Hello hello, 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.
Hoo boy this week… what a week. Lots to talk about so let’s kick things off right away, starting with the classic:
Garupa
Events: A Regrettable Tale / Hagumi and the Happy Dinosaur
(No new pulls)
So with the limited Afterglow event over, we’re moving on to a Hello, Happy World event themed around… dinosaurs?
Sure.
Honestly, though, I really like the card art from this set, which I realize is something I don’t say often about this game’s art. Check them out here, or if you’re lazy, here’s some sneak peaks:
If I had gems, I would probably pull once just for funsies, but I already depleted my supply last event. Unfortunate.
By the way, there was a recent livestream with some game news, so let’s get into some of it. Summary thread below:
First, new covers. I see one song I recognize (Shirobako‘s first opening), so that’s neat. More importantly, they’re finally releasing the first “Extra” song, which is basically just a cover sung with the original artist. The first song: DAYS of DASH, the first opening to Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo, in collaboration with Konomi Suzuki. I’m pretty hyped since I’m a big fan of the song (anime not so much, but that’s a different story).
Next, a new event type! They already took the curved slider notes from Project Sekai, so why not steal another idea? Yup, similar to Project Sekai‘s Cheerful Carnival Live events, the new event, called “Team-Live Festival Event”, has players competing in 5 v 5 multi lives. If it’s anything like Cheerful Carnival (AKA gives more event points), I’m down. Those are coming out late next month.
Finally, the biggest news (IMO) — a new collab event/gacha with… Zombieland Saga!
That’s neat. They’ve also released the untrained card art, but low key I’m not a big fan:
I don’t know, seeing the Pasta*Pal members zombified kinda creeps me out. I’m reserving judgement until I see the trained art, but I’m probably not gonna be too active in this event.
As per usual.
Project Sekai
Events: A Song of Vows For You, Dressed in Pure White! / Wonder Magical Showtime!
(No new pulls)
So with the limited wedding event done, we’re currently in a Wonderlands x Showtime event, featuring only three of the four human members. This is only the second time they’ve done this — the first time was coincidentally also a WxS event when Tsukasa was missing from the card roster.
You may be wondering why this is. Well, last event we already had a 4* Rui card, so it would be weird for him to get another card the very next event. This was also the case last time — Tsukasa had a 4* card in the event before.
I do find it funny, though, because there was a case when a character was featured in two straight events: Saki as the event 3* card during both the New Year’s event and the event afterwards (which was Leo/need themed).
Anyway, because of all that, we have two Virtual Singers in the roster, both of whom are event cards (3* Rin, 2* KAITO). The cards are beautiful as always and I was tempted to use my gems for a 10-pull since my favorite WxS member is one of the 4* cards. Ultimately I decided to save my gems for a better card set. We all know how well that worked out in the past…
That’s pretty much it in the world of Project Sekai. Moving on…
D4DJ Groovy Mix (JP)
Events: D4FES -Happy Moment- / Connect Your Feelings! Blessing Bridal Live
Mmkay we got another limited event, that’s (unfortunately) not crazy for this game. What is crazy, though, is the fact that the members of said event are the Merm4id girls, despite the fact they had a event pretty recently (late April).
For reference, Photon Maiden and Rondo had their last event around March, and Peaky P-Key had their last event during the Monster Hunter collab, which was like late January-ish. If we don’t consider collab events, their last event was… last November. The fourth event in the game.
…We’re in the 24th event.
Hmmmmmm what is balancing.
Yeah, I understand there are mixed events that feature some of the PKPK members. I mean, the last event had some. But it seems weird to have absolutely no pattern for when the units’ events happen.
I thought Garupa was bad with the way it handled things, but at least they have a pattern where they cycle through each band (sorta). Here, though, I don’t know what’s happening, which is unfortunately not the last time I’ll talk about my confusion on GuruMiku (see next section).
Anyway, the current event’s a bit late to the party because it’s a wedding dress theme. I pulled once because I had hella gems, and hey look at that I got the 4* Rika. That’s cool.
Unrelated, but it looks like the new reward system is gonna be used for every event type. I had hopes they would only use it for the bingo events, but this event confirms they’re keeping it for every event. Sucks because I don’t get enough points to get all of the limited items, only the stamp and cards. Goodbye, limited stage and club item.
