Pro Yakyū Spirits 2024-2025, the NPB licensed realistic baseball simulation title from Konami, may have seen a delay, but the game was in full force at Tokyo Game Show 2024. Celebrating 20 years since the inception of the series, how has this game been shaping up? Well, we got our hands on a demo build of the game multiple times over the course of the show and are here to tell you what we experienced. Let’s get into it.
Note
Before Tokyo Game Show 2024 kicked off, I was having a back and forth with Konami PR about several different things, including trying to get an interview with the some folks involved with the development of Spirits or Power Pros. I wasn’t able to do that on site during the show, but there are still some avenues that I’m exploring. Also, I was unable to get any of my own direct feed gameplay footage, so everything you are seeing here comes from various trailers that have been released up to this point.
TGS 2024 Booth
Konami had a somewhat reserved section of their booth on the far left side featuring their baseball ambassador Shohei Ohtani and logos for Power Pros, Pro Spirits and the newly announced eBaesball: MLB Pro Spirit. Even though it was smaller than their sections for Metal Gear and Silent Hill, the area had huge wall art of Ohtani as both a pitcher and a batter. They even had a smaller wall that showed off the key art for MLB Pro Spirit. It was cool to see.
The inside of the booth featured seven (maybe eight) playable demo stations. These were all set up to be played with two players, though fans could opt to play by themselves. If you didn’t come with a friend, the staff, either one of the female or male booth companions, would play with you. I played with the staff twice and by myself once.
In terms of merch, Konami was handing out some 30/20th anniversary stickers for Power Pros/Pro Spirits and MLB Pro Spirit. I got a few of each.
Gameplay & Demo
As for the demo itself, visitors were able to play either a one or two player Exhibition game. I played with Konami staff twice and on my own once. In total, I spent somewhere around 30-40 minutes with the game. Each session offered two innings of play. All of the NPB teams were available, including the Pacific League, Central League and Japan All-Star teams. I opted to play my favorite team, the Seibu Lions, Chiba Lotte Marines and the Oryx Buffaloes. All of the stadiums were also on offer, so I checked out Seibu’s Belluna Dome, Zozo Marine Stadium and Hotto Motto Field, the latter of which I played in the rain.
Gameplay in Pro Spirits 2024-2025 will feel familiar to those that have played games in the series or other simulation based baseball. Most of the time, the play sessions would kick off with auto-fielding enabled, but I did get to play defense manually once. Controls feel identical to past Spirits games, which I think is a good thing. Pitching has you choose the placement of your pitch with the stick and the press of X. As the pitcher is winding up and delivering, a small cursor appears and shrinks around the the selected area. If you press X at the before the shrinking cursor disappears, you’ll deliver your desired pitch. For batting, a bat cursor appears on the screen and, of course, you have to make contact with the incoming ball. Power swings can be initiated with the tap of R1. Again, if you’ve played a sim-style baseball game over the years, you can pick this up in no time.
Visuals & Presentation
Graphics in the game are top notch. Players look more lifelike than ever and a ton of detail has went into making. The rain effects were particularly impressive. On the close-up shots, you can see water beading up on helmets and also hitting the “camera” from time to time. Small things, like mud and dirt kicking up when the players are adjusting their feet for swings and puddles forming were also great to see. According to the booth staff, the game runs at 60 frames per second at 1080p - 4K will not be supported.
Despite the high level of visual fidelity, I did notice a few things in my time with the game. While the animations generally looked great, sometimes they would appear to stutter. You could see this in the short cutscenes before batting and, to some extent, with the pitchers. Just to be clear, this did not impact the gameplay at all, but it’s something that you may notice. Also, it is important to note that this game is still in development. Hopefully these kind of things will be fixed when the game releases.
eBaseball: MLB Pro Spirit
The start of Tokyo Game Show 2024 brought the announcement of of eBaseball: MLB Pro Spirit to both iOS and Android. I was on the show floor as the game was announced, though, during the first part of the announcement, I was actually playing Pro Spirits 2024-2025 for the first time. I’m glad to see Konami do more with the Spirit(s) series outside of Japan. As much as I enjoy Power Pros, I think attaching the MLB license to their more realistic series is a smart move for fans outside of Japan. This is just my take, but I feel that more baseball fans in North America, Central America, etc., prefer a realistic take on the sport. Of course, that’s not everyone, and it’ll be interesting to see how the game is received once it’s released.
When it’s all said and done, I am a bit disappointed that this is a mobile only game, but these kind of games are likely more profitable than something as grandiose as Spirits on PS5 and Steam. Regardless, if you’re into this sort of thing, MLB Pro Spirit releases this Fall.
Conclusion
Pro Spirits 2024-2025 is, overall, shaping up to be a great sequel previous entries in the series. The game looks fantastic despite a few hiccups, but it’s still an absolute blast to play. As of right now, we’re under a month away from release of the final build, which we’ll be covering fully. There’s still quite. bit more to say, but we’ll leave it here today. Until the full release, we hope that this has given you a good look at the game and Konami’s baseball presence at TGS 2024.
But let’s turn things over to you. Are you looking forward to Pro Spirits 2024-25? What platform do you plan on picking it up on? Do you have any thoughts on MLB Pro Spirit? Sound off with any and all comments down below. We’d love to hear from you.
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