Video games have introduced me to all sorts of weird and wonderful things over the years, but nothing compares to Umamusume. This anime may seem like a fairly standard show about schoolgirls competing in sports, but these characters are no ordinary girls. These girls are the reincarnated souls of famous and successful racehorses (yes, really). In their new lives, these horse girls are still extremely competitive and want to be the greatest racer of them all, and so they attend schools dedicated to training reincarnated horse girls. Featuring all your favorite horse girls competing in video game form, Umamusume: Pretty Derby – Party Dash might be just the party game you’ve been looking for.
In Umamusume: Pretty Derby – Party Dash, all the girls have a new goal: to win the Slapdash Grand Prix. This competition is open to teams of five girls, but the four events that make up the Grand Prix are a little unusual. Special Week, Silence Suzuka and the rest of the gang will have to be the best competitive eaters, basketball players and ball dodgers if they want to take home the gold.
There are tons of game modes in Umamusume: Pretty Derby – Party Dash, but the first one you’ll probably jump into is Story Mode. This mode tells the story of each of the four teams competing in the Grand Prix, and is essentially a visual novel with the odd mini-game thrown in for variety. You’ll learn all about the rivalries between various horse girls, hear them discuss who’s the best candidate for competitive eating, and if you’re not familiar with the series, you’ll be absolutely baffled by pretty much everything.
Aside from this visual novel framework, the main part of Umamusume: Pretty Derby – Party Dash is the four events you participate in. Blazing Baskets is essentially a race to get a certain number of points in a free-for-all basketball competition where fouls are allowed, special powers are used, and various crazy ball types and obstacles get in your way. Dodgeball Demolition has a similar ball theme, but is more brutal. You must eliminate the other girls with vicious throws and use perfectly timed catches to survive the spherical onslaught coming your way. Both ball events are fun, but not exactly revolutionary.
My favorite event though is Gourmet Gauntlet, a battle of the bellies where you basically play the server. In this event, food is thrown all over the floor and if your eater gets plates of the same color, they will form a combo and eat faster. With four horse girls all running around the plates and tirelessly using special abilities, it’s very chaotic and a really good way to pass the time.
However, not all events have the magic X-factor, and the worst of them all is Hurtling Hurdles. This simple race requires all the girls to run on tracks and switch between them to avoid obstacles. There are (as with pretty much all events) plenty of chaotic elements and special abilities designed to spice things up, but it feels clunky and ultimately just frustrating, whether you’re playing against the AI or a buddy.
As you would expect from a party game, Umamusume: Pretty Derby – Party Dash can be played both locally and online. With a group of friends, these crazy games would probably be a lot of fun, but there is also the option to play with random people.
By playing events in pretty much any mode, you can earn a ton of money and tickets that you can use to build a club room and recruit some of the horse girls to join your team and live there. If you like placing items in a room to make it look prettier, you’ll probably enjoy this, but if not, you might as well ignore it entirely.
Now, the main party games of Umamusume: Pretty Derby – Party Dash are fine on the whole, but I have to admit that none of them particularly excited me. Luckily, a hero emerged when I bought a game console for my virtual club room, a secret bonus game called Golshi’s Grand Adventure 2, which is some sort of bizarre mix of Vampire Survivors and Excitebike.
As Gold Shop, you must face waves of enemies with your auto-firing weapons while avoiding obstacles. You do this by moving between four different courses that you automatically travel down. By collecting enough experience stones, you level up and unlock new weapons that you can equip and upgrade, such as a dodgeball that bounces between enemies or a drone that causes nearby courses to constantly come under fire. I’m not sure I’ll necessarily come back to continue playing most of Umamusume, but I’ll leave it installed for a few playthroughs of Golshi’s Grand Adventure 2.
I think it’s probably fair to call Umamusume: Pretty Derby – Party Dash a game of mixed feelings, but I do have one issue with it that I haven’t mentioned so far. The minigames are incredibly poorly explained, and because of that, you’ll have no idea what you’re doing the first few times you play them. It’s pretty odd to almost completely forget to explain how your game works, and while this stops being an issue pretty quickly, it will likely cause some players to simply not continue.
Umamusume: Pretty Derby – Party Dash is a very odd but fun party game with a full visual novel mode that fans of the series will probably love. The minigames may not all be amazing, but the secret survival roguelike is arguably the best secret game I’ve ever played. Horse girl fans will get a lot of enjoyment out of this Umamusume extravaganza, but don’t expect a Mario Party killer.
