On a conceptual level, we need far more games like The Legend of Khiimori. It isn’t that I’ve been particularly clamouring for horse management-courier sim hybrid games in my life, you understand, but rather that developer Aesir Interactive delivers on interactive media’s ability to broaden your perspectives and build a walk-in encyclopedia of different cultures and experiences.
At least, it wants to do that. Because although the intention of this game is clearly to bring to life a time and place that hasn’t been captured in detail by the medium before, the execution leaves you acutely aware of how early this Early Access build is.
You are Naraa, a horse courier in 13th century Mongolia, navigating a sizeable open world with changeable weather conditions to deliver cargo or messages to the Yam people who inhabit it in small pockets. There’s a huge amount of charm to this world, even though it’s sparse. Unlike so many open worlds, the systems don’t get in the way of the environment here. You don’t feel like the world map janitor, sweeping up minimap icons and tidying away bits of busywork. You’re given the time and space to just enjoy the scenery and focus on a few key mechanics.
Nearly all of those mechanics are about your horse. Aesir Interactive is something of a specialist in equestrian games and it shows – everything from your steed’s cleanliness and mood to the weight distribution of its cargo is modelled here and needs your careful eye to ensure smooth passage across the world.
If you’re thinking that sounds a bit like Death Stranding on Horseback, you and I have that in common. Not in the way that Kojima’s game sneaks a playlist of indie songs and freewheeling cutscenes with guitar-gun battles, but in the way both games dare to task you with less from moment to moment. An Assassin’s Creed title – the big hitter when it comes to recreating culturally rich historical settings via huge open worlds – would have you dismounting every two minutes to hack a band of mercenaries to bits. It’s brave and commendable of The Legend of Khiimori to offer a different, family-friendly way to explore the period and the place.
It’s imbued with a gentle beauty, although the kind that doesn’t run entirely smoothly on an aged RTX 2080 TI. The dappled fields and thick woodland are rendered in gorgeous detail, with draw distances that inspire you out towards the next adventure.
The trouble is, things are a bit too stripped back in this current Early Access build. It’s intended to give a vertical slice of what the full game will entail, but doesn’t give you much more than a big ol’ space and some quests. It’s lacking the main narrative and campaign structure to put some meaning behind your missions, and for an already light-touch game that shallow content pool is quickly exhausted. To call upon the Death Stranding analogy once more, you’re inclined to go on another long and uneventful journey in that game because you know there’ll be a narrative payoff and that the systems will continue building on each other in interesting ways; that doesn’t happen here. You turn up at a remote location, say hello to a man and give him some supplies, and… that’s it.
Not without significant charm and endearment, mind you. Naraa’s disposition, like the jobs she takes on, is incredibly wholesome. There are moments of combat, when spirits or natural predators might attack or spook your horse, but they feel secondary to speaking to people, hearing the Mongolian language, and learning a little bit about life here some 700+ years ago by observing NPC settlements and routines. That’s the draw here. If you don’t like the sound of that, nor paying constant attention to the needs of your horse, there’s very little of interest here for you.
If you are fascinated by equestrian mechanics though, there’s an unusual level of depth here. Handling your horse across different terrain types requires careful management of their stamina bar, with rough or uphill terrain depleting it at a faster rate and certain vegetation like spiked bushes damaging its health. There are mountainous areas of topography, and perilous gaps to jump. All these systems and environmental factors make horseriding feel more involving than in the likes of The Witcher III or Red Dead 2, if not necessarily more enjoyable. There’s a degree of inertia and imprecision to controlling the animal which, intentional or not, makes for some brow-furrowing moments.
So too does the control system, which requires some fiddly positioning in order for the required button prompts to pop up. I’ve been stuck on quests a few times, thinking I missed something earlier, only to find I needed to be standing in an incredibly specific position in order to trigger the interaction I needed to progress the quest. So it goes with the movement animations, particularly Naraa’s run cycle and jump, and objective signposting – it’s all very WIP.
But I’m reluctant to raise The Legend of Khiimori’s problems, obvious as they are. It feels like telling a kindly relative that they got you the wrong birthday present, or correcting an enthusiastic child on their grammar. Here’s a game that doesn’t want to sell you a banana costume or a battle pass, and which seems genuinely passionate about the Mongolian history and culture it depicts. It just wants to make you smile, and does about it by crafting a singularly wholesome experience whose principles are rooted in respect for nature. That makes it hard to dislike.
But the problems are there. Firstly that it’s lacking a main questline, a substantial undertaking in itself and one that will define the experience. Fine, you might think, it’s in Early Access. But will the studio continue to support the game long enough to implement such a major, resource-hungry component part? We’ve all been hurt before in that regard.
Even aside from that, there’s a lot of polish needed here, to the controls, the signposting, the UI and the performance optimisation, along with the miscellaneous bug hunt that’s part and parcel of pre-1.0 development. Given that it’s currently selling for $30 on Steam, these points need to be raised, because it’s not a dead cert that they’ll all be fixed to a high standard by the full release in 2027.
I’m rooting for it. Because there aren’t enough games which take this historical and culture-first approach to open world games, and because I found it such a joy to hear Mongolian being spoken, and sung, in this unique and memorable setting. I want more games that recreate under-explored moments in world history, and that’ll only happen if ambitious concepts like this one are executed well enough to perform commercially. I’ll be hanging up a lucky horseshoe for it in the meantime.
