Cute to a point, if your kids or even yourself loves Nintendogs, you'll enjoy this!
At first, I thought this game would be a cheap rip off of the already not so wonderful Horsez, but Edios has proven me wrong.
The game starts off just like Nintendogs, picking the breed, the pattern of the animals coat, gender and naming, as well as paying a nice sum of money for the little darling... Your pony has a stable to sleep in as well as be fed and cleaned and a filed to exercise in. In the feild you can interact with your pony by feeding it treats and petting it. Edios has wonked this abit to where you have to be VERY careful on where you place your stylist point to pet or brush your pony. If too fast with a tap or a brush pass, your pony can get very annoyed :( and you dont want that!
The rest of the game gives you alot of little things to play around with and really explore the world of Pony Friends, everytime you go on a trail your 'mother' I believe gives you a 'mission' to take a picture of a certain animal she wants, and if you do so you can gain extra cash to spend in the store for more pretty little items for your pony(s)! Theres also racing and many other trails to explore with a whole line of animals to take pictures of and other little goodies to collect to make it all the more fun.
Sadly, on a cute game like this there are some down sides, I dont know if they're too horrible but it doesnt hurt to list them...
For one thing, you MUST clean your pony after every trail ride, or at least brush the pony to clean away the dust, again just like petting you need to brush in one slow motion in one direction, no back and forth-ness. Edios made this game abit slow for the younger audience.
Speaking of trail rides, they are very long! Much longer then I thought they would be! Thank god for the gallop button but even with that its very long, I was on a trail ride for 15 minutes and I thought Id never reach the end, even after taking all 10 pictures (thats another thing, you're set to a certain amount of film to take pictures so dont mess up! lol)
Next we have the camera control on trail rides, its abit too much but then again too less, if you want to look to your right you need to scroll with your stylist to get there and it isnt one quick movement, also it doesnt tell you how to take a picture at first, either you take it by mistake or its just making you read the manual and who reads those things?
Graphics are abit pixelated, even for a DS game I expected it to be just alittle bit smoother but they make the enviorment so big that it makes sense... kinda.
Lastly is the racing, for your pony to win a race you need to yell or 'cheer' into the mic to encourage your pony to run faster and win... Um, no. Why? I tried it myself (ended up cursing at the thing sweetly as I can) and it seemed I was 'cheering' high enough to make her go but apparently it knew I was cursing at it annnddd gave up, lol.
The only easy thing is doing the set of chores your 'mother' tells you to do every day to get money, in Nintendogs you either sell or you HAVE to do those tournaments to get money; the down fall to this is you can only do a set amount ONCE aday so to get more you either push your clock forward or sleep, waah...
All in all, the game is fun, not really a time killer (turn on, play for afew minutes then turn off kind of thing) unless you KNOW you have ALOT of time to spare...