Powerful Pro Yakyuu 2024-2025 First Impressions

The new Pawapuro is finally here

The latest Japanese baseball video game blockbuster is here. Perpetual high schooler and Caillou lookalike Pawapuro-kun has returned to our Nintendos and PlayStations, with the first mainline release since April 21st, 2022.

This game is mostly about looking back: It’s a big 30th anniversary celebration, with a mode for watching all the old intro movies, and a new emphasis on historical NPB players. For better or worse, most of the new modes are different kinds of remakes:

  • One of the Success Modes is a remake of the 12 NPB team Success mode from Pawapuro 2010. The other Success Mode is timeslipped 50 years into the future, though that’s mostly about recontextualizing old Success Mode characters into a fun new setting.
  • The “Taiketsu! Legend Battle” mode is mostly a remake of a similar mode in Pawapuro 10 and 11 in which you face off against legendary real-life players one at bat at a time in a gauntlet.
  • This game’s version of the popular Pawafes / Pawafestival mode is “Pawafes Adventure,” which is similar to Jikkyou Powerful Pro Yakyuu Heroes for the 3DS.
  • Another new feature is “Pawapuro Collection,” a gallery mode for unlocking and viewing art and cinematics from the old games.

I’m having a lot of fun with the game, but it is not a must-buy if you already own one of the last two titles. I need to spend more time with the new Pawafes mode, but the online consensus is disappointment. Instead of a snappy, replayable roguelite, this is a slower-paced mode that’s only minigames and boss battles. The minigames are things like fielding drills, “bunt golf” where you aim a bunt towards a golf hole, calling ball or strike as quickly as you can, and an insanely difficult basestealing minigame. It’s not bad, but it’s a shame it had to replace the universally popular old Pawafes.

The Legend Battle mode has kicked my butt on normal difficulty so far. Like most of the other special modes, you create and develop a character, but the gameplay is one-on-one battles against former NPB stars. If you’re a batter, hits are wins, outs make you lose a life. If you’re a pitcher, outs are wins, and hits will ding you. You only start off with three lives, so you’re being asked to consistently succeed in at-bat after at-bat. And starting off with minimal abilities… I’m sure I’ll figure out how to get better at it eventually.

Exhibition (“Taisen”) mode may actually have my favorite improvements so far. Previously, your choices for Exhibition mode teams were only the 12 NPB teams (plus All-Star teams) plus any teams you created yourself in Arrange mode. Now, you get Legend squads for each NPB team, plus for three defunct NPB teams, and then 14 Success Mode teams. I love having easier representation from the game’s fictional roster available to pick up and play.

There are a ton of new stadiums also, though I need to unlock most of them still to see what they are. The biggest additions are the new Fighters home stadium, Es Con Field Hokkaido, and the historical Osaka Field, which has an interesting outfield wall curve that’s low in center and high in the corners.

Shohei Ohtani is very much in the game, if you’re into that. As are Yu Darvish, Randy Bass, and 80% of any historical Japanese players you could have ever heard of. Hideo Nomo is a no-show, as is Warren Cromartie, but it’s an impressive roster of former NPB players.

I have yet to dig into the Success Modes this year, so we’ll see how that one hits me. I’m very happy to be back into a new Pawapuro game, though I feel like the next Pawapuro game will likely be more exciting. This game still released only on the PlayStation 4 and the Nintendo Switch, which are definitively last-gen consoles at this point. Trailers for the new Prospi look like a new generation of baseball game, so there’s I’m really more excited to see what that game is like later this year. And sure, Pawapuro‘s cartoon style doesn’t exactly need ray tracing and 4K graphics, but this game didn’t push the envelope in terms of modes or content either. It’s still better than your average annual The Show release, but I’m interested to see what they’ll do for a Pawapuro 2026.

Polar Pete’s Pronunciation

I enjoyed this Pete Alonso clip from the MLB All-Star Red Carpet. Pete wanted to express admiration for Shōta Imanaga. But he flubbed the delivery and accidentally revealed too much about his favorite genre of manga.

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