Shameless plug after trying The Show again...

[The_Joneser_PSN]

I hadn’t played this game since April, since I received my Japanese language copy of Pro Spirit ’24 / ’25 (now have the ’26 game, and jumped right into Season mode in that), but as I was creating some storage space and debating whether or not to uninstall MLBTS, I thought I’d give it a go, again, just to see if it compares as unfavorably as I had originally thought.

The real difference was blatantly obvious after a bit of distance. It wasn’t just the outdated player textures with their Play-Doh skin, the terrible physics governing balls in play, or the nonsensical proficiency of even bad (and seemingly out-of-scale?) defenders… it was just… bland. The gameplay experience was dull, lifeless, and uninspired.

Pro Spirit feels alive. The sounds alone are immersive, with crowds chanting player names and singing fight songs, roaring to life when someone delivers a clutch hit… bat-on-ball and other effects are amazing (like the thud of a ball bouncing off a padded wall) and MLBTS would do well to simply copy them; they’ve just done an incredible job with the audio all the way around (except the English commentary—it's bad; turn it off or stick with the Japanese).

It isn’t as if Pro Spirit is a perfect game, though, as it has its own peculiarities. People have pointed out that ball-in-play graphics take a big step back from the pitcher / batter screens, and that’s true. There are fewer fielder animations (but they don’t take the gameplay out of your hands like MLBTS’s Dragon’s Lair nonsense does), and there’s a weird little slide thing when a fielder isn’t lined up for the animation to reach down and pick up the ball; it doesn’t alter play results, but looks funny when instead of reaching down at a different angle, your outfielder kind of “slides” to the side to match the animation to the position of the ball on the ground. And there’s a pelvis problem (really can’t unsee that once you notice). So, yeah, not perfect, but the gameplay makes up for it.

Bottom line: actually playing the baseball part of MLBTS isn’t fun. DD and its addiction-based model hides some of that; it dangles “new” cards in front of your face and if you just get a few more hits with players you really aren’t interested in using, or trudge through modes you don’t want to play… but as soon as you do that, the next “new” card is already dangling, so you just grind a little bit more and keep playing...

If DD card collecting is your thing, smoke ‘em if you got ‘em. But if you’re a franchise player, or an offline player—and you don’t mind learning about players you’ve likely not heard of yet—then you’re missing out on a really good baseball game by sticking with this one out of unreciprocated loyalty.