Greetings and welcome to another edition of the Weekly Gacha Rhythm Game Update, the weekly post where I talk about the gacha rhythm games I play!
For those who are new to these posts, the games I play are BanG Dream: Girls Band Party (Garupa) in the Japanese (JP) server, D4DJ Groovy Mix (GuruMiku) in the Japanese (JP) and Worldwide (WW or EN) servers, Project Sekai: Colorful Stage feat. Hatsune Miku (PuroSeka), and Uma Musume: Pretty Derby. The latter two are Japanese only… for now.
Pretty busy week for me, so this post will probably be a short one. One quick thing I wanted to mention before getting into it: I decided to stop playing the English version of Garupa. I’ll still be logging in for daily rewards and all that jazz, but with the recent release of GuruMiku EN, I’ve been spending too much time on rhythm games. Combine that with a possible job offer (knock on wood), and I’m hopefully gonna be very busy soon.
It’s also something I’ve wanted to do for some time. The reason why I played the English version of Garupa was two-fold: to get the cards I couldn’t pull in the JP server and to read the stories. Well, my gacha luck isn’t great and I haven’t read a story in months. With both reasons pretty much nullified, I realized I had no reason to play EN, and it became more of a chore than anything. And when playing games becomes a chore… well, something needs to change.
Plus my only motivation for playing, event cards, can easily be obtained through the sticker shop months after the event ends. The only exception is limited events, though, so I’ll be playing those whenever they pop up. Other than that, though, this is me quitting the game. Thanks for the memories, but I’m still not out of the BanG Dream train… yet.
Speaking of which, let’s talk about the game, Japanese version:
Garupa
Event: A Regrettable Tale
The current event is limited, which I guess lines up with other games’ current events. Unlike those games, though, this isn’t a wedding dress theme. It’s… Arabian?
On the one hand, I like that it’s different, but I didn’t really hate the wedding dress theme solely because the card art from those events were Great (with a capital G):
Here though… I don’t know, maybe I’m spoiled by different games’ art nowadays, but it’s not really that amazing. It’s not good when I can argue the event 2* card is my favorite one based on the art.
I ended up pulling anyway because it’s a limited gacha and I had the gems, and hey I got a new 4* Ran card. It’s not the event card, but it is a new one. Sure, I already have a way better card with the same type, but new cards are cool I guess.
Also I got the 3* card from the set (twice!), which was honestly all I was hoping for. Gotta keep those expectations low.
Project Sekai
Event: A Song of Vows For You, Dressed in Pure White!
(No new pulls)
So last week I mentioned I knew who the event members were gonna be (through leaks, if you’re curious). But what I didn’t know was that (a). it was a Cheerful Carnival event and that (b). it was a wedding theme. Not wedding dress theme, though — wedding theme.
Remember, Project Sekai has male characters (and a nonbinary one, too!). That means that, yes, male characters are in this event. Almost all of the human ones, too — Akito, Rui, and Toya (sorry Tsukasa, but you already have too many cards).
On the one hand, the card art is great, and even more than usual since this is a limited set. But on the other hand… I don’t care? Look, I’m a straight male. Whether I’m actually bisexual is something I debate to this day since I don’t have any romantic experience, but I can confidently say I don’t give a hoot about fictional male characters. I get Tsukasa and Akito mixed up even though I know they’re different characters with different eye shapes and personalities.
So when I knew the bois (and An) were the event members, I breathed a sigh of relief for my empty wallet.
The fact that the event is Cheerful Carnival was also nice to find out, since these events typically give more event points. The bad news is that my team for this event SUCKS — even after maxing out everybody’s levels, my team power is only 130,000-ish. I feel like I’m letting my team down when I have the lowest score of the five (even if we win).
Speaking of which, the teams are based on the question “What would you like to wear at your wedding?” with Team Western Clothing and Team Japanese Clothing. Being a filthy gaijin, I immediately went to the Western Clothing option and never looked back.
At first, I thought I made the right decision because my teams were winning all of their showdowns against the Japanese garment lovers. Unfortunately, the actual results weren’t so — Team Japanese Clothing won both midpoint reports, and if past Cheerful Carnivals say anything, that won’t change in the final rankings.
Honestly though, whatever. I’ve mentioned this before and I’ll mention it again — the rewards between the winning and losing team are 50 gems in the midpoint rankings and (IIRC) 2 stamina drinks. In other words, hardly a difference. If anything, it’s only for bragging rights, but I’m not about that life.
That’s pretty much it for Project Sekai. Maybe I might pull for the lols, but I only have 3000 gems so I’m leaning towards saving them for the next great set. Hopefully it’s not the next one.
D4DJ Groovy Mix (JP)
Event: D4FES -Happy Moment-
So we’re still in the D4FES event, and after complaining about the new reward system, I can confidently say I still don’t know how I feel about it. It definitely takes longer than usual to get the event card, but it’s still attainable through using up the stamina meter every day. Whether I get the other rewards (which isn’t looking likely) is TBD.
It was also Dalia’s birthday, which meant limited b-day gacha. She’s not one of my favorites but I had an abundance of gems so hey, why not? I got a new 4* card, which is pretty neat. Can’t complain about that.
