🐎 Uma Musume Pretty Derby: Best Progression System in Mobile & Why should everybody play Umamusume

Think about it as something like, for instance, the weapons in Genshin Impact or Diablo or like all these other RPGs where you have these stats.

Like,

for instance, in Genshin, you have four slots in the inventory, and you roll the main stat, and then all like three auxiliary stats.

And you want to have the best ones for each character because you want to have like the best main stat, which is, I don't know, critical damage or attack percentage, and then you roll like critical damage,

attack, double attack, and then like, I don't know, increase speed or whatever.

You don't want to roll defense on an attack character.

It's 4 a.m.

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Hello, hello.

This is two and a half gamers, and welcome to another episode of why you should play Umamusume Pretty Derby.

Just kidding.

But anyway, I've been playing this game for quite a

intensive time, I would say, from the launch.

We already covered it on the full episode on the channel, which was pretty popular.

And yeah, I want to talk a little bit deeper regarding their Roguelite system.

Why I think it's the best in-class system regarding all rogue guys system on the market, why it's so good, why how does it compare to other pretty much games that are there in the category, category and yeah talk a little bit how or let's say talk a little bit more

why i think it will be copied eventually because it's just so good so let's start why are we also talking about this game

we are talking about this game also because it's still growing which is very unexpected

oh hello

Here I am.

I have something very important to say.

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good

so even if you look at steam numbers right here you can see that from the launch

it went just up and still goes around like 50k ccu if you look at the charts

right here this is the full chart of the whole game.

I mean, like also Japanese versions.

So you can see here that revenue is pretty much increased a lot from something like 50k baseline to like 500k a day.

This is the whole, pretty much all of the app versions.

And if we go only

into the

like if you filter by the English versions, you can see that the the revenue is actually scaling up.

It's already sorry, this is downloads.

Revenue is right here.

Yeah, so this is revenue which went to 400

on July 10, somewhere there.

And even though it looks like,

wait a second, it's going down.

It won't go down, trust me.

It will just go up because just today there's gonna be banner or like new gacha pool released with Kitasan Black, which is pretty much the best card in the game and everybody's gonna go bananas on it.

So my guess is next time we're looking at it at ReviewRadar or somewhere else, there's gonna be giant spike here.

I mean really really giant one.

So I wouldn't be surprised if it goes over like one million a day or something like that.

So it I think it will still scale up.

So that's good.

And yeah, as you saw here, the downloads downloads are still kind of stable, about 100k a day, which is again unheard of for a heavy Japanese game.

Not scaling, but kind of keeping up pretty good in the West.

Why is this happening and how is this happening?

One of the reasons,

like also, as I said, the Steam version is super popular.

There's currently around

more than 13.5k reviews on 94% rating.

If you go on YouTube, actually, this is also super interesting.

There are shorts

which have

literally millions and thousands of views, all are like one week old.

So

you remember, I think last time we also looked at some of the games that like the cat simulator game.

So this game is super viral.

So you can see it that like all of these shorts, all of these videos, they have like hundreds of thousands of views, all are pretty much new and it's all trending here because the the brand is so strong.

If you go to normal videos, again, same

thing, you're like hundreds of thousands of views pretty much everywhere.

And

I guess it's the same effect as the cat simulator game, where this is very

viral.

The characters are very relatable, the franchise is super strong, the anime is super strong.

So, like, all of these kind of effects

make it happen.

Yeah, it's as I said, unheard of for a Japanese game to be scaling or yeah, currently scaling in the West.

So this is just another testament why this system just works so well.

So

as I was researching this, because last time when we were talking about the game, I didn't even know how complex it was, but now I know.

So there are actually, for instance, there's a parenting gene guide here, which is literally 60 pages.

If you want to look into it, because yeah, this system is just super, super deep.

I won't go that far into it, but just I guess to

feasible meanings or feasible explanations, there's also like the guide for literally

what 230 pages basically, where I found out that there was literally a guide on the internet where the whole game was pretty much translated for people playing on the Japanese server from English-speaking countries.

So, everything's here pretty much like, yeah, 229 pages.

That's crazy.

Crazy, crazy.

But yeah, let's talk about the legacy system and how it works and why it's so important and so good for the overall experience.

So

as we talk in the game, you run the career, you train your horse girl there, Uma, and once she finishes,

she became the veteran, which can pass her

pretty much stuff on your new trainees.

The important part is also that this is also the part where she begins to interact with the metagame.

Because if you go into these old, like the daily modes, so for instance, now we have like the legend race, we have the team trials, which is and the system where you literally

you are incentivized to create a team of like 15 horse girls, basically different ones, all of them.

