It’s a rainy day in Hyogo, Japan as the competitors approach the second half of the Oka Sho, a 1600 meter race that’s the starting place for G1 classic races for the year. There’s less than 1000 meters to go in the race, and while the pack of 18 competitors has started to tighten towards the front, my eyes are specifically on my trainee, #9, who started off strong and has maintained her pace throughout. I can tell that the time we spent training her strategies and helping her maintain her stamina are paying off as she keeps pace with the head of the pack, staying just out of the centrifugal forces that might cause her to get crushed against the inside of the track and lost in the pack. The third corner comes, and then the fourth, and there it is: a sudden burst of speed from my runner. She shoots for the top spot, managing to blaze ahead of the others, but it’s close. #13 and #2 are still running ahead of her, and as she breaks stride to pass them, suddenly, out of nowhere, #5 blows past all of them. I watch, helpless, as my racer manages to eke out third overall, but we were shooting for first. She HAD to be first. She told me herself that she needed to be number one, that she needed to show that she was the greatest Umamusume (need to know what that is? Read this). And she failed. We failed. But more importantly, I had failed her as her trainer. I tell her we can do better next time, but the feeling of helplessness spreads. Before we can get our revenge, we lose the next race completely, and our campaign together ends.
I immediately smash the button and start a new career campaign. The same sights and sounds mostly play out, but this time, some things are different. I’ve chosen new support cards, I’ve selected a different training schedule, and I’ve ensured that better skills are picked. We easily win the Oka Sho this time, making it to the Tokyo Derby, but then suddenly my racer’s rival announces she’s leaving to compete in a different race entirely. I can tell she’s crushed by the announcement, and I have a decision to make. Do we go for the Derby after all of that work, or do we go somewhere else? Well… I can always play the career a third time and see what happens, right? What’s the worst that could happen? After all, it’s only… oh my God. It’s 5 AM. I need to be awake in 4 hours. I look at Daiwa Scarlet’s face and realize that I only have one real option:
We go again.
Always Bet on Winning Horses
If this intense description of the mindset of an athletic trainer isn’t what you expected to read about when you saw that the game was Umamusume: Pretty Derby, you wouldn’t be alone. Cygames’ monster hit often deceives people into believing that it is simply a “Cute Girl Collector” game, where players are incentivized to pull gachas and collect cute characters, but the reality is that Umamusume’s success as a game comes from the sheer size, scope, and depth of the game than from the cute graphics and catchy music. Make no mistake: Umamusume: Pretty Derby is a top-notch training simulator game, combining slight rogue-like and deck-building elements with training management and repeating challenges until you master and overcome them.
I do want to put a disclaimer note early in this review: Umamusume: Pretty Derby is Free to Play, because it runs off of Gacha machines that players can purchase in game currency to pull on. I know that Gacha games sometimes aren’t considered a “real” game because you (supposedly) need to pull to play properly, only for the game to go End of Service and take all of your money and run. I do think that is a viable and valid concern in a lot of cases, but Gacha games have come a long way, in which publisher Cygames has often been one of the more considerably reputable publishers in that market as games like GranBlue Fantasy have shown. However, if you do not like Gacha games, or are prone to bad impulse control, I do want to warn you up front and be transparent about the fact. I personally play almost primarily Gacha games lately; as the market shifts, I find that most games that are “slot machines” offer increasingly unique and interesting creative experiences, while games that want to sell me “cinematic experiences”, “realism”, and “art” are approaching 100 USD and release unfinished, buggy, or have executives ranting about “retention”.
It is somewhat remarkable then how good of an example of this dichotomy that Umamusume: Pretty Derby is. The main game play loop of Umamusume is pursuing individual racers Careers, which are extended narratives that involve multiple checkpoint races that require certain placements and requirements to enter. There are also daily races for resources, events, and stories that expand on the narratives of individual Umamusumes, but this narrative is separate from the Career mode. There’s also a PVP mode, and many more updates to come as the game progresses; at the time of this review, the game has only been officially out in English for 4 days, and has 4+ years of content to catch up on with the currently ongoing Japanese release. But what is already here is, frankly, a lot of game and very engaging. Even if you never pull a single time on the Umamusume banners for new trainees, the game gives you 5 different racers to start with: Gold Ship, Vodka, Daiwa Scarlet, Sakura Bakushin O, and Haru Urara. It also gives you a full deck of Support Cards, which provide buffs and benefits to your racers and specifically to your Career training goals.
