Backyard Baseball

This game has potential but it misses the mark big time. Don't get me wrong, the gameplay is fun, And i enjoyed the game. But i can't recommend it. i think they should have pushed the release back because the game isn't even complete. Gameplay wise it has bugs, that is to be expected. But it is kind of frustrating when having a runner on first and hitting a single into the outfield only to have the runner get thrown out at second because the cpu decided your runner should stay at first base so then you have to manually tell them to move. Its also annoying to have fly balls that bounce off the outfield fence walls in multiple ballparks get called out when the cpu catches it. It feels to me like this game wasn't even tested when they released it. The championship stadium, i took a screen shot of the field, the foul poles and the fair and foul line don't even make it to the fence. That is straight up embarrassing for a release. The gameplay bugs i can look over because they happen and can be fixed. But what i can't overlook is how they kinda stripped the personality of all the characters and part of the game itself. I am not a big fan of the homerun celebration sequence and the music, i know you can turn it off, but For example Achmed khan. They turned him from a heavy rockin guitar man into a pop artist. His homerun music is this weird trap beat and when he does his celebration, he does this weird michael jackson yell. That aint achmed khan at all. i am also not a huge fan of the voice acting. Its Clear they didn't spend time recording that many lines. Vinne the Gooch is too quiet and sounds too depressed. They re-use the Sunny Day "pitcher entrance" vocal line when the pitcher on the other team GOES UP TO BAT and isn't pitching. Not only that, but they seemed to forget to record Sunny Day's vocal name lines for the Non-backyard kids. Chico Pappas will get custom card art made for him, but won't even get his name read out by Sunny Day in game. I don't know how they missed that. It was in the old games. Overall i think this game is a mixed bag. i had fun playing it, but its clear to me that this was not ready to be released and i hope they go back and work on the vocal lines and at least fix the fields.

gamed mid, def not worth 40 dollars worth about 10 atleast only recommend on a big sale.

Too many bugs, player stats mean almost nothing, and juice meter is completely irrelevant. This isn't even worth $10, much less $40. Just play 01 or 97.

As someone who grew up on classic BYB and who still thinks BYB '01 is genuinely the best baseball game on Steam, I'm having a mixed but overall positive experience with this game. The marketing made it sound like it would be a one-to-one recreation of the original game so I was taken aback by just how much of it has been changed. And not all of these changes are bad, but if you're looking for an overly in-depth review of this game from someone who has literally hundreds of hours on the Steam versions of classic BYB, here you go: First, my thoughts on the changes that aren't necessarily good or bad but definitely make the experience different from classic BYB. -Holding for fielding instead of tapping a location/target makes fielding generally slower than it used to be, and this also means there is no buffering for double-plays anymore. On one hand, this makes double-plays harder and more satisfying when they happen but on the other hand, it can make the game frustrating at times because something that SHOULD be routine double-play is literally impossible because of the lack of buffer. -Hitting has been reworked to be more locational. On one hand, this makes the game feel more modern like a proper baseball game but on the other hand, it makes the game basically unplayable without pitch location assist, which was one of the most fun ways to play classic BYB. In classic BYB, the pitches came in slow enough for you to read and react without location assist but in new BYB, breaking balls break WAY more and much quicker than they used to, so playing without location assist is needlessly frustrating. And that's not necessarily a bad thing but in my opinion, the game isn't nearly as satisfying with pitch location turned on, so I feel like the game is punishing me for wanting something a little more skill-based. But also, this might be personal preference mixed with skill issue so I'll put it in this section. And then we have changes that are objectively bad and NEED to be fixed because they're just straight-up bad game design: -Pitcher juice means nothing. You can continue playing a pitcher at 0% juice with no significant consequence to your accuracy. In classic BYB, the pitcher would get noticeably less accurate as you ran out their juice and once you got below a certain point, they would literally become incapable of throwing a strike. But in this game, the "no juice" accuracy nerf is so minor that it doesn't even matter. -Special charge from the hitter's side is broken. I've had several games where it literally just doesn't charge. Haven't noticed this happening from the pitcher's side but batter's side Special charge is clearly bugged. Just bring back the old system where if you do something good, you're rewarded with a random Special. The charging-Special system breaks the flow, even if it was working as intended. -Certain Special hits don't do anything special. The Screaming Line Drive and Aluminum Power are literally just normal hits but slightly harder, and can lead to easy outs. The Under-Grounder frequently pops out of the ground directly in front of an outfielder and regularly gets you thrown out. The Crazy Bunt seems to work as intended but it moves so slowly that you rarely get more than a single out of it. It's gotten to the point that I don't even use special swings anymore because they're no more reliable than just swinging normally. -The strike zone means nothing. You can throw a ball that's not even CLOSE to the strike zone and it's still entirely hittable. In classic BYB (and in real baseball, for that matter), pitches outside the strike zone were literally not hittable, which was the whole point of throwing breaking balls. But now, you can still hit dingers off of pitches that are entirely out of the strike zone so why is the strike zone even there? Between this and the lack of buffer on defense (as mentioned earlier), it makes the game much more offensive-friendly than classic BYB (and real baseball, for that matter) and I don't think that's a good thing. If the defense is literally not capable of playing smart or precise, it's just not fun. -No switch-hitting? Really? BYB '03 had this and switch-hitting has only become more prominent in baseball over the last 20 years. -No option to make a character that doesn't hit with their dominant hand? This is an extremely common thing in real baseball, why can't I make a character that throws right-handed but bats lefty? And if you're looking for changes from the original that are objectively good, I really don't think I have any when it comes to gameplay, which is why I have such a weird taste in my mouth after 8 hours. The presentation is fantastic and all the new dialogue for Sunny and Vinnie are fantastic, the writers and voice actors killed it. Being able to have 3 custom players at a time is awesome as well, but these aren't gameplay improvements. They're just obvious updates to things that were already there. Overall, this is a very good game and I'm sure a lot of my frustrations are only felt because I love the originals so much BUT there is still a pretty lengthy list of issues that need to be fixed if they're going to insist on charging $40 for this. In its current state, I would grade it a B- and would NOT recommend paying more than $25 for it. I'm still giving it a thumbs up because a B- is still an above average game and despite all its flaws, this is still one of the better baseball games I've played (and certainly one of the best baseball games on Steam). If you're totally new to the series, I still recommend BYB '01 over this. It's 25 years old and somehow FAR more mechanically sound at a quarter of the price, and that's really what stings about the whole thing.

