Uma Musume is the new hotness right now. It’s the horse girl racing gacha game everyone’s been talking about for the past few weeks, and when I finally gave it the good ol’ college try last week, I could see why.
Uma Musume Pretty Derby follows the story of several anime girls named after real-life horses. All they wanna do is run and compete in races. And that, as far as I can gather from all the stories I’ve sped up and skipped through, is that. Nothing insidious or pervy. Just anime horse girls trying to run as fast as they can. After spending about an hour dabbling with the game, though, I started to understand the appeal.
Despite the silly premise and setup, Uma Musume is a surprisingly deep game in terms of its gameplay mechanics. The game’s main mode is called Career, where you’ll pick an Uma as your trainee, and two other veteran Umas as her legacy parents. The veterans would then be able to pass on stat boosts and other perks, potentially making your Career run a little easier. Over the course of a Career, you’d have to raise your trainee’s stats as much as possible while hitting important goals and milestones. As you continue playing, you get better at completing Careers, raising stats, unlocking skills, and subsequent Career runs for other Umas get easier as you get better veterans to serve as legacy Umas.
My first eight or so runs with Career mode did not go well. Uma Musume kicked my butt. When I finally completed my first Career for Oguri Cap, the best I could do for her was get her to C rank and it’s a grade I was proud of.
Fast forward to this weekend, and a new Support Card has been released in Uma Musume. Support Cards are, well, cards that can be used to enhance a Career run. This particular Support Card — [Fire at my Heels] Kitasan Black] — is a strong one. Players who have checked out the Japanese version of the game can attest to its strength and its place in Uma Musume’s meta game. Unfortunately I was unable to roll a copy of Kitasan Black through the gacha system. I’d spent most of my Carats getting Umas which, apparently, is ill-advised. But hey, how could I have known, right?
And so, because I’m a meta slave, it was time to reroll my account.
I kid you not. My entire Saturday afternoon was spent rerolling my damn account. Read the terms of agreement, enter region, birthdate, nickname, skip skip skip, roll on the Kitasan Black banner. I was hoping to get at least two copies of Kitasan Black and either the Super Creek or Fine Motion Support Card, or three copies of Kitasan Black. The chances of either scenario happening were extremely low. About 1.3%, to be precise.
So reroll, I did. I rerolled until I gave myself a headache and had to take a nap shortly after. I’d keep landing on two copies of Kitasan Black but nothing else. Not good enough, I thought! The great thing about Uma Musume is that the reroll process is so quick and easy that it didn’t make sense for me to settle for anything less than my original goal. It was also the worst thing about Uma Musume. Because rerolling is so quick and easy, I found myself stuck in an endless loop of clicks and beeps and despair.
Finally, nearly four hours later, I did it. I rolled three copies of Kitasan Black. Neither Fine Motion nor Super Creek came to me, but it didn’t matter. I was pretty much set. I deleted my original account and said goodbye to the horse girls who’d stuck by me so faithfully. Goodbye Special Week! Sayonara Mihono Bourbon! Adios Mejiro McQueen! You all served me well but I must now go to my true meta lord and savior, Kitasan Black.
As it turned out, burning my entire Saturday afternoon on rerolling was the best thing I could’ve done for my new account. Now that I was much more familiar with how the game worked, I was able to go through my Career runs quickly and efficiently. I even managed to hit all of my trainee’s goals on my very first Career run, and subsequent ones were much easier.
Over the next few days, I continued to throw my Carats (this game’s premium currency) at the Kitasan Black banner, and that paid off, too. I’d managed to get yet another copy of Kitasan Black, and I’d also managed to hit 200 rolls on the banner, which allowed me to exchange my accumulated points for a final copy of her Support Card. This then allowed me to fully uncap the Kitasan Black card, all for the low, low price of free and four hours of a Saturday afternoon I’ll never get back.
I think there’s something about my weird obsession with min-maxing in gacha games that’s probably worth exploring in therapy or something, but I’ll leave that for another day. For now, I’ll just enjoy my 2D horse girl card and watch those numbers go up.