When I say that you could easily just play until you’ve cleared all of those racers careers and never pull for another Umamusume or Support Card and play for an extremely long time, I’m not trying to sound facetious; Career mode is very in depth, but it also something I haven’t actually mentioned yet: Crushingly difficult. You will lose, and you will lose often. You will crash out numerous times as you felt like you were doing better the last time you attempted your career, so why did you suddenly lose the same race you won last time? And, frustratingly, you will realize: no amount of money you spend in real life would have changed that outcome. You cannot buy victory in Umamusume: Pretty Derby. Pulling the best Support Cards can certainly improve things slightly over time, but they will never instantly win you the game. Like real life, racing is unpredictable, and all you can do is learn from the experience and try again. And again. And again.
And again.
Horsing Around the Track
Career Mode works the following way: After selecting an Umamusume to train, the game asks you to pick 2 Legacies that affect your racer by providing them Inspirations (bonuses to stats, basically). This is essentially simulating the parentage of your trainee; in real life horse racing, aptitude and skill is often believed to be influenced by the Sire and Damsire of the horse in question, and U:PD replicates that by asking you to select Legacies (Parents) and then the Legacies that inspired them (Grandparents, essentially). From there, a small introductory narrative unique to the Umamusume you selected will start. Some of them want to become the Number One racer, others want to take you to an island in a bag and torture you for fun. Whatever the motivation of your racer, you will then have a select number of Turns to train them, rest them, allow them to recover in an infirmary, go on recreational trips, race in preliminary races to increase their fan following, or level up skills with accrued points.
Initially, this seems simple: the first race you need to complete, their Debut race, is often 10+ Turns out. The heat really starts to turn up when, much like real life racing, huge races start to hit you back to back, with 1, 2, or even 0 days(!) between them in order to continue your training. Suddenly the plan you had set yourself on doesn’t work, because you just don’t have the time to do what you needed to do. Sometimes, random things occur and your racer is injured, tired, or the training fails, and your seemingly surefire victory in the Tulip Sho race doesn’t materialize, and… you find yourself at the Game Over screen.
What caught me–and many new players–off guard is that Umamusume is not particularly “gentle” about losing. You can, and will, lose, and you will lose a lot. This is where the roguelike element comes into play; each time you attempt the Career, your previous attempts carry over very slightly as your racer’s graded Rank improves (starting at G+, and moving upwards). Playing other racer’s careers will allow you to improve their Ranks as well, thus meaning that selecting them as Legacies in another Career will carry improved bonuses. If this sounds like a lot of work, that’s because it is; as I said, Umamusume: Pretty Derby is a management simulator, and your job as Trainer is to manage your racers and try to guide them towards victory.
Managing Expectations for Maximum Fun Efficiency (Ugh)
To better aid you in your racing, Support Cards play an important role in how your Career efforts will go. In fact, were there any suggestion on what to roll for ever in the game, it would 100% be Support Cards over Trainees, because Support Cards are universally important and provide massive benefits to your efforts, and getting multiple copies of them unlocks further potential in what they can offer. If one were to play the game as a Free To Play player, saving up currency for Support Cards is the best decision one can make without worrying about what you are sacrificing, because they will always remain valuable and allow you to complete Career mode and improve your racers far beyond getting a new character will.
