Umamusume: Pretty Derby

TL;DR: Umamusume has a genuinely strong and satisfying training rogue lite game with very frequent replayability which is buried under a progression system that is hostile to new and late players. You do not steadily grind toward the fun; you survive months of weak decks, scarce Carats, non-carrying 200-pull pity and duplicate-gated supports just to assemble the tools needed to play Career mode properly—while the meta continues moving ahead of you. Once your account is built, the game can be excellent. Building it from scratch is stagnant, exploitative and designed to make spending hundreds of dollars the only reliable way to bypass the waiting period. As an Anecdote, the current scenario as of this review's post is Grand Concert. And, in order to fully enjoy and play the scenario to it's fullest, you're required to have 2 max limit break cards. (MLB for short, 5 copies of 1 card) Which, once you've missed the banner (slightly higher obtain rate and it's already passed), you're already hindered. Which I also had to spend hundreds from missing 2 pity pulls. (30,000 carats is 200 pulls, with 1 guaranteed only from the current banner, which isn't saved or carried over into future banners.) Umamusume: A Strong Game Choked by Its Gacha Economy Umamusume has a genuinely good core: train characters through changing scenarios, build around support decks and inheritance, manage limited turns, and create different racers for different distances and strategies. The problem is that new players are not given fair access to that game. A fresh account can enter Career mode, but usually has one usable borrowed support and five weak, incomplete or mismatched cards. Most SSR supports are poor at low limit break, and many only become properly good around 3LB. Since MLB requires five total copies, pulling one SSR often gives you the name, artwork and events, but not a card strong enough to use. Support cards do not merely raise your final rank. They determine how the whole Career feels: bond speed, friendship training, training gains, support placement, Skill Point income, energy, mood, secondary stats and consistency. A weak deck makes the main game slower, flatter and less responsive even when the player knows what to do. Cygames does not merely sell extra power. It sells access to the more satisfying version of Career mode. The starting progression is also badly designed. Playing more Careers does not reliably solve the support deficit. Career mode gives trained Umas, fans, inheritance and finite mission rewards, but it does not provide a dependable repeatable path to current supports or limit breaks. The resources that matter—Carats, selectors and limit-break materials—are restricted by events, campaigns, logins and time. So the early game is less “grinding” and more surviving: Play with a poor deck, exhaust the available Carats, skip most banners, wait until you have enough for 200 pulls, wait for a banner strong enough to justify spending everything, then hope you pull enough copies for the card to become usable. The 200-pull pity is not generous protection. It is a hard commitment threshold. At 200 pulls you may select one featured copy. At 199, you cannot, and the progress does not meaningfully carry into a future banner. Worse, one pity guarantees only one copy. It does not guarantee 3LB, MLB, or even a card strong enough to enter the deck. Even 400 pulls guarantee only two exchange copies. A support needing four or five total copies can still remain incomplete after an enormous investment. One successful banner is nowhere near enough. A deck uses six supports. Even with one borrowed card, a new player still needs several owned supports that work together. Completing one card may leave the deck as one strong borrow, one strong owned card and four weak slots. Then the player must save again, wait again and gamble again across several more banners. The real entry requirement is not “save for one good banner.” It is “survive until several deeply funded banners have assembled most of a functional deck.” The economy also punishes experimentation. Because Carats are scarce and low-LB SSRs are weak, the rational strategy is to ignore most banners, avoid favourite characters if support growth matters, follow tier lists, hoard for months and dump everything into a small number of meta supports. For a game whose depth comes from deck building, its economy discourages players from exploring that deck building. The catch-up race is unfair because the target keeps moving. While a new player saves, scenarios change, preferred deck structures change, stronger supports arrive and old targets lose value. Veterans already own completed cards and can keep playing while evaluating replacements. New players are saving toward relevance while the definition of relevance moves forward. Old completed cards depreciate, new first copies are weak, replacing them requires deep duplicate investment, and those replacements will eventually depreciate too. The system does not preserve player investment. It creates repeated reasons to reinvest. Rental supports and fixed rental decks are workarounds, not solutions. They prove that a stronger starting experience is possible, but borrowed access does not build the player’s collection or give them real freedom. Once an account owns a coherent support core, Umamusume becomes much better. Career decisions matter, strong training turns happen, scenarios can be explored properly, builds become flexible and optimisation becomes enjoyable. But reaching that state from scratch—especially years after launch—is slow, stagnant, luck-dependent and exploitative. The game’s best form is placed behind months of waiting, extreme saving discipline, favourable duplicate luck or substantial spending. Cygames could fix the problem by making 0LB cards functional, moving key effects earlier, carrying pity between banners, giving more universal limit-break materials, improving repeatable Carat income or providing permanent competitive starter supports. Instead, it adds rentals (a feature in the JP version not in global, which partially and temporarily solves the entry gate problem of new players), free pulls, selectors and special banners that reduce abandonment while preserving the pressure to spend. That is not an accident. It is the business model. The honest verdict: Umamusume is not merely slow for beginners. Its progression is structurally hostile to late entrants. Playing more does not reliably solve the support deficit. Pity is a non-carrying 200-pull cliff. One pity guarantees only one often-incomplete copy. Most strong supports need several copies. One banner cannot build a deck. The meta advances while the player saves, and spending is the only reliable way to compress the process. Umamusume becomes a good game after the account is built. Building that account from scratch is the part designed to wear players down and monetise their impatience. Cygames does not merely sell advantages above the gameplay floor. It keeps the floor low, then sells players the means to climb high enough for the game to feel properly playable.