Finally caved and tried Umamusume now that it’s global.
This is a weird one to review for me. I literally made my living on horse racing for several years and now 90% of my phone memory is taken up by gacha games. This should be a match made in heaven.
And I like dopamine hits. Who doesn’t?
What really got me is that this might be one of the few gachas that seemed to keep showing up on my friends’ Steam lists.
I always thought I’d get them into Gachas with something like Arknights or Mecharashi. I didn’t see racing horse girls being the final push they needed.
The game’s been out in Japan for four years already, so global is playing catch-up with an accelerated release. There are probably going to be a whole bunch of changes in the near future.
I’m only reviewing the global release, but they say a picture is worth a thousand words.
NAME ONE OTHER GACHA GAME ON STEAM THAT HAS REVIEWS LIKE THIS.
GFL2 has always been sitting in our top spend charts for the last year as one of the biggest gachas around, and its Steam reviews are awful.
The Core Gameplay Loop: A Roguelike Simulation (Sort of)
Gambling + Horse Racing + Anime = Global Hit
Forget everything you know about gacha combat.
You’re training horse girls for three in-game years. Each run takes 15-20 minutes. That’s your “battle.”
I don’t think I’ve ever played a gacha anywhere close to this. This game breaks so many gacha norms that it might be worth playing for that reason alone.
The Training Simulation
You’re managing stats, energy, and mood the whole time.
Here’s what you actually do:
Stat Training: Burn energy to boost Speed, Stamina, Power, Guts, or Wisdom. How much you get depends on your Support Cards and which characters happen to be at that training spot.
Rest: Low energy means bad stuff happens more often. Rest gives you back random amounts of energy because RNG needs to be everywhere, apparently.
Dialogue Events: Random events pop up constantly. Pick wrong and your stats tank. Pick right and maybe you get a skill. Or maybe nothing happens. Who knows.
Races: Pick a strategy, watch your horse run.
This seemed strange to me at first, but it’s not really a lot different from the “normal” combat gachas with auto combat, waiting to see if you win the fight or not.
You have zero control once it starts. Everything depends on what stats and skills you managed to cobble together during training. URA Finals at the end determine if your whole run was worth it.
I didn’t expect to like this game, honestly. I’ve watched hundreds (if not thousands) of horse races including some of the Japanese ones and this is what really made the gameplay for me:
There’s variance in the racing just like actual horse racing*.*
Upsets happen. Even if your Uma is far better than the field and you change nothing you could come dead last. Most of the time you won’t but that variance is always there.
It’s an AFK style game in that sense. You make your choices, plan your strategy and then root for them as they race. Some people will hate this, but for some, it might actually be the best type of gacha “combat” around.
The Legacy System (Breeding)
After finishing a run, that horse girl becomes a “Veteran” with locked stats.
You can then “breed” her with another character (yeah, I know how that sounds) to pass stats and skills to your next trainee.
This is how you actually get good at the game. Keep breeding better and better horses until you have something that doesn’t get destroyed in PvP. Takes forever, though.
Rating: 8.5/10 (Different but RNG will make you rage unless you learn to enjoy it)
The Story
The characters are actually based on real horses, and it’s my background… I did go into the game knowing a few names.
I’m actually one of the few gacha gamers who seems to focus on good gameplay before anything else and when the gameplay is good I don’t mind just hitting skip on the story.
But that’s not to say I don’t like a good story. There’s a reason I still manage to read through Arknights.
But how is the story actually decent here? For an idea that’s so (I’ll just say it) strange, the animation and camera work and voiceovers… it all just works really well together.
For a 4-year-old game, it has a more engaging story system (from a technical aspect) than even the more modern games.
It isn’t one of those amazing storylines that will have you up playing until 5 AM just because of the current story arc, but it also doesn’t need to be. It’s lighter than that, and the story mechanics work well with the gameplay.
Character & Support Card Progression
Two separate progression systems, and guess which one actually matters.
Horse Girl Star-Up System
Pull a dupe horse girl? (There’s a sentence you don’t say every day.)
