Alexandra Ledermann 7 - Le Défi de l'Étrier d'Or

Summary
Flora is a student at the new location of the riding academy, now situated in Italy and with Jade from the previous game being in management after the death of the old headmaster. Like in the prequel, you make your own class schedule and have adventures in between.

Game Design
The game is in 3D, with photorealistic textures. It is split into activities (no open world). At the start of each activity, you are placed in its setting, fulfill the task, and are taken back to the timetable menu. The game saves automatically after every time slot, making it impossible to go back if you've failed an activity.

Gameplay
You play as Flora, a new student at Academia Fitzgeraldo. The game starts with a dramatic cutscene This scene doubles as a hands-on tutorial for the controls and mechanics. Soon after, Flora starts her time at the academy and needs to make a time table, deciding every morning which four activities to do, very much the same as in the prequel. It is the player's responsibility that by the end of the week, all riding disciplines have been attended twice, along with regular horse care, trail rides, horse behaviour mini games, and social hangouts with the other students. An additional new feature is the responsibility for a foal.

The game goes on for six weeks again, with the new locations being in Italy, China, and Germany.

Horse Care
The usual. Brush (but not the head!), scrape hooves (but not the frog!), wash with a hose.

Riding
There are three disciplines to excel in – dressage, show jumping, and cross-country. There are two mandatory training sessions, each counting 50% for your passing grade each week (or else, you need to repeat the week). The mechanics have been slightly updated from the last game.

Show Jumping
Move with Arrow Keys, jump with space. In front of each obstacle, there are three bars on the floor. Jumping when the middle one lights up leads to a successful jump.

Cross Country
Same controls, but next obstacle is lit up with a colorful circle that indicates whether the horse's speed is correct. Blue/Turquoise will be a perfect jump, green is a good one, and anything below yellow will lead to a refusal.

Dressage
Dressage follows a line of dots on the floor, which indicate the path as well as the requested gait. Gaits come with extended/collected modifier keys. There are special figures like passage or pirouette etc that require extra keys. Dressage gives points (0-10) for each part of the course, which add up to and end grade.

Trail Rides
Each location has a trail riding area. If you put a trail ride into one of your daily slots, you can ride there without a time limit. These locations have optional photo collectibles. It is also useful to do a trail ride at least once, early in the week, to already know the area, because some story episodes will take place there!

Story
While you plan your day each morning, things won't always go as planned. Sometimes, an activity gets replaced by a story chapter!

currently i'm replaying the game (SartorialDragon), i'll add a spoiler tagged list which slots these are, for people who want to plan ahead.

The plot is mainly about Flora becoming a successful student and equestrian, while uncovering sabotages and intrigues, but it also includes social calls like a birthday party or helping out your friends, and a romance.

please use spoiler tags to hide big plot points!

Characters
The characters are a mix of known and new faces.

Flora (Player)
Flora

Teachers / Staff
Jade, Headmistress (Victoria in German version, despite being called Jade in the prequel?!) Patrick, co-leader Harry Temple?

Students
By selecting the social hangout as an activity, you can approach your fellow students and find out their life stories. You get two turns each hangout, and need to come back to it later to hear more.

Miguel .....

Plot
Opening Sequence

Week 1 (Toscana, Italy), Tuesday, Slot 4:

Differences between Releases
There is an NDS version!