This is a site about Pro Yakyu (Japanese Baseball), not about who the next player to go over to MLB is. It's a community of Pro Yakyu fans who have come together to share their knowledge and opinions with the world. It's a place to follow teams and individuals playing baseball in Japan (and Asia), and to learn about Japanese (and Asian) culture through baseball.
It is my sincere hope that once you learn a bit about what we're about here that you will join the community of contributors.
Michael Westbay
(aka westbaystars)
Founder
- I first played through the tutorials to catch any gameplay differences, but mostly to rack up some VP points. I only did the pitching and batting tutorials. The actual mechanical difference I've noticed with the gamepad is that holding down X when pitching doesn't change effectiveness/use more stamina; you have to press up on the right stick now.
- Pitching is a lot tougher. The timing to throw a perfect pitch is much more strict, and pitches that a pitcher has a poor rating in are even harder to throw with good control. I like this - it makes a guy's 6th or 7th pitch just a show-me pitch to change things up a little bit, but shouldn't be relied on.
- The game looks awesome. My 3 innings are in the Nagoya Dome, and it looks pretty fantastic. The colors are bright, the textures are, well, more textured (turf and dirt), and the crowd is much more lively. People walk around the outfield stands, there are flags waving, etc. The Nagoya Dome is one of the stadiums that has a wall behind home plate high enough that you don't have to stare at miserable looking fans (ala MLB2k7), so I'm spared that for now. We'll see how it is in other stadiums. However, the in-stadium announcement booth is there, and you can see about 6 people behind tinted glass, and they are detailed quite nicely.
- Players faces are great. As far as I can tell, everyone on both the Dragons and Fighters were made very well. There are no horrible burn victims (again, MLB 2K7) or distortions.
- The camera angles on defense do feel a bit different, but I like them so far. When a ball is hit into the corner, the camera rotates a bit, so it's a bit disorienting control-wise, but I think I'll get used to it quickly.
- The cheers, for the Dragons at least, are the same as PSY3. I was thinking there might be a higher quality synth trumpet or something, but no such luck.
- The umpires call strikes much more emphatically.
- Batters jacknife out of the way of pitches down an in, and run backwards, almost Derek Jeter-ish.
- A player argued a called third strike. The facial expressions did a great job showing his anger.
- The caught stealing reply is AWESOME. I'm going to keep sending my runners so I can see that a few more times.
- I hit a 3R HR with Woods, one of those no-doubters that the camera cuts away on. That felt nice. Nice camera angles on him rounding the bases, hi-fives in the dugout, etc.
- Tanishige hit a 2-out RBI double. The next guy grounded out to end the inning, and as the players ran off the field, they showed Tanishige getting hi-fives from his teammates, even though it was 2 plays ago. That's pretty cool.
- There are some frame rate issues, which I was not expecting from a PYS game. It's not too bad at all, not nearly as bad at MLB 2K7, but still a bit annoying.
I really love a game that plays so great out of the box, without having to spend 6 hours messing with sliders.
That's all I can think of for now. I might post some more later.