Though it’s not a huge loss since I don’t use them at all, it still sucks that they make me play the game more. I’m only here to play the bare minimum, game, why are making it harder to do that?
That’s a joke… kinda.
D4DJ Groovy Mix (WW/EN)
Events: Non S.T.O.P! Awe&Some / D4FES ~Festival, Reopened~
So with the weird move of releasing the Happy Around fantasy event set last week, I was curious where they would go for the next event. Well, looks like it’s the first part of the D4FES story. Permanent set? In my GuruMiku? Unheard of.
Also, in another weird move, they decided to release the cards from Lyrical Lily fairy tale themed event. Which… okay? Sure? What?
I understand they’re trying to match EN up with JP as close as possible, but this ain’t it, chief. It’s slightly better than last week when THREE LIMITED GACHAS WERE RUNNING AT THE SAME TIME — at least this time, we only have two concurrent sets (with one limited). Still, I’ve been seeing complaints about this already, and I’m sure there’s more out there if you look close enough.
The way they’ve handled the release so far is… interesting, to say the least. I’m curious to see when the heck they’ll run the early events or if they’ll just release those sets randomly to the world as well.
One other thing I didn’t consider last week is that they releasing the entire set, including the event card. That means you can’t get the free 3* card, and it gets stuck in purgatory until they decide to release the limited set again for funsies. That really messes up the balancing for the game, and now they have to make sure that’s fine tuned while aligning with JP. It’s a huge mess.
Well, we’ll see what the future events are gonna be. Not looking too great so far, though.
Uma Musume: Pretty Derby
Event: June Pride of the Flowering Maiden
Hoo boy… mistakes were made.
So for those who don’t know, I’ve been waiting for a few horses to be trainable since the game’s release. One of those horses is Seiun Sky, who I expected to be released soon-ish because of her relationship with some of the trainable characters.
Well… it happened:
And I had… 3800 jewels. Two 10-pulls-worth.
Uh-oh.
Y’all might have noticed there’s no slideshow for pulls like usual. There’s a good reason for that — too many pulls.
Yeah so I may or may not have used $200 to get jewels to pull for Seiun Sky. No big deal haha.
…
Seriously, though, it’s all good — it’s money I’ve been saving for a rainy day, and since I don’t have to pay rent for an empty apartment anymore, I’m not too tight on funds.
Still, it’s kinda shameful to say. I generally don’t spend money in gachas, though I’ve done so for almost every game I’ve talked about here (except Project Sekai and GuruMiku EN). This, though… this is a new record.
Sunk-cost fallacy definitely played an effect — I was 100-ish pulls in before I gave up the first time. I convinced myself that I was halfway to the pity system playing into effect, so why not go for it?
I went 50 more pulls in before I finally got this:
Was it worth it? Honestly… I don’t know. Yes because I got the character I wanted (and I’ve been training her exclusively for the past few days), but no because money. It’s hard to say.
If there’s one thing to take away from this, it’s DON’T DO GACHA. Well, that or DON’T USE MONEY IN GACHA. Be like my friend Edo who hasn’t spent a penny on FGO. If you’re bad with gambling, DON’T PLAY GACHA.
GACHA IS GAMBLING.
Anyway, that’s my PSA. As for other game stuff — we’re getting close to the Gemini Cup! It’s actually starting the day this post get released.
I talked about how I’ve been training long-distance horses for the event and how unsuccessful I was. Well, after days of debating, I convinced myself that there’s no way I would do well with my current lineup in the Grade League (no limit on horse rank), so I’m sticking with the Open League (limit of B) for now.
I’ve been hitting a wall in terms of training — I realized that my current support card lineup is a bit lacking, which I can’t really fix because I kinda just spent all of my jewels getting Seiun Sky. That means that unless I get lucky during training runs, I won’t be improving my PvP lineup anytime soon.
I’ve also been thinking of switching up my support card lineup — I’ve been following the guide I posted last week to a T, and it has been helpful to get some of my horses to A rank, but I haven’t been able to get great ones recently. Maybe I’ll experiment this week and see how it goes.
So I guess look forward to seeing the results of that (along with the Gemini Cup overall) next week!
And that’s all for this week’s update! Thanks as always for reading, and I’ll see y’all next week for the next installment of WRGU. Until then, stay safe out there.
Fractals and Recursion 