That's basically their PvP.

Then you have the daily runs, which are pretty much currency farming sources, where one is the currency for support cards, this one and then the soft currency.

And again, you just need to run these daily and you need the

well, let me show you how it works.

So we go here, we pick up one of the veterans, for instance, my strongest one here,

and

we kinda use it during the metagame progressions, which is the dailies, the

all these other things.

By the way, it's very comfy because you can just skip the whole race if you already want it.

So, yeah, she's first, of course.

There we go.

So, yeah, so that's there.

So, it just begins with this whole thing.

So, how does the system work?

What's the creation and

how you can get all of this?

So,

the thing is that when you start a new run, you choose those two parents.

Those are pretty much described here.

So you choose legacy number one and legacy number two.

And you not only are choosing the parents, like the first generation of parents, the second generation of their parents, basically.

And all of these veteran, pretty much

images or like

captures of your runs are passing their benefits to your main trainee.

So how does it work?

You see here, for instance, this is like a new as you are setting up,

you pass

direct stats

on your main stats, and then affinities towards your track distance.

So, basically, parameters get passed and increased.

It's like pretty simple, nothing really to it.

But, how do we get these parameters?

And

how does it work?

So, during the game, there are these inspiration events, which are basically stat rolls, where two times during the run, you roll a dice basically, and it gives you parameters based on the dices that these Umas bring in.

Very clean and simple design.

It basically increases your stats, and you have a chance to increase them better, so on and so forth.

The other thing is that you need to select characters which are compatible with your kind of training.

So, like the parents, the legacies, when you're selecting those,

for instance, Ice, if we go here into my current run,

you see here that I selected vodka with diver scarlet and super creek, and then opera with

Mayanotopgan and Symbol Rudolph.

So, why I selected those and why this has higher affinities because

she is a

mild to medium runner that is a pace and late chaser.

And if I go here,

you see that these would have pretty much the same stats.

So, you want to select, like, imagine it that you would be specifically selected like fire Pokemon on fire Pokemon because they have close affinity.

So, that's basically what this is about, but much more complex because their system, as I said, is a little bit more complex than your usual Pokémon thing.

So, you need to take that into consideration.

Once you take that into consideration, then comes the spark system.

And the spark system is the whole beauty of it, and why this is so good, and why i think this will be copied eventually because it's just so good so spark system

is pretty much it determines the benefits that you get like these inheritance benefits at the end of each run so let's say

i finish this run and she gets some sparks like let's look at for instance the sparks of those parents so there's a blue spark there's a pink spark and there are the white sparks so there's three types of sparks basically Actually, four.

There's also green sparks.

So, let's take this one.

For instance, this is a pretty strong car, pretty strong run, and pretty strong parent now because she has three stars in speed, which means there's a direct stat boost to speed once you select her as your parent, which will give you, I think, 40 speed or something like that.

With three stars,

where is it?

Yeah, with 21 per stat.

Yeah, so that's super good.

How do you even get this?

So you get this by completing the run,

and this is this is again a genius, genius system.

So there's a chance for you to even get these parks.

So first there are roles for the actual stats.

So if it's stamina, if it's power, if it's guts, or like each of these important stats that my

trainee has here, like speed, stamina, power, guts, and width, each responsible for different parts of the gameplay, or basically triggers.

And as you see here,

what blue spark you get is calculated this way.

The type is chosen at random, and then your final value, like the star, depends on how much of a big stat you achieve during your run.

So, if let's say I achieve speed of over 100,

I have a 10% 10% chance if I roll speed to get a three-star speed.

You see how this is super random in the end, and it takes so much runs to achieve this perfect parent.

And this is just one stat.

This is the base one.

Then we have the pink stat, which actually you can't even control or

there's no even like the parameters that you upgrade there doesn't even matter.

The pink spark stat

is just random based on the affinities.

And affinities, there are three affinities: the surface, the

distance, and the style of running.

And it rolls one of these.

And again,

depends on the affinity you get.

You get a random either one star or three star.

And as it's written here, it doesn't even matter if your runner kind of loses or your run gets...

She basically never wins, whatever, it can still roll.

sorry three star

and then we have green spark

and green spark is pretty much the transition of the special ability of the runner so let's say my runner here she has her signature skill called trimphant pulse and if i want to give this skill to a different woman or a horse girl She needs to pretty much the green spark will only appear if the legacy writes at least three stars.

So she needs to train this to three star, which means getting fans, pretty much meaning being successful during the run.

And then she's able to transfer this to other characters so they can also use her OP skill.