D4DJ Groovy Mix (WW/EN)
Event: Non S.T.O.P! Awe&Some
Meanwhile in the EN version, ya boi finally got a 4* card. Two, actually. Neither of them are Tsubaki, but I need anything I can get this early in the game.
I’ve been slowly reading stories, and it’s interesting how much my opinion on characters has changed. I haven’t even gone through the unit stories, but I’ve been reading side stories/area conversations. I used to really like Rika, but now I find her a bit annoying with her whole party attitude (which is interesting because I had her ranked hella high before). On the other hand, I had Noa ranked decently, but she’s shot up my rankings after I can understand her what she’s saying during her crazy moods. And it’s hilarious.
I’m sure these will change even more once I read more side stories and actually get into the unit stories, which I definitely have to do soon. I’ve just been too busy recently, but hopefully in a week or two I’ll have the time.
Game-wise, the first event’s pretty much over, and I’m interested to see what they’re gonna do for the next event, because in a really weird move, they actually released the cards from the next event, the Happy Around fantasy set.
Speaking of which, I didn’t talk about this when the event was happening in JP because I don’t usually talk about the card art for this game (which I blame partly on the fact that there’s no good Twitter account that shows them off). The Maho card from this set is… questionable. I’m not gonna put the pics here, but follow this link if you wanna see what I’m talking about.
…Yeah, I’m not a fan. I don’t like these types of cards, which I’ve talked about before with certain Lisa and Moca cards in Garupa. Just… don’t sexualize the high school girls, please. Simple as that. And before you get into the “but they’re fictional characters…” argument, I don’t care. Follow the advice of my friend Michael Jordan:
Anyway, they released that limited set early. And to top it off, they released Dalia’s b-day gacha in this server, which meant that EN had THREE LIMITED GACHAS running at the same time.
…Why?
Yeah man, seems like a great decision. Let’s release three limited gachas in the first week of the game’s release. I can only see things going well with this. Yes.
…I don’t know, maybe it’s good that I didn’t transfer accounts, because actions like this don’t bode well for the future of this game. Oh well, at least the music’s nice.
Uma Musume: Pretty Derby
Event: June Pride of the Flowering Maiden
We’re still in the story event, and ya boi’s gotten all five SSR Mejiro Dober cards, so we’re good.
During the past week, I’ve been preparing for the upcoming Champions’ Meeting (AKA the Gemini Cup) by training lots of long-distance horse girls. How have I been doing? Horribly.
I think my tweet from a few days ago sums it up well:
And that Gold Ship was trained a while ago, too.
Well, I guess I’m going Open League to at least have a chance of getting some rewards. The positive about training lots is that my failed runs can be used in the Open League.
In other news, I finally got all of my girls to 3*, meaning they all have their unique race outfits! It took a 10-pull and some random single pulls, but I finally got enough pieces to limit break the two stragglers, Mayano Top Gun and Agnes Tachyon.
That means I won’t have to see the default outfit for a while, since any new character I get will be a 3* with their own outfit. I guess they could release a new set of 1* and 2* characters, but that’s probably way in the future. Months down the line.
Now before I end this week’s post, I wanna talk about something related to the game. Recently, the official Uma Musume Twitter account reached 1 million subscribers. Usually, the game gives out rewards anytime a milestone is met i.e. Twitter followers, Youtube channel followers, races, etc.. In the past, they’ve given out gems, SR (and even SSR) tickets, and the default money/alarm clock/support tickets. People were excited for what the game would give out for the special million and we got…
10 alarm clocks, 50,000 money, and 50,000 support points.
…That’s it?
I think I agree with most people when I say that’s underwhelming. Compared to some of the past rewards given for lesser milestones, it’s definitely meh.
Now having said that… I think some people are seriously overreacting. Take the subreddit thread with people talking about how CyGames is greedy and all that jazz. There was also a hilarious quote retweet that I can’t find anymore that was basically “wow I quit, CyGames taking advantage of their playerbase once again” (the guy probably deleted it once he started playing again).
I mean… come on, people. If this is the reason you quit the game, I think you already had a foot out of the door. And I love the people arguing that the game is making bank, so they should give rewards because of that. They aren’t obligated to give their players rewards just because they’re successful. In an ideal world, maybe. But this isn’t an ideal world — it’s the real world.
I also love when people compare Uma Musume to other gacha games, saying the gacha is unfair and sucks. I do admit this game is not F2P-friendly — your success is reliant on the support cards you get, and you need multiple copies for them to be of any use.
However, this game is not unfair. Be thankful the support gacha and character gacha are separate, and that the rates aren’t 1% for the highest rarity. In fact, out of the gacha games I play, Uma Musume has the best rates overall (with the caveat that I play mostly rhythm games).
After all, in the end, this is a gacha game, with the purpose of getting as much money as they can out of their players (specifically the whales). Pretty graphics and gameplay aside, that’s what the main goal is. Money.
Welcome to the real world.
And that’s all for this week’s update! Thanks for reading, and I’ll see y’all next week for another WRGU! Until then, stay safe out there.
Fractals and Recursion 