk, so ignoring that
while playing i experienced about 3 crashes and 2 freezes.
i briefly played the game in spanish & i quickly discovered that they didn’t bother to program in gendered words towards the player, so whenever anything refers to the player, it looks like this
“...he considers you {Gender}|a friend(male), a friend(female)” your new friend matteo cant figure out what gender you are and isnt subtle about it at all
also the game’s controller support was designed for xbox controllers. i had to swap some buttons around in the steam thingy but apparently for the official nintendo switch version there are still many places where it tells you to press Y when actually you need to press X. come on now.
+1 gay point for a guy having a husband, +½ gay points for the tension between the rival and the player, -1 gay points for not being able to change my gender even after finally unlocking the mirror which lets you change your appearance like at the start of the game. there’s 7 skin tones and 4 of those are lighter and the last 3 are very different darker shades.
i don’t think there’s any gender locked hairstyles or outfits so that’s nice. -1 safety points because you are trapped in this outfit and thus unable to put on a helmet and heeled boots until you complete the main storyline. +1 gay points because this jacket is literally the nonbinary flag. and yet you have to pick a binary gender? hmm.
HOWEVER. despite all that. there is still a lot of Heart in this game. it’s got a sense of humor!
the ambience is quite good! the naturey sounds always brightened my spirits! the graphics go up pretty high! my laptop could only barely handle the lowest settings, but even so it was pretty nice. there’s a lot of ferns! there’s little low poly birds and pigs and bunnies and chickens and cats, and there’s a sidequest where you go photograph them for somebody. except photographing them is just pressing a Take Picture button while there’s an animal nearby. even Horse Life did better than that. the music is pretty peaceful and uses a lot of piano and strings and wind instruments, but it sounds uninspired and a little bland to me. EXCEPT for the Washing minigame music !!!
the horses have a little bit of personality sometimes, where if a horse has a fear of something like heights or the dark, they’ll become Terrified when you’re riding near a cliff or in a cave & you’ll have to dismount and pet them until they’re calm again. i caught a lovely horse named Pokey who i love who liked jumping & whenever she was feeling down, i could just do a little hop and a skip and she’d be happy again. i then immediately caught a different yet similar horse who liked running fast, which happens to be what i do all the time, so.. sorry pokey…
you can unlock this outfit for your horse
the naturey areas are pretty beautiful, and many areas feel big and bright and open and you’re free and you can run as fast as you can go. you can also drift slide around corners! you get tons and tons of letters every day from introverted riders around the peninsula letting you know that they finally beat your fastest time on a racetrack and they can’t wait for you to increase the challenge, or from horse breeders uncomfortably letting you know that they do in fact have even more horses available for breeding now and hey, maybe your horse will hit it off with one of them or something.
the majority of your time in this game is just riding around the map, picking up resources and going to and from places for quests. some paths will start to feel old with the number of times you have to take them, since there’s often only one way to get somewhere and no fast travel. other places will only become explorable after you finish the main plot, with rarer and suddenly much needed resources in an area you get to frolic in to your contentment.
in short, it’s pretty & outside and i like that. :3
let’s talk about how the main questline ends, because i was flabbergasted.
you get a letter from your relative, the one who set you up with this decrepit ranch, saying that you should celebrate how well you’re settling in to the valley by throwing a party and inviting all 7 people who live on the peninsula and who know me.
you ride all around the map to invite everyone in person. this takes a long time. everybody seems excited and agrees to bring something for the party, like decorations and chairs and tables and a cake. you then ride to the spot where the party is set to happen.
the table and chairs and decorations and cake are all there, but there’s no people there??? you play 3 different cutscenes of your character sadly eating cake by themselves until they give up on anyone arriving. it’s really sad.
a kid you invited shows up like “hey sorry i’m late haha how was the party?” and you say “nobody came…” and the kid is like “oh… uhhhh”
kid tells you something to do with an ‘emerald valley devil’. i missed most of what he said because i was playing in spanish and the bubble disappeared before i could finish reading it. this leads me to believe that the reason nobody showed up to my party was because some horrific monster attacked somebody, and now i have to go on a quest to keep everyone safe. this is significantly more exciting than anything that has happened so far.
you go home, sad and tired. you go to sleep on your air mattress in the camping tent you’ve been living out of your entire time here. you get up and check the mail.