Yeah, one star and two star won't get them, but you can eventually,

yeah, of course.

And these ones are obtained immediately at the start of the run.

They are not rolled like randomly.

And then we have white ones, which are the most devious ones, I think, because these are basically chances

to get additional bonuses that are again rolled and can be rolled on top of like other things.

So you have white sparks based on the skills that she has.

So let's say if she has these other skills currently, she can get the white spark out of it.

That it means that, let's say, let me go back to her parents.

Yeah.

So for instance, our super strong

opera here, she see, you have the ramp up.

Spark that give skill or ramp up.

So,

yeah, you have a chance to get race sparks from winning races.

That's the second one.

So, not only a chance to get white spark, which is

we can then

benefit, or let's say give the trainee, let him inherit the skills that your original previous run had, but also race sparks, which basically means, for instance, ura finale, which means basically finishing the run, which is again somewhere here, for instance.

Spark that increased speeds and stamina.

So basically, this means that

during this run, somebody who gets this runner got the spark Ura finale,

which means that it just boosts the stats of the trainee that he's putting this character as a parent.

And it's random because at the end of every career, every normal rarity skill, victorious G1 race, and career itself had 20% chance of generating a white spark, skills have 25% chance and so on and so forth.

So you see how, and by the way, these white sparks, there's like a shit ton of them.

I mean like every single race have one,

plus on top of it, the scenarios, like the final ones, like once you finish the training.

So

you see now how many different combinations for perfection the game offers for you to be pretty much farming for the perfect parents in order to get the best run.

There are even like strategies here written, like how people are pretty much doing these things.

And because one very important thing regarding the system, now that we know how the Spark system works, is that a lot of times you just borrow other people,

like the whale OP runs.

And this is also the other thing, which is that this system provides the strongest social helper mechanic.

Because in other games like AFK Arena

or

I don't know what was.

I don't think so.

You can do it.

Monster Strike had that, or pretty much a lot of Asian games where you can borrow a friend's character for a day.

That's great.

And you can do it during one level, one on something, something.

Here you can borrow

three parents from other players a day,

but you see how much more impactful these are compared to just one character out of six or out of five during your level run.

Like this literally

gives you so much advantage if you're pretty much friends with some very big whale or pretty much a seasoned player that has some of these parents, like for instance, this one that I borrowed here.

It takes so much time to create this parent.

the social helper mechanic during the system is just much more prominent, much more impactful.

The other thing is, as you see here, is that spark farming, and this is basically the end game of it, where you try to create and slowly kind of work your way through of getting, let's say, the baseline of the blue sparks, then the pink sparks, and like you slowly pretty much

genetically try to create better and better characters because you can

start to create the character that you have, you have the best parents as you can get, you create better parents, so on and so forth, and you switch those parents up with the best, best better ones that you just created also

a disclaimer

if let's say these umas are here as a parents i cannot use those as the trainee so for instance my strongest parent that i have here oguri i cannot use her to be her own parent so i need to use a different

horse girl so that's also kind of great because again incentivizes you to have a lot of them trained in in your collection there's even a system here designed like which was done on Japanese server on these loops, like where you're just going four characters in the loop to create this kind of a best system.

So that's there.

But anyway, you see, and what I'm getting here is that this offers literally

nearly unlimited possibilities on creating and achieving the perfect combination.

Think about it as something like, for instance, the weapons in Genshin Impact or Diablo or like all these other RPGs where you have these stats like

for instance in Genshin you have four slots in the inventory and you roll the main stat and then the all like three auxiliary stat and you want to have the best ones for each character because you want to have like best main stat which is I don't know critical damage or attack percentage and then you roll like critical damage attack double attack and then like I don't know increase speed or whatever.

You don't want to roll defense on a attack character.

And again, so many combinations are there for the gear.

So they're doing pretty much the same thing as that gear, but on steroids.

So that's amazing.

The other thing, which is again quite important, and I think not really a lot of people are talking about it, is that they don't have levels.

And

just think about it.

When you have stuff like Survivor I.O.

or...

any other hobby game or roga game, their content is fed through levels.

So you go from level one, level two, level three, so on so forth they scale it by hp and damage still need to create a lot of content so on a lot of progression layers they add more and more of these like artifacts weapons whatever like you just increase more hp and damage these guys don't do it that way they don't scale levels they don't even need to create new content because each of these horse girls have their own

they have their own pretty much goals they need to achieve like you see here like these are the races that she needs to clear, and each of the horse goals have their own.

And we are still racing the same Urafinale, pretty much, tracks.

