Backyard Baseball

I think this might be the first review I've written for a game. I've played probably hundreds of seasons in '01, and have loved that game to pieces since I first played it as a kid. At best, this game feels like a human-assisted computer-generated approximation of the outcomes of baseball. It is still baseball, it is still the players and personalities I have grown to love, but it feels WAY too formulaic, deterministic, and untested. The biggest thing for me is the batted ball profiles and hitting mechanisms. You will hit a home run every single time you click on the precise location of the ball at the precise timing. This is great for rewarding "skill", if you can call anything in a children's game "skill", but leaves the game completely devoid of variance in one place where the analysis of the real game of baseball has changed the most since this series' last release: batted ball profiles. If you are in an open stance, with power swing on, and you nail the location and timing of your swing, your ball will almost always land within the same general location, past the left field fence. If you are square, every perfect swing will result in a home run to dead center. If you are closed, past the right field fence. Everything about the way the ball comes off the bat in this game feels like it needs to fit into some predetermined flight path. Because of this, anything else that doesn't quite fit that mold becomes a pop fly out or weak base hit (depending on where it is hit to, more on that later). In stadiums like Steele Stadium, it feels like making good contact on the ball with a power swing results in a pop fly in front of the shallow wall, JUST because you only clicked with 80% of the ball in the circle, and not 90% of it. That shouldn't be the difference in 100'. It would be less of a problem if there was more of a spray chart for batted balls regardless of swing timing, but when there's not, you notice that trend very, very quickly. In one game, I hit 8 such fly balls, right behind second base, right in front of the shallowest part of the wall. Adding on to that, if you do hit a home run, it will either scrape the wall, or be the cutscene-style "perfect-perfect" home run that flies 100' past the fence. This, coupled with the fact that the wall scrapers already have a distance counter on them from the second they leave the bat means there is absolutely no tension during the flight of the ball. Once you get the bird's eye view, you know the outcome. In '01, I can remember countless instances where a ball shadow would be against the wall, and I wouldn't know whether it would go out, hit the top of the wall, or be caught. There is no mystery in '26, and I find that makes gameplay stale. Balls also travel WAY too fast. I've only played for 4.5 hours, and I've been thrown out on line drives and grounders to the outfield dozens of times. If you have a runner on, and make contact that doesn't leave the yard, you can probably expect to be thrown out trying to advance. For how slow all of the runners are, the exit velocity makes it almost impossible to reach base on ANY BALL hit to the right side of the field, no matter whether an infielder or outfielder gets to it. And if you use your sprint getting from home to first, you're just going to be hosed on your way to second the next time someone hits the ball. It's truly bizarre to me that this game made it to release without that being noticed as a major issue. Fielding is awful because either your players won't move at all, or you'll be on the complete wrong character when the camera shifts up, and find yourself moving the character you expected to be controlling in the complete wrong direction. With such fast ballspeed, it becomes incredibly difficult to rebound from the slightest, most momentary missed inputs, so this presents itself often. It's also weird that every fielder throws that looping, arced toss, except for the catcher, who just throws bullets. Good luck straight stealing with anyone not named Pete. Pitching sucks too, but enough people have talked about it that I feel like I don't have to. I want this to be great. I am still having fun with it, but I don't know how much longer I'll be playing if none of these things are addressed. I feel like I could play hundreds of seasons of '01 because there was so much variance. A perfect swing sometimes resulted in little dinkers. Frustrating, but baseball. This game is way too exacting in its approach and recreation of a sport that almost never has the same thing happen twice. For all of that, don't spend your $40 on this yet. I'll edit this if they ever fix everything. Until then, I'll go back to '01.

Great game, lots of depth. Play the tutorial, people saying it's too hard are missing some info. Online multiplayer should be great once it is added. Also the game runs perfectly on my old i7 2600 with 8gb ram and a 1060, well below the stated minimum system requirements.

Fun gameplay and stunning visuals. This reminded me of and old game i used to play, Baseball heroes.

if you like sports games this is one of the best, the online update will make it even better, aside from minor graphical glitches i haven't had any issues, the character customization is nice, you will probably hear repeated voice lines although that is not a new thing for this franchise, but the graphics are a huge upgrade, the game modes are fun and engaging, the controls work really well with controller and with keyboard and mouse although you may want to switch some of the key binds, all in all a good reboot and for 40 bucks at the time of posting this review its not a terrible price for this game. especially with all the unlockable players and team names. Edit: A lot of people are criticizing the $40 price tag, and I understand why. The game isn't perfect and there are definitely things I'd like to see improved. That said, we've seen much larger publishers release games with comparable launch issues while charging $60 or even $70. In that context, I don't think $40 is an unreasonable asking price, especially considering the amount of content already in the game and the planned updates

♥♥♥♥ this game/ players just falling over randomly. missing catches at first base for no reason. meanwhile the computer has is getting strikes when its clearly outside the box, catching in the outfield when its not even close, and hitting EVERY SINGLE ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ PITCH even when you get a perfect pitch and its even outside the strike zone. like wtf?

this game is the perfect match if yu don't want to much grinding or blood and gore. i find this game very intertaining and hope to see more udates in the future.

As someone from a country where Baseball isn't that big, I can finally understand how Junpei works in Persona 4 Arena.