The thing that struck me the most when I first started playing Umamusume: Pretty Derby is how intense the game gets. I don’t want to say “addicting” because of the Gacha component, which might give the wrong impression; the addictive part of the game has actually nothing to do with the Gacha. In all honesty, I haven’t spent a dime on the game ever; that may change later on down the line, but right now I am a F2P player and enjoying every second of it as I work towards clearing Career mode. It is the Career mode that keeps bringing me back, keeps making me want to see how I can get the victory that continues to elude me. Trying different training regimens to raise different stats, using different support cards to unlock their potential, vying not to be #1 in every race but to shoot for the most important and consistent performances to get a little further in the campaign than last time, is what I keep coming back for. And frankly, it needs to be stated that Career runs are long. Perhaps after playing the same one a few times you may start to skip repeating dialogues and only making relevant choices may the time start to shave off, but Career mode is not asking you to look at your phone for five minutes and then turn the game off; it wants your full attention for an hour or more, all of which is spent playing.
Your reward for this hard work is seeing various little skits and narrative segments where your racer interacts with others, and where viewing the generally comical skits rewards you with deepened friendships that generate increased returns on investment. Telling Mihono Bourbon she isn’t a cyborg or watching Super Creek feed a ravenous Oguri Cap inspires you to train your own racer better, and in turn increases the bonds you share with others, similar to a Social Link system like in Persona games. Aside from these little interludes, the biggest reward is watching your star race in their actual races with live commentary. There’s something uniquely thrilling about watching the races occur, perhaps because of how well they replicate real horse racing, but also because you have no direct control over what is going to happen; you are only a spectator, watching the athlete you’ve worked with do their best against their competitors. The game follows them with a dynamic camera and cut-ins, all while the announcer yells about who is in what position and who is trying to vie for first, leading to nail biting finishes or intense blowouts. You can, of course, skip straight to the results, but doing so feels like a betrayal of what you are here for in the first place, like an errant parent who spends all their time at the little league game looking at their phone.
Rerolling, Rolling, Rolling, Come On
So, if any of this sounds enticing or interesting to you, dear reader, I want to offer a few tips on how to best start the game and some options that you have available to you if you choose to do so. Often, Gacha games will have discussions about “Rerolling” when you start them, trying to game the system into giving you high tier drops off of the free starter pulls that games often give new players. In many games, these systems are onerous and time consuming, but ironically, Umamusume’s is the fastest by far, taking about 50-90 seconds to reroll an account and try your luck with the 4 free 10 pulls you’re given, at least after you complete the Tutorial at least one time (all rewards given to you at the end of the Tutorial are the same every time). The game even asks if you want to skip the Tutorial after deleting all of your data, which feels intentional, or at least, Cygames acknowledges that perhaps players just want to start over and see how a fresh start can change things.
If you do wish to try rerolling for the “best start” you can get, there are two target Support Cards you should aim for: SSR Super Creek, or SSR Fine Motion. These two cards are so ubiquitously used that they are still meta in current Japanese play, years after release, and getting one or the other is enough to consider your starting account “strong”. The method for rerolling in this case is to gather your free pulls, roll the Support Card banner until you get either Super Creek or Fine Motion, and if you obtained neither, delete your account data and start again. I opted to do this, and it took me about an hour to get an account I was happy with, so the time investment is not especially long if you’re really interested in this path.
From there, there’s two important notes: The game (currently, at time of review) gives you a free 3 Star Selector Ticket for a Trainee of your choice from the starting 3 Star pool: Special Week, Silence Suzuka, Tokai Teio, Maruzensky, Oguri Cap, Taiki Shuttle, Mejiro McQueen, Symboli Rudolf, and Rice Shower. The game also has a Beginners Quest that takes some time to complete, but doing so gives you a free random 3 Star from the same list, meaning that without ever pulling the banner, you can get 2 different 3 Star units by doing the Beginner Quest and then selecting a unit of your choice with the voucher. If you are looking to play “optimally”, the best choice outcome is obtaining Oguri Cap, and then, selecting either Taiki Shuttle or Maruzensky. Oguri Cap is the best “all round” unit in the game for quite some time, with the other two performing very well in their fields (Turf or Dirt).
Of course, you are also welcome to ignore any and all of this advice and play the game however you like. The joy of Umamusume: Pretty Derby is that it rewards almost any type of player with the experience they want. If you see an Umamusume you really like, get her with the voucher for free, or earn the free 3 star roll and see who you get. There’s no wrong “way” to play the game.
