Uma Musume: Pretty Derby is a run-based horse raising/racing game in the vein of every other horse racing game out there. It's not as deep as the sim games like Winning Post, but there's still a lot to keep track of. Now, as far as I can tell the global audience is barely aware of the horse racing game subgenre or the idol management games that Uma Musume is cribbing from (source: just look at that aftermath article that seems to think there are no real horse racing games out there) so as best I can explain Uma Musume to the people who aren't aware of how it plays: the gameplay is in the style of raising sim games like Princess Maker or Long Live the Queen or Magical Diary or Trillion, where you pick an activity and it raises a stat, and there are events between those choices which further affect your stats and mood and skills. I've seen no less than 3 people asking when the game part starts, seemingly out of a misunderstanding that you might have any control over the horse races like that one Dragon Quest 11 minigame. The horses race automatically and you watch it like you'd watch horse racing on TV. This is typical of horse racing games, but none of those have ever been translated as far as I can tell. koei tecmo please localize winning post.
I don't know what else there is to say about the game. Everything about the game should be repulsive, but I think Cygames is operating at hitherto uncomprehended frequencies. They are so unbelievably bought into the appeal of idols and horse racing, so obsessed with the indomitable triumph of hard work, so absolutely dedicated to overcoming the odds, so committed to making them shine, that it's difficult to not get swept up in it, especially as they've replaced the metaphorical horse race of the idol industry with a literal one.
2025-07-19: They got me. I've been playing the global version since it released the other week and it turns out the game's way better when you can read what's going on. I'm still not big on most of the horse's designs and the lobby music is still way too high-energy for my tastes and rolling on the support card banners instead of the character banner still feels bad, but I've always thought the core loop was really solid outside of that, and it's even better when you can read the skill text and make decisions off of that. I've hit the good ending on 21 characters and my team trials squad on week 3 is better than my JP team was when I stopped playing it a few months into the JP release. I whaled the Kitasan Black card to 3 limit breaks and stopped when the amount I'd spent was starting to get a bit too high for my liking. The rates are ass.
None of the trainees currently in the game have really grabbed me yet, though I know Seiun Sky's coming down the pipe in a month or two and she's going to hit my wallet like a truck.
2024-05-03: reinstalled uma musume and did my free pulls for anni. eleven hours later i remembered why i dropped uma musume in the first place, mostly having to do with not liking the lobby music, not liking the look of most of the horses, not liking how time-consuming a single run of the training mode is, not liking the PVP, and not liking how you mainly need to roll on the equipment banners instead of the character banners. i will probably give the american version a shot whenever that comes out and drop it within twelve hours as i remember that i do not like the presentation of this game very much.