I dont know how multiplayer is still not in the game, you yall wont tell anyone when its coming out....DO NOT BUY THIS

Can't recommend with blatant sponsorships in game combined with the high price. Others have already mentioned in their reviews the Gatorade powerups, but I haven't seen anyone discuss the Frosted Flakes sponsorship. There's additional Gatorade sponsorships in the Super Colossal Dome (a banner in left field and one in the commentary booth) which feels like a real slap in the face to see after making it to the Ultra Grand Championship of the Universe Series. There's a similar banner for Frosted Flakes at Big City Stadium which would've frustrated me, but the game went a step further. In Dirt Yards, there's a cute mural mostly of old Backyard Baseball team logos and has a Tony the Tiger in the lower left of it. Again, would've annoyed me if that's all it was, but I hit a home run that bounced off it and was gobsmacked when Sunny Day and Vinnie launched into an exchange along the lines of "wow that ball was hit right at the kellog's frosted flakes mural! the breakfast of champions! it's grrrrrreat!" I couldn't believe my ears. So it's for these previously undisclosed sponsorships I cannot recommend this game. The price being $40 in addition to having these is a huge insult. And, I know this game is marketed towards 30-40 year olds who remember playing these games as kids, but those people's children are going to play this game. And they're going to be served these ads. And that's just really gross to me. Honestly, game-wise, I do like a lot of what they did. Baserunning is worse than in past games (can't steal bases anymore and the AI is really bad at tagging up/going with no way of overturning its decision). Fielding feels as janky as it did back then, just with new jank. Pitching is as much a mystery box as it was but I like the timing minigame added as a distraction from that. I like hitting a lot. Feels like that's where all the focus went and I think they did a great job on that. And most importantly the pace of the games is just way better. Things like the ball getting back to the pitcher after a pitch taking half a second rather than two seconds adds up. I could talk more about subjective things like how I don't understand the voice direction for Vinnie making him sound really sleepy, or why the songs are purposely toned down when it was cool how bombastic and in-your-face they were, or why promise online play but not come with it at launch, but I think that's beyond the scope of the review. The bottom line for me is that I need the sponsorships gone if I'm ever going to recommend this to anyone else.

enjoyable, fielding needs more polish, no microtranstactions is a great plus.

i will come back to play once they add the old pitch locator. the new one gives you a pin point of where the ball is. game is far to easy on all difficulties if your used to playing any kind of point and click fps games. the old pitch locator gave you a general area and still allowed you to not perfect hit every ball. the games feel more like a grind to get through atm then enjoyable. having to run yourself out on the bases to get through games so you dont blow them out or spend way to long on a game is not enjoyable. you would think just turning the pitch locator off would up the challenge enough to make it feel competitive. let me tell you from a player of mlb the show it is not a small step up of difficulty it is hard to hit with no pitch locator in this game. the nostalgia is nice, but not worth 5 hours of gameplay for $40. hope they improve the game