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
Gameplay is where I kinda have an issue. First big issue is no CPU walks. Even if you foul off pitches, it's very difficult to get the CPU to give up a walk. Most major league pitchers will miss their spots on occasion, so this is a big flaw. Walks are a big part of baseball.
Second, I can't quite describe it, but hitting is very different from Pawapuro. It's nearly impossible to hit for power using a normal cursor and digipad control(which is how any hardcore Pawapuro player hits). Normal cursor is very unforgiving in this series, which is why they have the lock-on feature. Maybe it's just me, but I really don't even want to humor the lock-on batting. It just seems cheap. Lock-on level 1 isn't too cheap, so it's a small gripe.
I don't know why, but defense in Pawapuro has truly degenerated in quality since 11. Seems like defense has become less responsive and more clunky like Pawapuro 8 era gameplay. 11 Ketteiban is by far the smoothest of all the games because of all the different animations and overall fluidity of the motions. PawaMajor 2 defense isn't terrible, but it's definitely not the best ever. Throws from the outfield are particularly unresponsive.
Strike zone is way too big. This leads to the first problem discussed with the lack of walks. It would be nice if there were varying strike zones with each game played.
Stats for players and accuracy of rosters are way off. It's to the point that it truly takes away from the game. No edit mode for Japanese fans is inexcusable.
There is only one story in Success Mode and it sucks. They went from making Success players way too easy to way too hard. Way to find balance, Konami. Even if you're an experienced player like myself, you'll make guys with stats around EECCD or 85 MPH D control and C stamina. Which means what? You won't be able to remake any decent players that Konami screwed up. Hurray! In all honesty, I would've rather had the super easy Success Mode.
Completely unnecessary to make Arrange teams in Season Mode cost 100,000 points(50 full games played). It's like the goal of the development team is to piss people off as much as possible. In that regard, they are succeeding in a big way.
Lastly, I'll address the big change to the series in the facial graphics. After playing for a few days, I'm really wishing for Pawapuro-kun's simple appearance back. Why? Well, the hair in this game sucks. You'll also find a lot of guys looking identical. If that's going to be the case, I'd rather just have the traditional Pawapuro-kun characters. Having facial features and hair is just another thing to worry about when you're creating or editing guys. No thanks.
Overall, I give it a score of 8 out of 10, so I guess my review isn't too far off from the Famitsu guys. If this were following Pawapuro 10 or 11, I'd give it a 7. Since it's following such terrible releases, I'm giving it an 8. There really needs to be online play after this game. This is the online era and there is no excuse for a game like this to have no online at all.