Uma Musume: Pretty Derby (2021)
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Publisher: Cygames
Developer: Cygames
Platform: Android/iOS/PC
Overview:
Horse girls from around Japan enroll in the prestigious Tracen Academy to become competitive racers.
Gameplay:
This is a blend of social simulation and sports. You have the eponymous horse girls who come in 1-, 2-, and 3-star rarities. Their core stats are speed, stamina, power, guts, and intelligence. They also have affinities for different track types, race distances and racing techniques, as well as special skills that can influence any of these factors. With character fragments known as Pieces, you can limit break the characters by raising them to the next star level. You get these pieces from duplicates in the gacha or by trading in Goddess Statues. (The trading system for Goddess Statues is identical to the one in Princess Connect Re:Dive where the exchange rate increases every 20 Pieces to a maximum of five Goddess Statues per Piece.) The next important element is the Support Cards that provide assorted bonuses in training. They come in R, SR and SSR rarities and while you may be tempted to focus on collecting characters, you really need to be making sure to collect these cards as well. You can level up the cards to increase the bonuses and merge duplicates to break the level cap. (Only duplicate cards can be used for limit breaking at present, but that may change in future versions.)
The main gameplay portion is the career mode. With the character you select, you go through a three-year career, but if you fail to meet the milestones for a given stage, the career ends. (You get one free continue and can expend a certain item up to three times for additional continues if you want to try your luck and see if random factors shifting is all it takes to secure victory.) You can always start back over to try to do better (and this may be facilitated by such things as gaining better Support Cards, limit breaking the character, etc.). To speed up the process of multiple runs, you can skip over a lot of the events, but you'll at least want the full experience your first time. In this mode, you have a set number of turns before the big race. One of the main activities you'll do is train to boost your character's base stats. While the focus is on a single stat, you usually get boosts to two other stats as well. The more you train in a particular area, the facilities will level up to yield greater returns. Training costs stamina and the lower the stamina, the greater the likelihood training will fail (which not only wastes your turn but also results in penalties to the target stat and the character's condition), so there's a rest function where you take a turn off to recover. There's also the character's condition to consider, which will affect performance, and if this starts to drop, going on an outing can improve it. After your debut, the number of fans you have will affect what races you can enter and the way to build fans is by running smaller races. Largely influenced by your support cards, there will be little events between turns which can give you additional stat boosts or unlock new skills. There are also random negative events that can cause a hit to stamina or condition. You also earn skill points along the way which can be traded in to either acquire or level up skills that provide assorted benefits such as making it easier to pass from the outside or reducing fatigue going uphill. When it comes to the races, it's more than a simple matter of stacking stats against each other. I'd have to do more research to figure out what exactly translates to more reliable wins. It could be that there's such a big factor of randomness that you can never quite be sure of how it'll shake out. And once the race is over, you have the Winning Live, with a little song and dance number because the horse girls are also idol singers for Japan reasons. You get "Make Debut" after your first race and other songs open up as you ace major races. I should have also mentioned inheritance. At the start of your career, you set other characters to inherit traits from and when you meet the major milestones, you can inherit those traits for an additional boost. This is another element that can improve subsequent runs as you train up more of your characters.
Outside of career mode, you have daily races, both single and team races. Your characters' stats at the end of a career run will be used, so that's your incentive to improve your performance there. You have races to farm materials and periodic event races with such rewards as Pieces for the featured character. Other special events with have various conditions with both daily and overall missions to perform. There is also the story section where you can view character episodes and such.
As this is a gacha game, I should spend a bit talking about that. You pick between drawing for characters or Support Cards. You have banners for both the free and premium currencies. The drop rate seems to be about par for Cygames' titles, which is to say decent, but they often give out freebies to keep you going.
Story/Characters:
I would've loved to have seen the initial pitch meeting for this franchise. "Moe. Idol. Kemonomimi. Horse racing." The idea of taking real-life racehorses and anthropomorphising them is... interesting, I have to say. The main story is divided into chapters centered around specific characters, starting with Mejiro McQueen. We have a rather colorful cast of characters and those that don't get the full treatment of being the protagonists of the main story are thankfully developed beyond their basic settings via character episodes and in-game events. If you've played other Cygames titles, you know that they're generally pretty good about bringing their characters to life and I'd say you can add this one to the list.
Graphics:
The cel-shaded 3D models for the characters are quite nice and the designs manage to keep the characters visually distinctive while referencing various aspects of the horses they are based on. The expressive animations nicely bring out the individuals' character. The races have a lot of energy to them, especially once you get into the final stretch and the special animations activate. For those of you who like idol stuff, you'll probably appreciate the choreography and other visual aspects of the Winning Live performances.
Music/Sound:
The music at times reminds me a bit of Mario Kart, which I suppose is appropriate as being a lighthearted racer is part of what the game is. There are some rather nice tracks, but Cygames tends to be pretty good when it comes to the music for its games.
The main story, the character episodes and the event chapters are all fully voiced and we have bonus dialog in the lobby, but training events are the exception. The pieces of dialog for the race announcers piece together rather smoothly so that you don't really notice the seams. The cast is quite good at giving life to the characters. Just to give an example, before I even knew anything about the characters, I was put off a bit by Gold Ship due to her design, but it just took one line from her to win me over (and then once I got to see her in action, she became a serious contender for best pony).
Conclusion:
I was brought to this game and the franchise at large primarily due to how much I've enjoyed other Cygames titles. While I'm not a sports person, I do enjoy these ikusei-style games and the appeal of the characters cemented my interest. It's definitely worth giving a shot. Just don't get too wrapped up betting on the races in real life.
Rating:
Play It