Saddle Up: Time To Ride - PC

My teen daughter is so happy to relive her younger years.

First of all...If you like horse games with realistic looking horses DONT BUY THIS GAME! The horses looked pathetic compared to other horse games ive played. But I do have to say the whole mystery thing was really fun. Grooming horses did take forever though! So if you dont care about what the horses looked like than go ahead and buy it. But this game is not realistic.

I enjoyed everything about this game except for the difficulty of the game play. In order to progress through the game, you need to complete increasingly difficult courses, some in a paddock and some cross-country, within a specified time and relatively error-free. Perhaps it's easier for younger players and it's my slow adult reflexes that trip me up, but I found this close to impossible. The keyboard controls are too clumsy to allow you to move your horse around the course at a pace quick enough to beat the time; perhaps it's more workable with a joystick or other controller.Don't consider this game unless you have endless patience, lightning-quick reflexes, and a horse obsession. Otherwise you'll do what I did: scream in frustration and uninstall.

My daughter got this for her 9th birthday. This game was so frustrating when we first got it loaded because I couldn't figure out how to get the required steps done. The website was useless. Luckily persistent 9 yr olds can figure out games, and once I knew what to do I loved the game. I used to ride in Horse Trials when I was young and have gotten too old and fat to jump anymore in real life, so this game let me relive some wonderful memories.This game has three difficulty settings (easy, normal, hard). We set it on Easy, though I eventually tried Hard which was really challenging, mostly because I had to learn the courses without the hints.The ending was a let down (okay, STUPID), and also I never would have figured out all the right card suits from the hints in the game, I think "clubs" must have a different name in France. But I found the answer by searching the web (lots of other frustrated people out there who couldn't figure it out).To keep horses from getting sick, you have to feed once a day (neither less nor more often), and when you clean the hooves you have to not touch the "frog" of the hoof. I found that just cleaning at the toe of the hoof was fast and safe.The only things I didn't like was that it takes a minimum of 36 brush strokes (in the right places) to get a horse clean (if you ride a dirty horse, or go to sleep without cleaning it, they get sick), and 26 clicks to clean a stall (so horse won't get sick), and after accumulating multiple horses that gets hard on a person's mouse-hand. There are two horses you don't have to clean (or feed) them or their stall everyday (only need to brush after you ride one of those, because they belong to other characters in the game), but one of the later competitions requires that all the horses have been trained, so you can't afford to let any of your horses stay dirty/unfed/etc and get sick. Luckily for me, my daughter had a hard time getting through each level so she was willing to clean my horses so I could keep discovering the next challenge.Overall I loved the game.

I received this game as a present for my birthday. I had read the other reviews on Amazon and it sounded interesting, so I brought it up and received it as a present. I installed it (my computer runs windows 2000 professional) and afterwards it did take a while for it to come up. When it did, about ten minutes later, I started the game and it seemed promising. I do like the way the buildings are set up; you walk to a door and a cone-thing shows above it (green means you can enter, red means you can't). The house was very nice, and there are multiple rooms to explore. Grooming is very easy at first, because you only have one horse (the game is French - all horses you don't name by yourself have French names, and the first one is Tempete), but it becomes difficult as you acquire the five other horses you alone have to groom and train. Competitions only have show jumping and cross country, no dressage. As for the mystery: believe the other reviews. There barely is a mystery, and you spend most of your time just competing and training. The "night rider" in the game only appears once, and even that one time is a disappointment set to adventure music. The puzzle at the end is downright annoying, because if you can't memorize every single code on the several books scattered throughout rooms in the game, you have to ride to each and every location to look again. The ending isn't anything interesting and is very brisk.Better games would be: Let's ride Champions collection; Nancy Drew (much more mystery); or the Starshine Legacy games. Despite the downsides it is an interesting game, but maybe the story is targeted for a younger audience.