The Legend of Khiimori (PC) - Preview

I say it all the time, I like weird and interesting games. Especially when it comes to strange settings in games, compared to what we’re all used to. Aesir Interactive and NightinGames’ The Legend of Khiimori sees you take on the role of Naraa, a Yam Courier (postal worker) in 13th-century Mongolia, which by my reckoning puts us anywhere between Korea and Ukraine. However, there isn’t much to say about Naraa’s journey, as The Legend of Khiimori enters early access with a gameplay loop, missions, and little in the way of story. The New Game menu states, “Story is not implemented at this stage.”

The Legend of Khiimori is, in fact, focused on equestrianism and being able to keep your horses happy, healthy, and maintained to high standards for the work you are doing as a courier. As I say, it is difficult to judge anything really beyond the gameplay, and equestrianism is where the gameplay is focused. It would be easy to say Khiimori is a historical variation on Aesir’s previous titles in the Windstrom series, at least to some degree. However, I’ve not gotten around to those titles just yet.

Not that a history of games focused around horses and caring for them means that everything feels, shall we say, polished. Stumble over a rock the wrong way, and you’ve broken your horse’s legs as you set out on a mile-long adventure around a lake. Or, when around a camp and you’re reversing your articulated pony, it will walk into a tent, slightly glitch out, and take a bit of damage in a clumsy and rarely-feeling-earned-down point. Be it controls that can be more complicated than a manual transmission or simply a horse maneuvering like a Sherman Tank.

The majority of the gameplay and mission structure at this point is that Naraa comes to the central village on the map, Tov, is directed to find a lost old man named Batu, and return him to the camp. From there, as a Yam Courier, Naraa must deliver packages between outposts and such across the vast plains, tall mountains, and bramble-filled forests on horseback. Lines are voiced, there is a sense of a larger world, but story-wise, you’re barking up the wrong tree. The best comparison I’ve come up with across several hours with The Legend of Khiimori is Ubisoft’s Ghost Recon Wildlands.

By that, I am drawing the comparison of the large world, the emptiness only populated by those “emergent” gameplay opportunities, and an outline of a plot that you’re most likely ignoring. The trouble is, at this time, The Legend of Khiimori has one of those – a large open world populated by what is effectively fetch quests. Or rather, delivery and fetch quests, with little else in between. Part of the gameplay, however, is that the old man you collected before is a cartographer, so taking quests and returning to him in theory is supposed to help connect the scattered Mongolians of this vast land. Reality is a little less exciting.

Aside from breaking your horse’s leg as you set out, you also have to feed, water, and keep your beast or beasts happy. Each horse you have has a certain set of stats that mean they run a bit faster, can carry more, tire less easily, and so on. The overall point is that you can breed them to improve stats and make your life a bit easier. Indeed, you might guess that my little ponies have been closer to the glue factory than they have been to breeding the grand national champion.

The biggest thing holding back The Legend of Khiimori, sadly, is its ambition. I love a game with too much ambition to be truly polished – look at Just Cause and Watch Dogs Legion – but I’m more specifically talking about the systems themselves being thrown together and expected to just work. Alongside keeping your horse happy and healthy, your horse is its own Sam Porter Bridges as you cross the wildlands of 13th-century Mongolia instead of post-apocalyptic America/Australia.

Indeed, not a great comparison to make as Death Stranding is made by a madman (who I love), but delivering packages, having to manage your inventory, and making sure the horse is balanced properly (or risk incurring injury), fits the comparison. As you might guess though, you also have to keep food for the horse, potions/ointments to ward off negative effects, and there is crafting at hand as well, as you pick up the parts to make healing items and such. It all feels a bit overwhelming at times, and not in a good or exciting gameplay way.

Yet, despite all of this, there is a massive amount of charm to The Legend of Khiimori; be it the rough, characteristically German development, the somewhat dated visuals at times, or the wonderfully emergent Mongolian folk soundtrack and occasional shout from Naraa. Riding across the plains at a breakneck pace to drop off a package can look and feel amazing, albeit for a moment. The camera pulls out, the soundtrack gently swells, and the worries of your horse falling to bits drift away.

