Well actually ain't my first time dipping, but usually i have my fun then hit a paywall or point in the game where it just becomes not fun and i hate having to feel like i need to play a game on a schedule, it's one of the reasons why i avoid mmos because i fear getting sucked in and reaching a point where i feel i HAVE to log in because otherwise if i don't i'll let the guild down or something, hell naw.
Anyways back to umasume pretty derby.
If you've spent any amount of time on social media lately, chances are you'll have noticed a rise in horse related memes and cute girls running around really fast, yeah it's because of this. IF you're confused, you will hopefully be less after I explain wtf it's all about.
The TLDR version is its anime horse girls based on rl racing horses, racing each other for our amusement. But let's expand on that.
First the setting and lore because it is genuinely hilarious to me in its connotations:
The game/anime is set in a wonderful alt history setting where THERE ARE NO HORSES ONLY HORSEGIRLS.
This means that from that dawn of time, as horses were so instrumental to the develop of human civilisation, humans have been taming and...riding? a race of apparently docile near humans who have the strength and speed of horses.
This implies a hell of a lot of things from genghis khan and his horde of mongol riding horsegirls to the tragedies of ww1-2 where millions of umas gave their lives to serve their country and pay the ultimate price (in this setting i'd imagine uma would be used more as shock units because they run so fast, who better then to send across no mans land to storm trenches?).
Also because this is anime world, similar to some anime i vaguely know of, umas can of course have two mothers and the mother can be the father. I don't know how this works and i'm scared to find out.
And yes, umas do hook up with their trainers in this setting (as confirmed by a recently released uma whose whole gimmick is she is obsessed over hooking up with you, the trainer). Yeah we going full anime here, no half measures, tourists gtfo if you can't handle it. That said though, uma yanderes and such are no jokes, an uma can not only quickly catch up to any human in seconds but with their horse strength they can easily overpower anyone,
^I have no idea how this guy is still alive or has a normal shaped head after getting horse kicks straight to the face.
Oh yeah there's also an anime but other then clips i can't tell you if it's any good or not.
Most of this is utterly irrelevant to the game though since it's exclusively focused on the horse racing part of the world rather then exploring the setting.
The gameplay:
Wtf do you actually do?
Well it's a management sim, pure and simple. You got 3 years to manage your chosen uma and take an action each turn to train your uma and boost her stats and teach her skills which have a % chance of activating depending on her wit stats so racing iq is an actual stat here among other things.
Win conditions vary based on the uma you select for that run, they all have different stats and strengths, as well as career goals, so difficulty varies from easy (to give examples: bakushin is a speed demon who only runs on short races during her career, so you can get away with only training speed over and over, whereas another uma like king halo has runs of all different lengths and requirements and has a ****** statline AND a tricky race style on top of it so she requires a lot more work, but at least she isn't moody and prone to fits of depression like some of the moodier umas) to very difficult (there is an uma who is based on a horse who lost all their races and she her career reflects that with the objectives usually being just to earn x amount of fans rather then win outright).
The highlights are obviously the races themselves though where you can see your preparations and hard training pay off, and the games production values make them fun to watch and very anime like, complete with dramatic closeups as umas activate their ultimate skills, and leading to lots of anime moments where your uma manages to activate several skills consecutively and push through to the finish line at the last second.
And this is where the game stumbled onto something which i think is key to its success: a lot of people really like to cheer for something they trained for to win. Watching your umas race is fun and relaxing. You get a nice dopamine rush when you think your uma is about to lose but then she remembers the power of friendship and animes her way to the finish line, likewise you get a genuine urge to kill when your uma who is favored number 1 and has better stats then everyone else somehow ends up mid place after being boxed in by other umas for half the race. Your fault for not taking more skills that make your uma better at positioning herself.
And if you win a race, you get a motion captured concert where the 3 singers vary depending on who wins (and you have a concert mode where you can mix and match which uma sings what to your hearts content, this is the kinda little thing that genuinely charms me since it shows the devs actually invested effort and ressources into features that would only appeal to a tiny section of people, you could remove this whole idol singing aspect entirely and i doubt it would change much, but the devs show their inner chad here by going the extra motioned captured mile.
But yeah that's the gameplay loop, simple time management sim with a race so you can see your efforts pay off.
In between races theres story events and occasionally a dialogue choice to make which can affect plotlines a bit but obviously its not intended to be an actual rpg, its just fun things for the player to read if they are into that, and there is an option at the start of every run to minimised cutscenes and story sections so you can focus just on the management aspects.
With cutscenes set to shortened/disable, each run takes on average 15-30 mins, going up to 1-2hoursish if you do take your time and read all enabled cutscenes.
Before every new run, you choose a support card deck who function a bit like rpg party members in that they become your support cast during the career and besides helping you train, you get events with them. And here is where the gacha starts so ill start a section on that i guess.
The gacha, or how greedy is it?
Well the good news is that if all you want to do is see the end of the game/story, then it is as casual as it gets.
Beating a career with basic cards and nothing levelled up might require a few restarts but it is totally doable and normal to beat runs after your first few tries, albeit it is unlikely you will win ALL of the races 1st place and get the best plotline outcomes. And that's whyyou play it again, and again, to do better then your previous run and race an even more super sonic uma.
And this is where you'll remember that umasume is still ultimately a gacha. Even if you are lucky enough to get an SSR support card, in most case it will be useless until you have further copies of it to uncap its stars, so the whale vs everyone else divide in pvp is real.
You can get away with SR gold support cards at the moment, its what i do, but the western version of the game is 3 years behind jp and what i've glimpsed from the jp servers got me wondering if i will still be playing by then (to give you an idea of the power creep, in jp they have 69 full league divisions above what is currently possible in global, and the stats on their umas tend to be 3k+ when currently global is capped at 1200).
So yeah between support cards needing to be uncapped and levelled to be used to their full potential and umasumes also having star rarities but the star shards are also slow to acquire, the artificial threadmill to limit your progression is certainly there but it doesnt prevent you from clearing single player content, it only really gets apparent when you start playing vs people. Also obviously must umas are locked and you gotta roll for those, also their costumes if you want those too as you cant just buy a skin.
As a free player you earn a bit of currency by doing dailies and from some missions but it is miserly, most of your prenium currency will be earned through giveaways and events.
If you did want to drop money on this game, my instinct aswell as vids of others playing this tells me you will likely drop 100s and not get what you want and then get forced into a sunk cost fallacy where you just drop 200 bucks to reach the pity draw and guarantee you get what you were actually wanting in the first place.
Anyways game is decently fun, worth a try now before it gets too sweaty.
ONE OF US! 
