GOD this scenario is so fun to play.
As I mentioned before, this scenario is a “sandbox” the way that Make A New Track is, in the sense that the game doesn’t tie you to any girl’s specific story, so you can very easily pick whichever race you want outside of the scenario-specific objectives.
And it is indeed easier, because so long as you’re playin Project L’arc your girl will have the proficiencies to run the story races bumped up. So while Haru Urara might go back to beign unable to run in grass after the scenario, during it Arima Kinen sure is less scary than usual.
Though to be honest, this is all assuming that you REMEMBER to run races, because this scenario is SO FUN when it comes to training itself.
If you want a primer on how the game works, I already wrote a primer about it a while back.
Here’s how the scenario works: Like in Aoharu Cup, each supporting unit in training has a second bar aside from the bond one. It’s called the Star Gauge and there’s actually some extra differences compared to the Aoharu one.
The first one is that it only has three segments, the second one is that unlike the Aoharu gauge it always procs upon training instead of needing to pick one specific training where the Ahorau Gauge is active, and the third one is that after “using” it it’s not spent and instead that support character just “leveled up” becoming more potent in training.
And how do you “use” it? By picking the sixth training exclusive to this scenario: the Star Match, those are the ones that Mei explained existed to gather support for the project. Star Matches are a burst to all stats that consume no stamina and “use” the Star gauge of the girls involved in the race, resetting it to zero segments while also levelling them up.
So here’s how the flow goes:
You go pick a training and you go for the one that has the most girls in it, except oh no out of 5 of the girls 3 already have their gauges at max, so what do you do? Pick a training with big stats now for only two gauges raised? or do you pick a different training that though weaker has more than 2 gauges to fill?
Hell, even though the ideal thing is for the Star Match to have five members on it, maximizing training time by using the fact that Star Matches don’t consume energy IS a valid strategy in more than one ocassion.
The thing is: Uma Musume’s training flow has always felt really REALLY good. The feedback loop both sensorial and statistical is massively addictive. Indeed, the reason Make a New Track feels so off as a scenario is the fact that the girls end up with high stats but you don’t feel the stats going up the same way.
From a design perspective it’s actually really amusing to see them gradually integrate the element of timing a bonus into the flow.
Even in Grand Masters, the game incentivizes you to use your bonuses as soon as possible, but then comes the update to Aoharu Cup where they make it so the player has more reasons to use the bonus ASAP instead of holding it back until the right time.
This is the first scenario where the idea of timing a bonus feels like a purposeful design cue. Even Make A New Track, where you have things like “training bonus on demand” and “nullify risk on demand” is predicated on resource accumulation rather than timing necessarily.
Hell, following this train of thought, the fact that the Pink Aoharu Explosion in Aoharu Cup always has a risk of 0% feels like one of the steps into this specific iteration of the scenario.
See what I mean? I haven’t even talked about the races yet. Why the fuck would you race when the training itself is beefy as it is?
Well, for one early on races are a good source for Supporter Points and while you build gauges for a big Star Match, they also help build the Support % Gauge early on.
To explain the two terms I just casually threw in: Supporter Points are basically the score you gotta have enough of in order to progress in the scenario and the Support % is a gauge that raisesd with these points and the more you raise it the more your trainings level up at once. So even beyond the scenario requiremenets, having enough points will make sure you have enough training level.
There is one more currency, but before that, there’s one more element to explain.
In this scenario there’s no Summer Camp (4 turns where all your training is Lvl 5 amongst other bonuses), instead from July to October you will be in your Overseas Expedition. The Summer Camp effects of Lvl5 training and Super Resting (resting that also raises motivation) is still there, but now the girl is doing it all in France!
Speed training is running so hard your training partner in a Parachute can rise into the air, Stamina is singing in the riverside, Power is kickboxing, Willpower is standing kayak, Intelligence is practicing French, even going out was changed to the girl having a stroll with a Baguette.
So there’s one extra thing you can buy. Remember those “proficiencies” I went on and on about earlier and how they affect your stats? You buy those with… let’s call them “French Points”.
You get French Points by doing Star Matches and racing, but during overseas expeditions every single action gives them out to you, meaning Overseas Expedition is most likely your main source of those.
The one drawback is that during overseas expeditions you can’t race other races, you can’t build up star gauges, and you can’t participate in Star Matches. So interestingly it isn’t just simply “Bonus Time!!” but a different mode you have to take into consideration.
I’m excited to see them iterate in this concept of Summer Camp being a different mode of training in the future.
To be honest, there’s not much else to say mechanically. The fun of the scenario is precisely its simplicity. It isn’t reinventing any element of the game, in fact, I’d argue it’s even less bloated than the last two scenarios. It’s just a very refined version of the formula that has worked so well so far.
Now, normally the next post would be one where I just cram all the trivia I couldn’t put elsewhere in this topic… HOWEVER while making it, one specific chunk of it was so long I thought it’d be better to leave it as its own thing.
So next time, get ready for LORE.