Matteo has sent you a letter asking you to meet him somewhere.
you show up. he’s unblocked one of the exits to the forest, unlocking a new area. “i think there’s a legendary horse out there!” he says excitedly. this legendary horse is actually the monster you were excited about defeating, and now you're disappointed. “why didn’t you come to my party, Matteo?” you ask. “oh shit” Matteo says. “didn’t think i’d be missed. uhhhhhh let’s go catch you that legendary horse, kiddo.”
you catch the legendary horse. it’s so fast. you can never go back to your old horse again. riding will never be the same. the legendary horse looks pretty normal though
you go home. there’s some new guy there. he says he’s your homoerotic rival’s older brother, and he’s running some errands that he could use your help with. you say “aw what the heck” and follow him around.
he leads you to a surprise party! all your friends are there! they’re clapping for you in a lovely cutscene where you're riding a grey horse that you don't have! you think “oh, so they didn’t come to my party to set up a secret slightly better surprise party? weird and kinda mean but ok I guess”.
the brother says “heyyy yeah sorry, i think my little sister, your homoerotic rival, missed your party yesterday because i’d just gotten home and they always make a big fuss about it, you know?” you think “wait is this party for you ??? i thought it was for me.”
you talk to the Toddler. the Toddler says that the surprise party was for you. you think “yes, she is more trustworthy than the brother. the party is totally for me.”
you talk to Matteo. he mentions having a husband! +1 gay point for Emerald Valley Ranch
you talk to your rival. she says “heyyy! haha uh sorry for missing your party yesterday. i pulled this together because we all felt bad for missing your party.”
it’s a PITY PARTY!? most people don’t even have reasons for why they didn’t go to the first one!? what the heck!!! and they had to have shown up before me to leave the chair and tables and decorations and cake, and then they LEFT ANYWAYS!??? there’s only Seven People on this peninsula of Course your absence will be noted !!!
grumbling, you go and talk to the lady who helped you move in to your ranch, the lady who’s always standing nearby to tell you that when you finally get some furniture, she’ll give you fashion tips. the lady who can only realistically be described as a milf. she gives you blueprints for a House.
you’ve been living out of a tent this entire time. this lady has been standing nearby all this time. she’s had the blueprints for a House in her pocket that entire time. building a House is the only possible way to obtain Furniture for changing your clothes. she was just standing there like “oh, too bad you don’t have a house! let me know when you do!” knowing full well she was the ONLY WAY by which i could EVER build a house.
this is the end of the main questline. you’re supposed to feel happy and content here.
after a long trek to gather resources, you finally build a house. here’s the before and after
you go straight from a tent to a fucking four story tall McMansion with a bajillion windows. you gasp and run inside. the camera is clipping through every wall and floor and the popup construction menus for things that are outside show up through the walls. there are 3 rooms on the ground floor. you have a bedroom, a useless dining room, and a common area with stairs in it. you run up the stairs. the stairs end at a door that is actually a wall. there is nowhere else to go in the giant house. this is a pretty good metaphor for the entire game
worth pointing out that a lot of the plots at your estate seem intended to be filled out with gardens of various sorts, but the only purpose of food in this game is to feed your horse a little treat if you want to try and make them happy, and if you feed them 3 in a row they get the Overfed status effect for a while. and it’s entirely optional and not very beneficial.
as you can hopefully see from this very long post, Emerald Valley Ranch is frustrating because it’s the definition of so close yet so far. there’s much more in the game than Horse Life, which i’m using as my baseline perfectly mediocre 2.5 star game. however, Emerald Valley Ranch has so many glitches and flaws that it goes into ‘actively bad’ territory, earning it a rating of Less than Mid. only like 42% of steam players made it through the main quest, so i know it's for sure not just me. i’m rating it 2 stars out of 5.
★★☆☆☆
it’s been years since it came out and there’s still so much wrong with it. but it could still be great!!! they could still fix it!!! but will they?
if you’re interested in this game, I recommend waiting until it goes on sale. i got it for $10 on steam and apparently it’s usually like $40 and that is just too much for a game with this many problems. however, if you like relaxing games where you’re just riding around on a pretty horse in a pretty world, i would say that this is a great game for that! i didn’t really start enjoying it until i started listening to Snapcube videos and podcasts while playing, so it’s a good game for multitasking.
thanks for reading! please feel free to submit any horse games that aren't already on the list! i think it would be funny to amass a list of every known horse game in existence