The counterpoint to some pretty vistas is encountering any weather, getting up close with something, or, God forbid, having to talk to someone. There was one guy in the middle of the small islands in the lake (Chicheg) who would stand and say, “Hail, Rider! Good Day to you.” His problem is that he and his hair would stand before his head. That’s an extreme example, but pop-in, facial expressions in Fallout 4-style dialog scenes (minus the options), and the aforementioned weather make everything look a bit more like the late 2000s.

Rain in certain areas turns everything into a muggy monochromatic picture filled with confetti, wind slows you down but can also turn everything a bit brown, and snowy areas are like driving backwards down the motorway with your eye shut, bloody useless. Add to that, depending on your “night brightness” setting, you have “Geoff man! I’m blind!” to row 11 on the eye chart at the opticians. All of which can make some progression a bit of a chore when the game’s coding and design isn’t already doing that.

If your horse is low on (or has run out of) stamina, everything is desaturated and goes a bit blurry. Add this on top of weather effects, and you might as well call yourself Stevie Wonder with how much you wish you could see. Yet that is not the worst part. As noted above, you are also doing the work of the cartographer, so the map somewhat has a fog-of-war over it, and exploring unveils new details. That includes the names of locations that you’ll have to go to for what we’ll loosely call “main line” quests.

As a note, after writing most of this preview, I checked to see if anyone else reviewing had this issue; apparently, it has been common. In Zagaschin Village, you get handed a heavy stone item that can only go in your saddle bags, you’re given this anti-freeze stuff you can’t craft yet, you’re told your delivery location is up a mountain, and the quest marker on the map is a mile or two in the opposite direction. Doesn’t sound too bad. Then you get there, and in my case, the quest marker led me to a bugged-out thorny bush that would feed me unlimited items in the middle of a grassland area.

Best of all, the name of the actual village you’re to deliver the item to won’t appear until you get there, even if you’ve cleared the fog-of-war effect off the surrounding area of the map. This isn’t the only bug I’ve encountered, either. Giving the horse items such as food and healing items stopped working entirely, only solving once I’ve managed to reload a recent save. With general performance on the highest possible settings – despite meeting or exceeding recommended specs – occasionally seeing freezes, crashes, and dips as low as 30 frames per second.

There is so much I could use to hit The Legend of Khiimori over the head with as a problem. I don’t like the mouse-like cursor in menus despite playing with a controller, menus such as the load menu looking a little ugly, and not being able to dismiss broken quests to try and reset them. There is a lot that makes The Legend of Khiimori less than ideal as it launches into early access this week, but as much as I’ll bemoan the ambition of throwing all these systems in, hoping they’ll work from the off, something is endearing about it.

I will bemoan having to turn the actual PC’s volume up to hear anything despite all audio sliders at 100%, but the concept and the feeling of The Legend of Khiimori sometimes override its flaws. When your vision isn’t being inhibited, and you’ve got everything just right for your Goldilocks of a horse, galloping across gently rolling hills has that cozy gaming feeling. A lot of The Legend of Khiimori seems to be aiming in that direction.

Then you stumble upon grave sites that spook the horse. You go up a mountain and get chased by a wolf. You’ll wander a little too close to a forest with a bear in it. Soon enough, you’ll realize the arrows you’ve got are meant to be used to kill things, and it isn’t really satisfying combat either, as the dead wolf poofs out of existence into a pile of detritus you can use to craft. A bit closer to Grand Theft Horse 2 than Hello Kitty Island Adventure, if you ask me.

Ultimately, The Legend of Khiimori feels like a concept of a game that is stuck between two ideas, one cozy and about Mongolian postal delivery, and the other Red Dead Horse 2. Yet, both are trying to fit on top of that historical setting with their own influences. At present, this launch into early access is a bit undercooked with a decent idea or two behind it, but hopefully, this early access period will be used to refine and define mechanics as much as it will be about adding to what’s here. Though I do love the waypoint-making system, I hope that’s kept.

A PC preview copy of The Legend of Khiimori was provided by Mindscape for this preview.