My Final Review of MLB The Show 25
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Since we are officially in end-game, this year much earlier and staler than usual, I figured now is the time to give my review of this year’s game, which is bound to anger some.
Collection Heavy Diamond Dynasty - not great
Personally, towards the end of year, I didn’t mind collections as much, mainly because by that time I had accumulated enough needed fodder to either sell or simply collect my way to the rewards. I have all the collections done except Finest. It was not a fun process. It was also where most of the best cards lied. I get that the meta cards should be hard to get, nobody’s saying that it shouldn’t be. But when there isn’t much diversity it does get tedious and repetitive.
Team Affinity Was a Travesty
When they went back to individual team affinity programs, I had mixed feelings. On one hand, we can focus on just one team at a time instead of a whole division. On the other hand, it would be tough to earn progress for all thirty teams, especially when teams like the Marlins, Rockies, and D-Backs don’t have many usable cards to earn progress with without going out of your way. Also, the lack of TA content was just a mess. We got an 85/86, 91/92, 95, and two 99s, compared to last year’s TA model, which saw us get an individual chapter each month. We also didn’t get a retro finest TA, which adds insult to injury. All you had to do was collect a voucher and boom, you got your Finest card. This needs to change last year. And don’t even get me started with captains.
WS Rewards Sucked
The hardest achievement in the game (which was nerfed to begin with) was the least rewarding. Yes, Nolan Arenado and Rob Dibble were WS rewards. Wtf. The only good rewards are the current rewards, which are deGrom and Yordan in November. Woopdidoo.
Battle Royale and Events Are Useless
No rewards for either mode above 97 overall. Need I say more?
Gameplay Was Horrid
The hitting engine is more random, glitched, and flat-out mind-boggling than ever. Not to mention the game freezes half the time in the Home Screen, forcing you to close the game and open it up again, which is quite annoying.
Weekend Classic was a Hit
This was something to look forward to at the end of each Inning. The rewards were great, and although many people complained about matching with players way above their skill level, I found WC fun.
The Legend Pool was Great
We got plenty of new legends including Ted Williams, Roger Clemens, Manny Ramirez, Ben Zobrist, Jose Bautista, Steve Carlton, and more. It’s really fun to use all of these guys, but so many older legends have been forgotten this year, which kind of numbs the goodness here.
Diamond Quest Sever its Purpose
For what it is, the mode is fine. People may not like it, which is understandable, but it serves its purpose as a roguelike MLB game mode.
Final Rating: 5/10
The game wasn’t atrocious, but it wasn’t good either. There were some upsides this year but I think there were a few more downsides. Let me hear your thoughts but please keep it civilized. -
Overall, I liked the subcollections, but I would agree to have them more later in the year. Team Affinity was definitely subpar this year. The rewards were alright at best and they didnt really give you much to do. The online stuff I 100% agree with. I think the gameplay was the best weve ever had, but the glitches were horrible this year. Ive been playing since 22, and this was by far the best MLB the Show ive played. I would give it an 8/10
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I'm not going to go as deep as you did and mainly going to touch on criticisms.
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Why in the world is the Attribute wheel bug still a thing. Why does my 99 Tyler O'Neill show his live attributes in the wheel.
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How many years are we going to have to live with our logos disappearing?
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Why was the exploit stadium allowed to continue to exist and people allowed to blatantly abuse it? It basically made getting a 1/1 impossible for players to reach legitimately, especially for position players.
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Team Captains were a mess. 5 Teams didn't get a pitcher captain until November. The values of the boosts were all over the place and by mid year were unbalanced as some teams got massive boosts in cards.
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I get the concept behind the #1 fan icon but it basically handicapped fans of teams that had superstar players for a decade or two. The goal seemed so unreachable that I just quit trying.
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Legend players being fodder for live series cards. I am thinking of the likes of Greg Maddux and Stan Musial basically being stepping stones to get another Ketel Marte in the spooky program.
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I hate that their are two HOF players who only have a single gold card (Gary Carter and Olando Cepeda). I feel they should have found a spot to at least give them a low to mid 90 card partway through the season.
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That the Yankees have more 99s than the Diamondbacks, White Sox, Marlins, or Rockies have Diamond cards total.
Personal gripe here that many may not agree with.
