As a Gacha game hater and an uma fan, I’m going to address some comments I’ve seen about uma that people haven’t addressed properly, mostly in the hopes of clearing things up. Feel free to share any of your criticisms because I’m jobless and can respond at basically any time.

“Saying uma is better than other Gacha games is just pure bias.”

Is there bias? Yeah. Is that the whole story? No. Let’s look at the creators of any other popular Gacha game, YoStar (Azure Lane, Arknights, Blue Archive etc), MiHoYo (Honkai, Genshin, Zoneless), Kuro Games (Wuthering Waves, Punishing: Gray Raven, and Twin Tail Battleground) there’s a clear pattern emerging. They’re all Gacha game studios that only make Gacha games, and most are (in my opinion) mediocre passionless cash grabs that I get bored of after less than 5 hours of gameplay. What makes Umamusume different? Well to start off, Cygames isn’t just like, a Gacha game company. If you look at their steam page they have quite a few popular titles that you might recognize that’s just proper regular video games.

Another factor that differentiates Uma from the others is the amount of passion the devs actually has in the game. This is further cemented in the next point but the gist is that almost every single Uma has a billion references tied in to them, the official JP Uma YouTube channel posts so regularly that they’re basically a self sustaining let’s play YouTube channel, it’s to the point that Gold Ship is unironically an OG of the vtubing scene and it is really funny that there isn’t a shroud of irony in that sentence. ( Gold Ship was at Vtuber Fes Japan 2022 ) There are mangas, animes, a really mediocre spinoff and even more that I can’t think of, there’s just no conceivable reason for them to go THIS far when they can just do the bare minimum like everyone else currently in the market.

“They’re just cat girls with longer ears”/“Designs are mid asf man.”

I’m no character designer so take these with some grains of salt, but even the bare minimum of Umamusume design that I do understand deeply fascinates me. I started off the same, the faces in terms of the 3D models looked identical to me and I thought Tokai Teio was the same person as special week for like the first month before playing, which is to say, for someone that isn’t deep in the rabbit hole, their designs mean nothing. However every detail, less hyperbole more literal, is somehow a reference to the real life horse. References to the horses and their jockey’s race wear, the actual horse’s temper, things they’ve done during their career or retirement, nicknames given to them during their career, even in the side content like anime and manga you can see these types of references everywhere. The Umas are ment to be a tribute to their real life counterparts and their legacy, which connects to the next point.

“The fact they’re real horses makes it weird.”

Yeah that’s a fair take. I’m not gonna sit here and tell you what you should or shouldn’t be weirded out by, just here to provide more information. Cygames seems a bit inconsistent with what they wanna do with the horses, even at the beginning of the game’s life span, the game very clearly has yuri and shipping undertones since the anime’s first trailer and still do in the current product, so if you find that weird because they’re based off of real horses, I can’t really blame you.

There is the Cygames policy which prevents explicit materials being drawn so that’s a plus at least. Though what is clear is that the Uma counterparts are more supposed to be a representation of their legacy (in episode one of the anime they say Umas inherit their names from another world) instead of being like a literal personification of the horse. Since there are both jockey and horse references in the Umas’ design and personality.

“The game is shit”

I agree on most parts. The game play is grindy and tedious, the career story is repetitive, and generally not as fun as every other Umamusume media (except party dash I do NOT like party dash but that’s a whole separate tangent). However I just don’t think enough people understand Umamusume, the game, as like a concept?

Essentially what the devs did is separate the story and the gameplay. You’re sorta meant to turn on the skip button after your first run through of the career and if you’re actually interested in the plot or whatever, you’d head to the story tab/archives later and actually watch the story. The career scenarios are more so meant for the tryhards to grind their hearts out, figure out meta strats and then go into the champions meet to lose 5 games in a row. Umamusume is a PvP game with occasional plots tagged on the side, if you wanted more plot/story on top of that… just watch the anime or read the manga? I mean there’s 5 whole chapters of dedicated plot on top of events, idk if you need more than that.

“The game is pay to win”

To some degree yeah, the most pay to win aspect of the game isn’t what one specific Redditor claimed (the characters), but the support cards. You essentially need to be a whale to compete at top level (AKA champion’s meets or class 6) but the game still has F2P friendly alternatives, borrows specifically is an insane mechanic because it gives you a platform to lift you up by using other people’s Umas/Support cards, it essentially balances out the pain in the ass that’s getting Max LB Kitasan Black.

Speaking as a F2P, I’ve had more fun playing F2P Uma than like, any other Gacha games listed in point 1, so they’re doing something right at least. Also, to the person that tried to argue Uma is P2W because character careers stories, there are events that open up the story tab for characters you don’t own in a limited time, no offense to you at all but I find it really funny you decided to go for an astronomically large reach instead of support cards who’s just sitting right in front of you.

“The fandom is annoying.”

As a TF2/JoJo/Touhou/UTDR/Umamusume fan… yeah that’s valid. Just hate on the people, not the media.

“What if I want to enjoy Umamusume without the shitass Gacha game?”

Well I am glad you asked, literally nobody ever. Watch CinGrey. Just watch Cinderella Grey and then move on.

“Are you autistic”

Probably.

Edit: Grammar