Umamusume: Pretty Derby – Party Dash (PC)

Geoffrey Wright | October 11, 2024 | Review | No Comments

Umamusume Pretty Derby Party Dash sprints onto console & PC, bringing the colourful cast of horse girls (named after real race horses) to everyone’s screen via an interesting party game masked as a school festival OVA. Does it have what it takes for a photo finish? Lets take a look

With a story reminiscent of an OVA, Pretty Derby Dash sees our Horse girls taking part and competing in the Slapdash Grand Prix, a school festival featuring students split into teams, headed by the likes of Special Week and Silence Suzuka, and set to face off against each other in numerous events to see who can take home the cup. Which team will run, shoot, and eat their way to gold and glory?

Sporting quite a lot of the crew from the series, you’ll be able to grab your favourite as you make your way through the stories of each of the 4 teams – unless your favourite is Gold Ship. The stories are unique to this game which will please fans, and there’s a good mix of characters in each team to keep the more recognisable ones spread out. There’s only a handful of events, but there’s plenty of unlockable and customisation options to grab with the currency you grind for. Should last a good while until you bore of the grind.

Eschewing the usual anime flair, this release gives us a visual makeup that may or not be something fans will get behind. There’s some decent 3D environments that the story & stages take place in, but the characters themselves take on a chunky pixel art look. Funnily enough, even without enough pixels, each character is actually recognisable in some way and probably works to help them stand out a little during hectic events/stages.

Audio is decent enough, voice work is always pleasing as roles are reprised, and that’s no different here as music will also keep fans locked in. As expected from the screenshots, it’s one of those ports that’s so easy to run at 4K/120Hz my PC (R7 5800X3D/32GB/RTX 3090) probably breaks more of a sweat browsing the net.

So what do we have this time for an anime release, a brawler? Arena fighter? Dungeon crawling JRPG? Nope, surprisingly its a party style game – similar to a Mario Party. There’s 4 main events in total that make up the festival, and each one has its own set of rules and strategies to use, ranging from assault course style races to powered up ball games. You’ll gradually play each event through the teams stories, so there’s plenty of opportunity to build up the perfect team.

It is unfortunate there are only these handful of events to play, as the amount of credits you’ll need to recruit the girls can be quite the grind, and while the events are surprisingly fun with enough depth, there’s still only 4. Luckily if you use some of your earnings to spruce up the team building you can get an extra event, a 2D rogue-lite of sorts. This is where you will find Gold Ship, can’t really recruit her unfortunately, but I guess she gets her own mode instead which makes a nice consolation. In this you try to get as far as possible by defeating enemies to win prizes, so plays different enough to the rest and is good fun for a breather form the grind.

Umamusume Pretty Derby Party Dash is probably how I would expect an Umamusume game to turn out, outside of an actual racing game & the chunky pixels, offering party game vibes with various events that fit the show perfectly. There’s only a handful of events to be honest, the biggest stickler with the game, which can make the grind tough later on, but the events themselves are actually fun to play with some depth – if only online play worked a bit better. A fan of the series may well just grab this, or may already have it, given it is a pretty solid offering overall, but It’s not one I can see drawing in others from outside the fanbase unfortunately.