- I hate that there is still not a single Lou Brock card with good speed or stealing attributes or that we have 2 Ozzie Smith cards both with sub 90 fielding. Taking away the each players defining skillset that got them into the HOF just so that they could have a moonshot card?
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TA was definitely a dud. I was left wanting more after getting the voucher maybe then using that player somehow in TA.
Online play, I haven't played it very much so I can't comment to much on it other than they need to remove the lewd pictures, icons and names. It's rated for everyone and I am going move on from this paragraph on that note.
I feel that gameplay in offline what I play all the time is bad. The ball to bat physics was atrocious. Gameplay was extremely inconsistent. The dotting by common, bronze and silver players was extremely annoying and got to be unplayable at times. I know they are going to rework the gameplay and ball to bat physics for next year. I hope they make good on their promise.
Legend pool was good except for the left off legends and the whole Ozzie debacle. Other it was solid.
I felt that the 99 dump happened way too soon, it made the game feel very stale very quickly.
Did we really need 2 99 Ketel Martes or 2 of any 99 player? How about the 99 Brian Reynolds who is considered a meta player but in real life far from it.
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Leaving online out of it unless it interfered with offline. I generally hate PvP and while The Show can be fun with an evenly matched opponent Its almost never something I would ever want to play.
The good:
-While many won't appreciate this because they didn't address issue xyz, but SDS clearly made changes throughout the year as a direct response to community feedback
-Further this, I feel SDS really mailed it in by October last year, this year we have had some strong content in October and November
-The program capper cards were really strong this year in general
-They did a good job of recognizing in season accomplishments with the milestone programs
-The xp needed to complete innings was balanced well
-The frequency of conquest maps was a nice surprise, last year they fell off a cliff after city connects were done
-The last couple mini seasons were quite good. Inked had us playing theme teams, great. Run it back had good rewards and Finest one is solid too. I have the option of playing that one and facing better quality teams, or run it back if I just want easy wins
-Finest was a big win compared to last year
-I liked the intent of captain cards being the TA cards. Honestly I always disliked the captain card art (sad its back) and if nothing else its more aesthetically pleasing this way
-On that note, card art team deserves the shout out as well.
-Moments hit the right balance of mostly optional, less frequently frustrating, with a lot of extreme moments (this is GOOD hard difficulty)
-While it was rocky early on, by the time we hit summer the game was very solidly free to play friendlyThe bad
-Team Affinity
-Power creep was absolutely awful in the second half. We skipped the upper 90s completely, and the cards scaled to absurd proportions. When Kyle Schwarber gets max contact its time to revise how end game cards are constructed
-Innings drops with very little offline content. I feel Weekend Classic is a large part of this.
-Diamond Quest was a swing and a miss. Its salvageable probably, but needs more player choice and protection against bad 3 inning RNG or a disconnect undoing 75 minutes of tedium to leave the player in no better state than when they started
-Conquest maps were too small.
-Mini seasons were less frequent, less rewarding until late in the year, and the stat tracking is still [censored]
-Spotlight just isnt the same as weekly drops. I liked the old structure of weekly TA with Monthly spotlight, but spotlight was asked to do a lot of the Friday program heavy lifting this year
-The card quality from offline modes was inferior to online modes, and generally not sellable except for DQ
-In general mode specific cards should be phased out as the season goes on.
-Too many cards competing for stubs. Buying so many cards off the marketboard really drained my desire to play the game for a while. I could get stubs, sure, but its just not a satisfying way to acquire cards
-Too many wasted programs. Rivalry week with only two cards? Whats the point of even having the program then?
-Theme teams mishandled, partially because of the TA structure. In general the card volume should be somewhere in between the last two years and 2023, if not at 2023 levels
-Legends also mishandled. Why was there no 95 Royals Beltran? A large portion of players never got to use a diamond of one of the big legend additions. A Reggie Sanders for teams other than the Reds? And the current legends fared little better. Getting an early card was a bad thing in most cases because it meant you weren't getting anything in the mid 90s.Overall it was a step up from 2024, but from an offline perspective its still a big drop off from a more content rich version like 2023. I don't see why we cant have sets and seasons gone, but without the loss of content and without innings lacking any of the excitement of seasons.
7.5/10
