Image credit: Em Stonham for Kyusai/PikPok/Prodigy Design Limited
If you’re a fan of horse racing games, chances are that you’ve had your eye on the console release of Rival Stars: Horse Racing.
It’s finally galloped onto both PlayStation and Xbox, and despite not generally being an equestrian enthusiast, I had fun checking it out. Here’s a full review of Rival Stars: Horse Racing on PlayStation 5, sans any story spoilers.
Horsing around
Rival Stars: Horse Racing kicks off with a fairly standard cozy gaming trope – you’re inheriting a property from an elderly relative, with the hopes of bringing it into the modern era and making your family proud.
It’s simple but effective as a foundation for a simulation game. The first thing you’ll do is design your jockey character and your dream horse, before you get to start training them and racing them on various courses.
The gameplay in Rival Stars: Horse Racing largely revolves around completing races and cross-country courses with your horses, breeding and caring for horses, and finishing simple missions, like upgrading a foal stall.
The racing gameplay loop is decently satisfying, with a good variety of courses to unlock as you level up. At the start of a race, you’ll need to time the perfect start, before mindfully using your sprint resource to outpace the competition, keeping in your horse’s preferred spot on the track to charge up quickly.
In the cross-country mode, you’ll need to guide your horse around a course, managing their sprint bar once again while taking them over hurdles and gates.
Instead of being scored on placement like a standard race, cross-country races award prize medals, along with a heaping of prize money if you do well. If I ever ran out of cash during my time with the game, I would turn to cross-country races; they’re incredibly lucrative and not particularly difficult.
Speaking of money, it’s possible to bet on horse races and hire a jockey to automatically complete the race for you. While there are caps on betting on maxed-out horses, you can bet on your own horse and jockey, meaning you can pull in some decent cash if you’re confident with a race.
Off to the races
Outside of the racing and horse breeding gameplay in Rival Stars: Horse Racing, there are management mechanics, largely revolving around leveling up training facilities and collecting money from your homestead.
The story and missions provide useful resources to help you level up the facilities and keep your horses in good shape. The narrative is simple but sweet, with a few emotional beats.
There’s plenty of content on offer through the prestige leveling system. Gaining a prestige level means unlocking new customizations, new courses, or extra resources. To gain prestige, you’ll simply need to race and complete missions, meaning there’s a steady sense of progression.
Aesthetically, Rival Stars: Horse Racing looked decent but had a few quirky moments. The jockey models felt a little uncanny valley at times, and a few cutscenes felt clunky.
There were also some nice aesthetic choices, though; it’s clear that the horse customization system was a focal point for the team, as each type of horse and pattern felt intricately designed.
Character customization geeks won’t have much to play with for the jockey designs, but there’s a wealth of content in the horse creator tab, ranging from genetic traits and sometimes-hilarious names to dilutions and coat patterns.
Performance-wise, the PlayStation 5 version of Rival Stars: Horse Racing ran fine enough, with some notable frame drops in cutscenes.
The menus were clean and largely intuitive – although it wasn’t always clear when I had something highlighted with the cursor, as the highlight color was a light orange and the buttons were generally a darker orange. Despite this, I found the game easy to pick up and get the hang of.
While there were some rough patches in Rival Stars: Horse Racing, I did have fun with it, despite not being someone who rides horses or watches races. It’ll likely go down well with equestrian gaming fans looking for something new to play on console.
FAQs
Rival Stars: Horse Racing is available on mobile, PC (via Steam, with a VR version available), PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Xbox One.
At the time of writing, Rival Stars: Horse Racing is due out on Nintendo Switch, but has not been released yet.
Yes, there is horse betting in Rival Stars: Horse Racing, but it’s not an overwhelmingly integral part of the game. Players can skip over it if so inclined.
Yes, Rival Stars: Horse Racing is decently cozy; it’ll likely be an incredibly comforting play for folks who ride horses and love equestrian culture.
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