Yes, I have that kind of time on my hooves, don’t ask why. My verdict? It’s a massive improvement over A Maretime Bay Adventure, both in terms of the diversity and creativity of the mini games I saw, the fact that each of our main characters has something substantial to contribute in the narrative rather than just being background fodder until they’re needed, and the overall story is a lot more intriguing, with plenty of unique scenarios. The skill sets for each of the Mane 6 were impressive and true to their characters, therefore making them feel like an organic part of the story instead of just different modes. I really like that extra touch. It also feels like this game utilized G5’s world and side characters a whole lot more. The voice acting ranged from good to eh, but overall was serviceable enough to be believable, except for Zipp. While I didn’t care for the meandering of the pacing at first (seriously, it takes them FOREVER to find Misty and actually get somewhere), it more than picks up once we get to the second and third acts, with the plot moving a whole lot quicker and upping the stakes with every major beat. The resolution was pretty heartfelt too, even though I called the Sparky reveal pretty early on. I even thought the animation graphics were marginally better than last time too, sooooo that’s also a plus. In spite of some minor gripes, I’m impressed. This is a vast improvement in a ton of areas. Well done!

I’ll be posting a full, more detailed review on my channel sometime this weekend, but I just wanted to share my general thoughts here first. What do you guys think though? Feel free to let me know. You can be as general or spoiler heavy as you want. I won’t mind as I already saw it. :)

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Still not gonna buy for full price.

I thought it was really cool.

I must wonder out of curiously if there is G4 references and Easter eggs in the new Zephyr Heights game?

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Okay, compared to their last game, it's a little bit more investive with the characters and diverse amount of exploration, but I think it still has many areas that could be improved on.

For starters, let me address that there's music (Rrvirus likely muted the music, but it's there, so I won't be judging them on that).

Second, they could've animated things better, such as with the cutscenes. They had panning, shifts, many things that make the cutscenes a little bit more involved than the back-and-forth they have with NPCs, but they could've had pre-renders, better positioning, wider expressions, they could've added these to really sell the thrill of what the player was getting themselves into. Heck, this would've been the perfect excuse to hire the Make Your Mark team again since they won't be touching these characters anytime soon. There's also sections that could've really used some animation to better show a progress being made, such as with Sunny's interaction with those anomalies as they just jumped to the end result instead of showing a flash of light over the scene in question or the objects returning to their original position (much like it does for Izzy during her 'gimmick' moments).

Third is that they could've been a little more trusting on players and have those tutorial moments be on the right side of the screen or be a flashing icon to tell you what button to press or be less invasive on the player or something else instead of interrupting gameplay by taking you to a screen for every little detail about basic controlling (if they had to manually stop gameplay to show us how to move and jump, then they might as well assume that we can't even get past the main menu). It eventually fades away, and I can see what you mean by them picking themselves up after the first hour or so, though I'm noticing some sluggish moments with the turning (taking a moment like an actual horse does in a 180 rotation) and the charging function (needing a running start first), but I guess that's fitting as this is a game is intended to be slow and calming.

It's more of a platformer this time around where collectables could be missed much more easily along with unreachable areas that can only be met once you get every character, so there's a small amount of replayability. I feel that time was hindering the team behind this as a few abrupt moment really threw me off (such as the teleporting pumpkin (a Cinderella thing?)), but there's not a whole lot to complain about... but to riff at, oh boy...

On a side note, at 4:52:55, you can hear Misty saying a line, but the textbox is assigned as if Zipp was the one saying it.

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The voice acting ranged from good to eh, but overall was serviceable enough to be believable, except for Zipp.

The original game also did this; Zipp is voiced by Abby Trott in MBT as Matreiyi Ramakrishnan was unavailable.