So, there's, and during the updates, nothing's going to change.

Like, more horse goes gonna be added with their own things.

And the races that they kind of created, those are just parameters, nothing else.

Like, it's super simple to create.

So, if I go here, you see these races.

So, it's about like, it's the distance, is the property of the surface, property of the distance, and that's it.

And how many fans you get, the name, a little bit of like recycled visual, and that's it.

So that's their content pipeline.

They pretty much don't need to create any content for this.

So this is amazing because this is also why this system works so well because during each run, the randomness and the combinations in your decisions.

are responsible for the replayability factor.

Why it's so good?

Because even if I, for instance, training you or whatever, something doing, you see how much randomness is thrown into the machine.

Because, for instance, each of these trainings, like if I would have a little bit more spent-up energy,

for instance, let's spend up here.

There's a percentage chance that the training will actually

not yet, one more.

But there will be basically a percentage chance the training will fail, which will again put me against the decision with like a risk-reward scenario.

Yeah, so 28% failed.

Do I risk it or do I lose a turn and rest?

Which means if I do it, she'll need to race immediately because that was like the end of her goal.

And I can risk it and maybe get better in the race if I would just risk the speed.

But also, she can, I don't know, broke her leg, go to the infirmary and get debuff.

So this risk-reward scenario is pretty much under every single decision.

The other important thing is also that I could just don't care about this at all and go racing and win some optional races actually to get more skilled points to buy her more skills.

So, the further you get into it, you see how many more important decisions during each turn you need to go, which are still super specific based on the situation, based on the

inheritance benefits that you get from the partners.

All of these are the things that are just like so, so engaging.

And that's why this whole system, just the inheritance system, has like 60 pages just to get you running and pretty much what you need to do and why you need to create these monster parents because like yeah you see this this is how it actually looks in final state that you have this kind of monster parent with like you see how many different skills she inherited and all are pretty much three star

so like yeah you can go very very far with this because again what you do you like with each run and better and better parents you improve and improve and improve and improve on on top of this she's she's like ultra

I don't know, but like the great there.

So,

what will happen, I think, probably, and people will notice, people will notice pretty fast now that umamusume is not the usual Japanese translation that's going nowhere, like a lot of those that we've seen seen lately.

It's actually going somewhere, that the system will be probably translated into some meaningful gameplay, which means that

again, the runs and the part where

it's just so engaging and a lot like pretty much the randomness makes sure that it's so good and why the system works so well.

So yeah, this screen basically needs to be translated into some could be fantasy RPG, could be sports game.

I think sports game would work even better for this than like again, doesn't need to be horse racing, could be something completely different.

Like think of a scenario how

Golf clash use clash reals metagame

in order to put it in a completely different genre and category so something like that will happen probably i think that somebody will think of it and

the automated visual of horse racing will get replaced by some other thing

It could be a football match, could be a hockey match, could be a whatever, some kind of automated stuff thing that you will see where all these triggers that you're managing in between that automated part will be done.

and then you just need to create the set of these specific parameters like you see here that uh if i go here yeah like all of these things pretty much this is the the core of the whole connection to the

to the loop like what what what are these different part like the elemental system basically like they don't have elemental system they have this they have the surface the distance and the style and all of this have very big impact on your actual gameplay.

So think of it that basically they have like three elemental systems at once, basically.

So yeah.

And

yeah, it's going to be very interesting if somebody is able to translate this into a different game because again, I think the system is super engaging.

I've never seen any other game with just like even something close to this.

And in my opinion, it's just super overlooked in the current state because people just see the

ridiculous idea of girls running horse racing tournaments, which kind of puts them off a little bit in the West.

But yeah, if you go over it and just play it and see how, and why, and if you understand properly why the system is so good, like, yeah, I think we're going to see a multi-million game out of this if somebody is able to execute it properly.

Anyway, hope you like that.

Go play Umamusume for sure.

Even if you don't like it, just get familiar with the system because it's super engaging, super good from game design perspective.

As I said, system design is the most important part here.

And their economy and their whole pretty much thing is something unheard of.

So yeah, definitely recommend going to check it out.

Don't just play the games that you play all the time, that are just small iterations.

This is completely new.

So yeah, definitely go do it.

Anyway, that's been all.

I hope you like it.

If you have any other questions or anything else that's popping on your mind regarding this, let us know.

We'll definitely return to the game back when we'll do review radar.

And yeah, I'm having high hopes now as I was like super skeptical regarding the English versions, gross revenue statistics.

But it seems that, yeah, the horse ghost went over my expectations, definitely.

Ciao.