I started playing this game because I have several friends who are very long-term players and it kept appearing on my store page as "Recommended". Well, almost 15 hours in a single session later, and here I am with a review.
Well, if I played ~15 hours straight, I must have enjoyed it, right?
Yes, I did. Listening to the absolutely insane VA work of the commentators as my trainee Uma goes from 10th place and blitzes through the pack to a neck-and-neck finish, clinching victory at the final second... Well, I guess I understand the people that camp-out in the local bookies/betting shops now.
And just like a betting shop, this game wants your money. Not only to gamble on the Umas, but also on the Supporter Cards, which are, funnily enough, even more important and more of a make-or-break to your Career Mode dreams (and later PvP) than the actual racer you've picked.
You'll see long-term players with tons of SS+ or UG-rank Umas, even if they're only 1* or 2*, and you'll wonder how they did that, when you, as a new player, fail out of Career Mode with 3 races left, because your stats are all D or C-rank, and you only have 3-4 skills unlocked. Well, it's because they're running maxed-out SSR Support Cards that allow them to get 50+ stat and skill points every time they train after the first couple races. Compare that to a newer player's R-rank, or even a basic SR card, that might just about get you to 20 stat points on a perfect training by the time you get to year 2.
So yes, if you want to get to the point of having well-trained Umas, which you will want as they can be used as "Legacy" to improve the stats/skills on a new Career Mode trainee, it's either opening up the wallet and putting obscene amounts of money into the gacha to propel yourself forwards, or spending hundreds of hours glued to the game, logging in every day and doing every single event, keeping every scrap of premium currency until a good card banner shows up.
I would say that if that hasn't put you off, and you still want to jump in, now is arguably the best time to do so, given a 1.5Yr Anniversary event is ongoing, but keep expectations low. Why? Because the pity systems and such in Pretty Derby are "old-school". Don't expect a guarantee of SSR by 100 pulls, or a 50-50 system. Here, it's pull until you get lucky, or save-up 200 pulls and buy the Uma/Support Card outright. And again, if you want to get well-trained Umas, you'll want to max-out those supporter cards, so 5-6 total copies per card, ~1,200 pulls (maximum) EACH.
Likewise, for the Umas, this isn't a case of getting 5-6 total copies and done. They come in 1*, 2* and 3* variants, and can then be upgraded up to a max of 5*. The upgrades use "fragments", and getting duplicates from the gacha will award you anywhere from 5-90 fragments. To get a 1* Uma to 5* would take 130 duplicates.
Barely anyone would actually do this, unless they're a whale, or have been playing for so long they did it passively, but it gives you an idea (and yes, there is the statue shop to buy fragments).
As for the actual gameplay, it's really going to depend on how efficient you want to be. I did Noshino Flower's Career Mode and played through the whole thing "properly", which took me the best part of ~4 hours (and I read quick). Given that I actually wanted to make some progress, I ended up just slapping the next 3 Uma's Career Modes on "Skip All", meaning the gameplay was just spamming training sessions, resting, and races.
If it weren't for the races (and the winning ceremonies) being so hype because of the monumental VA work, I probably would have dipped after finishing my first playthrough.
For what's outside career mode, it's all very typical mobile/gacha-game stuff, like farming races for various Currencies, PvP, and then a story mode told in a kind of visual-novel format, some of which require you to own the Uma and have high friendship with them (Several runs of career mode) to progress.
Overall... how would I rate Pretty Derby? Well, it's a gacha, so I would never recommend anyone start it if you do not know what you're getting yourself into. I also have a feeling that if I had started before this current big event, I would have exhausted my pull currency much quicker, and not gotten half as much to show for it, making the game feel like a slog. It kind of feels like that old saying of "it gets good after 100 hours", because you would probably have a good core set of stuff by that point, and wouldn't feel anywhere near as pressured into spending money.
P.S: To anyone complaining about the constant downloading causing lag and stuttering, go into the Options menu and find "Download all data". Weird it's separate from the initial "download everything" pop-up, but yeah, should save from having issues.
