Turf Dynasty Review Part 2:
Vinny Blond from @PicksByDynasty
Back In May of 2019 The Daily Gallop was asked by Turf Dynasty (@TurfDynasty) to do a review of their new mobile horse racing game during its beta phase and since the beta I have been hooked on this. If you want to read my review of the beta version of Turf Dynasty you can read it here http://thedailygallop.net/turf-dynasty-mobile-game-review-by-vinny-blond/ . I will be focusing on the improvements and my overall game experience over the last 6 months of Turf Dynasty being released.
The name of my stable is Dynasty Stables and there have been a lot of improvements to the stable settings since the beta including badges, trophies, and stats. The badges are basically like achievements in the game that you can unlock by meeting certain criteria. For example, there are badges for winning a set number of races, overall purse earnings, and for the number of foals that you have bred in the game. Personally, I wish there were more options for the badges as they are limited, but you can select up to 3 to display on your stables profile which does allow for a bit of customization. Currently on my profile for Dynasty Stables I have the badges for 1 Million purse earnings, being a beta tester, and for recording my first win. Trophies you earn by winning stakes races with your horses which makes these very tough to get in my opinion. It costs 100,000 coin which is the currency in Turf Dynasty to make your horse stakes eligible, then you need to have a horse good enough to win one of these races. As not every horse has the best of stats, I have been very picky about which horses I make stakes eligible, so I am not wasting my coin and I was lucky enough to have 1 of the 2 horses that I did make stakes eligible win a stakes race. Space Godzilla won the Summer Breeze Derby to earn Dynasty Stables its’ first and currently only trophy. I wish there was an option to use the trophies as badges for your stable profile as I would much rather show of the trophies than the badges to people viewing my profile. Now on to the stat tracking in Turf Dynasty.
As of writing this review Dynasty Stables, I would like to think is a middle of the road stable in the game. I have 463 starts and have a record of 44 wins (About 10%), 51 places, and 46 shows (30% overall in the money) with overall earnings of 2,173,210 Coin. Not only does the game track the overall stats, but it also tracks each of your horses’ individual efforts. Each horse has its own profile which shows you the basic information from the color of the horse (Has a picture of the horses’ head) to the name, sex, and age. From the horses’ profile screen, you can see their total starts, number of wins with their win percentage, and the number of times the horse has finished in the top 3. In addition to this you can also see the horse’s lifetime earnings and how much the horse has earned in its’ last 5 starts. Clicking on the profile to see a more advance view you can see the horse’s stats (I discussed the color coding in the beta review), and you can also see the results of the last 10 races while being able to watch the replays of each of them. Personally, I do not use the replay feature a ton, but it is enjoyable when watching and the graphics on the races have vastly improved over the last 6 months.
Two more big changes to Turf Dynasty since the beta are the addition of a second region and seasons. Hong Kong was recently added, and it does cost 50,000 coin to transfer a horse from the starting region which is Canada to Hong Kong and vise versa. This addition is very cool as it gives you more variety of races to run in. So far, I have not had much luck in Hong Kong with Dynasty Stables, but I do only have 1 active 3-year-old running in this region. I also transferred over a mare and a stallion so I can start breeding in the Hong Kong region to build this part of my stable up over the next few seasons. I am a huge fan of how seasons work in Turf Dynasty. As of writing this review the game is on Season 7 week 11. Time obviously is accelerated in the game, but each season is 52 weeks or 1 year. From what I have experienced so far is that horses tend to peek around ages 3-4 and start slowing decreasing in stats at age 5. This makes it a challenge to constantly be thinking about the future of your Stable. There is also a stakes schedule that is released for each season so if you have a stakes eligible horse you know where to point them too. With the quick seasons though the game does get difficult if the horses in your stable do not perform well and unlike in the beta there are microtransactions.
I know most people including myself are not a fan of games with microtransactions that make the game feel like a “Pay to Win” game, but Turf Dynasty is not one of them. You can only purchase more coins which while it can assist you with breeding, buying, or claiming more horses, it does nothing to improve these horses’ stats which I think is a big plus for Turf Dynasty. No money can be spent to make a horse perform better in the game and this makes the game competitive to all and does not give an advantage to someone who spends $100’s on coins. As the people over at Turf Dynasty asked us to review the game and did name a stakes race after The Daily Gallop, I did purchase the starter pack bundle in the game which was around $7.00. This included extra coin to start the game, two mares for breeding, and a 2-year-old active runner. Personally, I thought this was well worth it to give my stable a nice boost to start out and since this purchase I have not felt the need to spend more.
Turf Dynasty has improved a great deal since the beta but there are still a few flaws in this game but like I said in my first review I think they are very small ones. One thing that I am hoping to see a change with in the future is the jockey selection for races. Now Turf Dynasty has done a great job of establishing a solid jockey colony, all with different stats for each region, but when you enter your horse in a race you are not always guaranteed that jockey. I have found that if I am the first one entered in a race, I am more likely to get the jockey I want rather than entering a race that already has a few runners in it. I would love to be able to see which jockeys are already assigned to runners when I am picking jockeys. While this is a small nitpick, it does get frustrating because if you don’t get your first choice of jockey it just randomly assigns you one. Another small flaw is that there is no good way to hold onto your retired horses. Personally, for me I would like the ability to have a farm where I can send horses that I do not intend on breeding with, but still can go back and look at their stats. Currently you can send them to a farm but there is no way to recover them or look at their stats once there. Again, these are two very small flaws and probably are more personal nitpicks than flaws but still negatives in my book.
Overall, I would give Turf Dynasty an 8/10 rating. For a horse racing fan like myself this is by far the best mobile horse racing game I have played. It is challenging enough that it does take some skill to know where your horses should be running, but it is not massively time consuming like other mobile games. I highly recommend Turf Dynasty to anyone who enjoys mobile gaming and especially to horse racing fans. I am excited to see the future updates to Turf Dynasty as the they have indicated that the game is still evolving.