Umamusume: Pretty Derby – Party Dash review

Video games have introduced me to all sorts of weird and wonderful things over the years, but nothing quite like Umamusume. This anime might look like a fairly normal show about schoolgirls competing in sports, but these characters aren’t ordinary girls. These girls are the reincarnated souls of famous and successful race horses (yes really). In their new life these horse girls are still fiercely competitive and want to be the greatest racer of all, and so attend schools dedicated to training reincarnated horse girls. Umamusume: Pretty Derby – Party Dash features all your favourite horse girls competing in video game form, and might just be the party game you’ve been looking for.

In Umamusume: Pretty Derby – Party Dash the girls all 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 all 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 plenty of modes to play in Umamusume: Pretty Derby – Party Dash, but the first you jump into will probably be the 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 minigame thrown in to mix things up. You’ll learn all about the rivalries between different horse girls, hear them discuss who is the best candidate for competitive eating, and if you’re unfamiliar with the series be absolutely baffled by pretty much all of it.

Outside of this visual novel framing, the main course of Umamusume: Pretty Derby – Party Dash are the four events you’ll be competing in. Blazing Baskets is essentially a race to score a target amount of points in a free for all basketball battle, with fouls allowed, special powers and various wacky ball types and obstacles standing in your way. Dodgeball Demolition is similarly ball themed but more violent, tasking you with eliminating the other girls with vicious throws and using perfectly timed catches to survive the spherical onslaught coming your way. Both the ball events are fun enough, but not exactly revolutionary.

My favourite event though is Gourmet Gauntlet, a battle of bellies in which you actually play the server. Food is thrown all over the floor in this event, and If your eater is given the same coloured plates they’ll build up a combo and eat faster. With four horse girls all racing to grab plates and special abilities being used relentlessly it’s very chaotic and a really good time.

Not all the events have the magic X factor though, and the worst of them all is Hurtling Hurdles. This basic race involves all the girls running on tracks and swapping between them to dodge obstacles. There are (as is the case with pretty much all the events) plenty of chaotic elements and special abilities that attempt to spice this up, but it feels clunky and ultimately just frustrating to play whether it’s against the AI or a buddy.

As you’d expect from a party game, Umamusume: Pretty Derby – Party Dash is playable both locally and online. With a group of friends these wacky games would likely be a whole lot of fun, but there’s the option to play with random people too.

Playing events in pretty much any mode will net you a whole lot of money and tickets, which you can use to build a clubroom and recruit some of the horse girls to join your team and live there. If placing items into a room to make it look nice is something you enjoy, then you’ll likely get a kick out of this, but if not it’s also entirely ignorable.

Now the main party games of Umamusume: Pretty Derby – Party Dash are mainly fine, but I’ll admit I wasn’t particularly hooked on any of them. Thankfully a hero emerged once I bought a games console for my virtual clubroom, a secret bonus game that’s a sort of bizarre mix of Vampire Survivors and Excitebike called Golshi’s Grand Adventure 2.

As Gold Shop you must face waves of enemies with your auto firing weapons while avoiding obstacles, which is done by moving between four different tracks which you automatically run down. By collecting enough experience gems you’ll level up and unlock new weapons to equip and upgrade, like a dodge ball that bounces between enemies or a drone that ensures nearby lanes have constant gunfire heading their way. I’m not sure I’ll necessarily come back to play more of most parts of Umamusume, but I’ll keep it installed for a few runs of Golshi’s Grand Adventure 2.

I think it’s probably fair to call Umamusume: Pretty Derby – Party Dash a bit of a mixed bag of a game, but there’s one issue I have with it that I haven’t mentioned yet. The mini games are incredibly poorly explained, and because of this the first few times you play them you’ll have no idea what you’re doing. It’s pretty weird to almost entirely neglect to explain how your game works, and although this stops being an issue pretty quickly it’ll likely lead to some players just not bothering to continue.

Umamusume: Pretty Derby – Party Dash is a very weird but enjoyable party game, with a full on visual novel mode that fans of the franchise will likely love. The minigames may not all be bangers, but the secret survival Roguelike may well be the best secret game I’ve ever played. Horse girl fans will find a lot to enjoy in this Umamusume extravaganza, but don’t go in expecting a Mario Party killer.