You get stars/shards to increase their base rarity. Unlocks some skills, gives minor stat boosts for training. Honestly, it feels pretty weak compared to getting dupes in other games.
I pulled a duplicate of my main girl and was excited for about two seconds, until I realized how little it actually did.
Some people will hate this, others will love it. Definitely more F2P friendly.
Support Card Limit Breaking
Support Cards are where your real power is.
Need dupes to limit break them. A maxed SSR Support Card versus a base one? Night and day difference. Better bonuses, more friendship gain and stronger training results.
F2P players basically need to pick one or two Support Cards and pray they can max them eventually.
The power difference is stupid.
F2P Friendly?
It really depends on what you’re hoping for.
You can do everything you want in the game as long as you’re not worried about the PvP. It shouldn’t surprise any Gacha player that the whales just have such an edge.
You can still win, but if you’re F2P or low spend, just don’t worry about the PvP too much.
Rating: 8/10 (Support Cards throw a spanner in the works)
Gacha & Monetization
Cygames gonna Cygames. They give with one hand and take with the other.
Gacha Rates & Pity
3% SSR rate for both characters and support cards. Decent enough.
Pity is 200 pulls for a guarantee. Pity doesn’t transfer between banners. Miss the 200? Your pity currency is converted into a worthless secondary currency.
Either go all in or lose everything. That’s my advice, but most gacha players will save until they have enough for the banner anyway. None of this “farming pity” rubbish.
Accelerated Schedule (is a Problem for a While)
Global is speedrunning 4 years of content.
Banners are rotating faster than you can save. Good luck planning for anything when the meta character you wanted shows up 2 weeks after you blew everything on bait.
The FOMO is real. Japanese players had months to save between banners. We get weeks if we’re lucky.
Rating: 7/10 (Good rates ruined by garbage pity system)
So… Does It Make my Daily Game List?
Production value is insane. 3D models, voice acting, race animations - all top tier. But man, this game demands your soul.
Daily runs take a minimum of 20 minutes. RNG decides if your perfect training run gets ruined by a random event (which you might hate or love). The accelerated schedule makes it impossible to keep up without whaling.
Gonna keep a small hardcore fanbase, but most people will bounce once the honeymoon phase ends.
But… there’s just something about it. It’s still installed. I’m still playing.
The Good and Bad for Gacha Addicts
What Works:
- Roguelike training loop actually requires thinking - you’re making decisions constantly, not just watching auto-battle
- Graphics and presentation embarrass most other mobile games
- 3% rates are above average at least
- Breeding system means you’re always working toward something, even if slowly
- Races are weirdly hype even though you just watch
- It stacks the normal gambling of gacha with the gamble of the actual races.
What Sucks:
- 200 pull pity that doesn’t carry over is criminal
- Daily 20-minute commitment just to clear quests
- An accelerated schedule means constant banner FOMO but this will only be short lived
- Support Cards matter way more than actual characters
- RNG can brick entire runs randomly
- Dupes feel underwhelming for characters, but mandatory for Support Cards
Stuff That’s Gonna Make You Quit:
Spent 30 minutes on a perfect training run. Random event triggers. Horse girl gets injured. Stats ruined. Race performance tanks. Waste of time.
Or you save for 2 months for a character. Don’t hit 200 pulls. Banner ends. Currency converts to worthless tokens. Character doesn’t rerun for 6 months.
The time investment almost kills it for me.
Some days, I just want to do dailies in 5 minutes and log off. Umamusume laughs at that idea. Minimum 20 minutes or don’t bother.
Final Score: 7.5/10
The game’s quality is undeniable, but the demands are rough.
If you have time to burn and like the horse girl aesthetic, go for it. If you’re juggling multiple gachas or have a life, this one’s gonna be the first you drop when things get busy.
I am still playing it, but I might start eyeing the exit if I find another game that scratches the AFK battler itch this is currently taking up. For the moment, cheering for my Uma is enough to get me logged in each day but once it slips from my dailies list, I probably wouldn’t be going back.