Horses of Different Platforms (Cross Platform Progression)
As a small final note before wrapping up, U:PD is available for mobile devices (Google Play or App Store) and via Steam. The biggest “difference” between them is that the Steam version plays in a sort of “landscape” mode, where the rectangular main screen is extended to include the main menu or chat log. You can also use the Data Link feature to set up a password that ties to your Trainer ID, meaning you can play the game on any device you have access to with cross-platform play and progression, with one warning: Paid currency does not transfer between platforms. Essentially, buying Carats with Google Play and then going to your iOS device will not carry over those paid Carats. I assume there is some specific economic reason for doing this tied to platform specific fees or discounts, but otherwise you can totally play the game at your computer on Steam, and then pick up your Career on your phone when you’re away from your computer. I was surprised at how seamless it was once I set it up, although the warning about currency carrying over confused me at first; again, it doesn’t apply to your in game earned Carats, just ones you pay for, which will remain available on whatever platform you bought them on.
Crossing the Finish to Become an Umapyoi Densetsu
I am not the biggest sports video game fan; this isn’t because I don’t love sports (As you might guess, I’m a huge fan of horse racing), but mostly just because I don’t find the video game versions of them overly compelling or fun. Umamusume: Pretty Derby gives me a specific shot of dopamine that speaks to me and what I enjoy about sport, which is the idea of management and training and then seeing the results of that training pay off. It doesn’t hurt that the game looks absolutely gorgeous, with cute, stylish anime graphics representing each of the Umamusumes and their unique personalities. The game is fun to look and and fun to play, and even fun to listen to, with catchy music and occasionally full musical concerts when your racer wins. I have the game set to “Balanced” on my phone and it looks great, and the transition from phone to PC is barely noticeable, with both platforms looking very appealing.
There are some obvious caveats to this review: If you aren’t a big fan of anime style games, you are probably not going to like Umamusume. That isn’t because the game is overly sexualized–in fact, the game is almost completely not that at all, unlike many other mobile games–but just because the entire cast are Cute Horse Girls. That said, the management aspect of the game and the narratives of the racers more than make the aesthetic worth it if you give it a chance, and if you do like anime stylized games, then you’ll get one of the slickest looking games on the market for sure.
I mentioned in my previous article that Umamusume’s unique world building is one of its best selling points, and I will say that the game doesn’t quite do that world building as much justice as the anime and manga series do. While the media of the franchise tell stories grounded in historical retelling of real races, the game is mostly fantasy booking grounded in certain aspects of the horses themselves, at least in Career mode. There is also a lot more off the wall silliness, but the individual story mode segments do tap in to the history and legacies of the racers depicted in the game.
Finally, as I have mentioned, this is a management simulator; you do not control the races, nor can you affect their outcomes except to have done your best in training for them before they happen. I know some initial chatter from people curious about the game resulted in them being disappointed they weren’t able to race directly, like in Mario Kart of an F1 game, but if you know going in that your job is to train the racer and see if your training has paid off, I think you’ll find something really special here; the game rewards you with numerous trophies, songs, achievements, titles, and many more things to collect and help you improve your racers and show off your achievements in the game as well, and you can also join clubs with other players, if you so choose.
That said, Umamusume: Pretty Derby is one of my favorite games in a long time. I have been waiting for a long, long time for an official English release so that I could finally share the game with friends who didn’t want to deal with downloading APKs and VPNs, and I am absolutely smitten with the work the Cygames team did in localizing the game for an international market. The Umamusume’s unique personalities are translated well, the writing is entertaining and charming, the feel of the game is great, and the in-game explanations of systems and functions is one of the best I’ve seen in a translated game lately. If you’re ready to enter the gate and get off to the races, I urge you to give Umamusume: Pretty Derby a shot. I know that when you see your racer’s smiling face, or worse, their crushing look of despair, you’ll want to keep coming back and trying again to get an even bigger win. I know I won’t rest until I’ve ensured Daiwa Scarlet is indeed the Number One Umamusume, nor will I rest until I’m sure Gold Ship won’t play a prank on me that kills me in my sleep. Either way, I’m here for the long haul, dear reader, and I hope to see you at the races too.
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