I am a big MLB the Show guy but I feel like this year's format got me detached from it relatively quickly. I haven't played it in almost a month and that feeling is incredible. I may have gotten 90+ hours of gameplay but we can ignore that because it is mainly due to how grindy this is. I have felt no desire to come in and get cards when every good card is seemingly behind a paywall. Genuinely thinking of just not buying next year. I only got it this year because David Wright was in the game (he is also basically paywalled).

This year's edition added a mode focused on the history and moments of Negro League players, which was awesome, informative, and immersive. Also, scouting updates to Franchise and March to October modes, as well as the ability to do more than one season with the latter made both modes playable again for the first time in years.

However, the Diamond Dynasty mode was primarily ruined by 99's and moving away from immersion. This year, the mode started the season out with 99-rated players, essentially eliminating the power curve structure that had defined the mode since '19. This also devalued the current player collection as well as Team Affinity, which had been the mode's staples for developing a team. In other words, the long, fun grind of six months was removed and shortened to just a week or so. From the first month of the season on, the only massive improvements to a squad were expensive cards found in super-rare "Chase" packs, limiting the game to one for those willing to splash cash on stubs.

Also, this year seemed to over rely on new card types without any basis in historic accomplishment or statistic. The reliance on 99's also undermined a new change in the addition of "captains" who were specific player cards that would boost other player attributes depending on your DD team composition meeting certain conditions such as using players from the same team or same era. However, these cards didn't have much of an impact with the already over-powered 99's and some of the conditions for "captaincy" didn't make sense as some of the best captain cards were focused on arbitrary attribute points, where the boost was given to those with 99 instead of 98 durability. And with the shift to completely made-up player card types, whether a player had 99 instead of 98 in an attribute was completely at the whim of the development team and broke the immersion of the mode. You might as well have played a non-licensed fictional baseball game instead.

Simply the best baseball game on the market. There’s a ton of content through 5 main modes. I sink almost all my time into Diamond Dynasty, which while the set rotation can get pretty annoying, it’s also pretty addictive. The MLB season has ended so there’s no more roster updates, but that adds a pretty fun economy with investing to it, which you then use to spend on the best players. Besides that I’ve only played the franchise mode, which would seem boring since there’s not really any gameplay, but it’s a really addicting side mode that you can easily sink hours and hours into trading and simulating seasons. I have a hard time giving it something like an 8 just because it’s a yearly sports game that’s only relevant for 9 months, but it can be a blast.

List of things I don't like:
Sometimes the camera angle will change while playing a fielder just messing up which direction you're running.
As a baserunner you will randomly get tagged out for leading off (even without leading off) with no warning.
Navigating the menus suck, the jukebox music selection sucks, and managing your collections/inventory sucks.
Sometimes your uniform settings for your Diamond Dynasty team will reset to defaults along with clearing out all logos.
Graphics SUUUUUUCK.
The commentators get really annoying really fast saying the same 5 things over and over.

List of things I do like:
Pitching/batting feels great.
Lots of options for customization for your players.

Video game reviews are completely subjective, as is this review.

I am not a sports person (as you could probably tell because of me being on this site), but I saw that Nintendo Switch Online was giving a trial of this game and since I had just completed another game, I decided why the hell not and played about an hour of this game. I can truly say I don't get this game. I probably wouldn't say it's a bad game, but I had little to no enjoyment in the brief time I played the game. The game made me want to play Mario Baseball so I guess it gets a half-star for that.