Prospi‘s dramatic next-gen foray is here
Pro Yakyuu Spirits 2024-2025 is the latest Konami baseball game, the first with a realistic graphical style since 2021. The game came out at midnight October 17th in Japan. This game comes with a new engine built on top of Unreal, and a release only on PS5 and PC. The trailers wowed even outside the normal niche of weirdos like me who play import sports games. Does the final release live up to the trailer hype?
Graphics
This is a clear step beyond any previous baseball game, graphically. The lighting magic of the latest Unreal Engine is probably the single biggest element. But there is a lot of care and detail put into things I never would have looked for in a baseball game before. A double against the outfield wall will leave a temporary dent in the padding. You can see specific jerseys hung up on the walls in the tunnels behind the dugouts at Belluna Dome. Players are constantly kicking up small bits of dirt.
Some effects are maybe a little overdone: The players sure seem to get sweaty, evoking the PS3 era of super-shiny surfaces. Rainy games result in visible puddles. They gotta pay NPB groundskeepers more if this is what they’re dealing with over there.
The overall player models always look great, but player likenesses vary in quality, of course. The guys on Samurai Japan have every pore in the right place. Others, especially western-born players not named Gregory Polanco, are clearly missing facescans. The quality is always at least good, but the inconsistency is noticeable between the best and the rest.
The player body proportions are noticeably better than The Show. All body types are represented, and everyone I know well looks right, from tall, broad-shouldered Ohtani to the teensy Yoshida.
It won’t be fair for a variety of reasons, but I plan to do a post comparing the likenesses between Prospi and The Show. The Show has to cover at least three times as many players, and the players who span both games are almost always more important to Prospi than The Show, like Domingo Santana and Gregory Polanco. And The Show has to run on PS4, Xbox One, and Switch. But still, the science has to be done.
Animations don’t look much different from previous Prospi games to my eyes. Batters will still go from ultra-smooth, artfully crafted walkup animations into jitter-y, sudden swings. Baserunners can look like sped-up old 1920s newsreel footage sometimes. Some of this I suspect is in service of responsive gameplay, but suffice to say I don’t see a massive improvement on animations.
Sound
I’ve been really impressed by the sound so far. Playing on a stereo system with the PS5, the glove pop after pitches immediately grabbed me. The bat cracks are great too, and the crowd noise amps up appropriately for long fly balls.
I’m not fluent enough to notice what impact the addition of A.I. has had on the commentary. It sounds like baseball video game commentary to me, with the usual little intonation mismatches between a player name and the action being talked about. Ohtani! goes into the windup. The pitch is hit! And it’s caught by, Kondoh.
Gameplay
This feels very similar to the same Prospi gameplay we’ve had for over a decade now, which works for me. I had no trouble getting situated and performing just as well or poorly as usual. The default settings are similar to Pawapuro, but with two-tap pitching, and every pitcher has three extra low-quality breaking balls in their arsenal for some reason.
There are more control presets now. Previously there were three: “My settings” to use whatever you configure yourself, Normal, and Pro. Now they’ve added settings for Casual, Prospi A (the mobile game), and Pawapuro. The latter two use control schemes and settings to closely match how those games play. Nice friendly addition for the people who just want it to play like the other games.
The camera angle for fielding is different, and my gameplay video above has a few laughers where my fielder runs right past the ball. So I’ve got to spend more time getting used to it, I reckon.
Modes
I haven’t had time yet to dig into any of the modes in detail, partially because the servers were off until today.
The quality remains to be seen, but the quantity is better than your average Prospi game. Unlimited length Pennant mode is a huge win to start. The high school management mode Hakkyu no Kiseki is very promising, since it appears to be a direct match for a great Pawapuro mode, Eikan Nine. Grand Prix, Spirits mode, and myBallpark all offer different version of gacha-ish progression that could be fun to dive into. Then MyPlayer is a beautiful vision of what Road to the Show could be.
Sports games have gotten me used to the idea that the first big new iteration on a new generation of consoles will have fewer modes than normal. That doesn’t seem to be the case here.
The little things
- On the game’s first startup, you will get jump scared with a language options menu that includes English! But don’t get too excited. Only a few things are translated: the main menu, the digital instruction manual, and about 30% of the UI during gameplay. Nothing that makes a huge difference, but better than nothing.
- Currently there are no alternate jerseys in the game (summer jerseys, throwbacks, alt colors, etc.). Each team gets home and away jerseys, and that’s it. Disappointing and a step back from previous games in the series. Possible this gets added for their 2025 update before next year?
- The roster of OBs (Old Boys, former NPB players) looks a little light. All the Japanese players currently in MLB are included, though they’re all encased in amber with the attributes they had when they last played in NPB. For Darvish this was 12 years ago, so both his attributes and player model look a bit odd now. Ohtani is an exception: He gets a low-powered last year in NPB version and a separate, current day, fully actualized Ohtani on the Samurai Japan roster. Ichiro is in the game, and also has two separate versions, basically a young NPB version and an older peak MLB version. The other OBs are mostly current coaches (fun to see wrinkly Okada hitting bombs).
So, can I buy it on Steam or not?
There were no last-minute changes to regional availability for the game on Steam. The game is only available on Steam in Asia, basically.
I live in the US of A and haven’t tried to find a way to play this game on PC yet. I have heard of others successfully playing the game by using a VPN or a friend in the right region to set up a new account, buy the game in that region, then hand the credentials over to let them play it here. You don’t have to appear in the correct region to download or play the game, only to purchase it.
To my understanding, your account has to be native to a region in Asia. At least in my experience, using a VPN with an existing American Steam account isn’t sufficient to let you buy the game.
Does it run on Steam Deck?
I haven’t been able to try myself due to the above, but yes. It sounds like generally it’s best to change graphics settings to Low, but after that performance is good.
YouTube Viewing Guide
- Pro Yakyuu Spirits 2024-2025 Gameplay – Already linked above, but this is the big one for this week. Yakult Swallows vs. Hanshin Tigers at Koushien.
- Pro Yakyuu Spirits 2024-2025 CPU vs. CPU Gameplay – Going up on Saturday, so it may not be accessible as you read this. It’s Samurai Japan vs. the Pacific League All-Stars. Ohtani vs. Roki Sasaki.
- Pro Yakyuu Netsusta 2007 (PS2) CPU vs. CPU Gameplay – I love these Namco PS2 games, and this one’s a little hard to find YouTube footage of. But still not sure why this is getting so many views on week one. The children yearn for Namco to get back into the baseball game biz.
- Backyard Baseball ’97 Gameplay – Here’s the other big release of the past week, the rerelease of Backyard Baseball on Steam. It is exactly the original game, with different logos in the opening cinematic. It’s still a cool game, though a bit slow and simple. Amazing characters and vibes though.