When moving upwards or over rocky terrain, this results in a spidery climb on bent legs that just looks off-putting. In motion, the horses are hit or miss, depending on what ground you move across: they unfortunately suffer from a very similar setup of Inverse Kinematics as Torrent in Elden Ring, which I’ve written about at length here. I can still see myself getting attached to the Sandrock steeds though: their wonky shape doesn’t make them unlovable, I just find the artistic choices a bit odd.

Where the human NPCs have all lost most of their stylistic weirdness compared to the first game – several of them look good enough that I’m actually going to use the romance features this time around – the horses retain some of those weirdly unappealing qualities.

That being said, there remain a few stylistic choices that I can’t really get behind, such as the perpetually annoyed-looking eyes and the wonky head shape. I blasted through most of the available quests in a matter of days – admittedly partly because I was sick and couldn’t do much but sit around gaming, but also because the game’s content and core mechanics are just really engaging and satisfying.īefore too long, rancher’s daughter Elsie invited my player character to learn about horses and riding, giving me a chance to look at the game’s mounts in motion.

The formula of assembling large items from laboriously gathered and refined resources works as splendidly as it did in Portia. You quickly get acquainted with the other local craftspeople including the dubiously competent guild master Yan, the Civil Corps leader named Justice and your friend and rival Mi-an.īy gathering resources and crafting new tools and machinery, you ramp up your workshop’s production capacity in order to do commissions for specific items and assemble large building parts for main missions. My Time at Sandrock starts with your arrival at the titular town of Sandrock as one of two new Builders. When the crowdfunding campaign for the sequel My Time at Sandrock launched in early 2021, I knew I had to try and get on board early, with the hopes of leaving valuable horse-related feedback with the game still in development for a game I was surely going to enjoy anyway. With the Early Access release in late May 2022, it was obviously time to redeem my backer key and give this a try.

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