Super Mega Baseball 4 Review (DegenerateWeeb (iAmBadBeNicePls))
TLDR: I'm having a lot of fun – 8/10 experience for me and better than Super Mega Baseball 3 in my opinion, but there’s improvements to be made for sure. I’m currently exclusively playing offline modes, I’ve seen some bugs in online play from other players (*cough* basically Angel Hernandez behind the plate *cough* – though no notable bugs in offline play from my experience).
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I'm not really good at writing reviews, so I figure I'll offer my personal opinions and comparison to Super Mega Baseball 2 and 3, which I've invested quite a bit of time in. The devs have a done a good job of improving past titles post release, so hopefully any issues currently present do get fixed quickly.
- Overall gameplay - very similar to Super Mega Baseball 3. Some differences that are worth pointing out though: 1) I feel like there’s more offense than previous games (at the same ego/difficulty I hit better and pitch worse than previous titles – and this is in spite of what I feel like is a bigger strike zone in Super Mega Baseball 4). 2) Fielding seems more realistic than previous titles (not as many insane highlight reel diving plays in the infield). 3) AI seem to take less time between pitches than previous titles (I’ve had to step out between pitches more).
- Sounds are… different. The bat to ball sound is better in some aspects and worse in other aspects (the hits sound more “wooden” but it’s harder to discern hard hit balls since they added some other sound effects to the bat/ball contact). Crowd and announcer sounds are significantly better. Umpire sounds are "better" but more annoying than in previous titles (I even went as far turning the umpire sounds off - one of the umps cackles like a witch). The addition of varied in-game music is a nice touch.
- Animations are significantly improved compared to previous titles (e.g., home run trots, pitching animations, player facial animations). Overall graphics quality moved laterally; some ballparks look significantly better, some feel unchanged, other ballparks look significantly worse (Swagger Center went from one of my favourite ball parks to being an absolute eyesore in Super Mega Baseball 4). Player faces look much better, but player bodies look much worse (everyone looks like they’re playing beer league baseball, emphasis on the beer). Optimization seems better, in Super Mega Baseball 3 I had to play at 1440p to achieve a good frame rate, but in Super Mega Baseball 4, using the same hardware I can play fine if not better at 4K.
- I'm loving the new roster building features compared to previous titles. Player chemistry, the choice to include real life former players, and shuffle draft are great additions. I kind of wish they added the “Shohei Ohtani” rule though – you can’t use two-way players as both a hitter and pitcher in the same game in Super Mega Baseball 4, which seems odd since two-way players were supposed to be a big deal in this game...
- I haven't touched any of the player nor team customisation features just yet; I’ve been told they’ve made no improvements in this regard when compared to previous titles, but I also personally thought that previous titles had great customization options already.
- User interface is just as terrible on PC as it has been in previous games. The in-game font choice (that they use for stuff like home run distance and pitch selection) is absolute eye cancer. They somehow downgraded on font even worse than Super Mega Baseball 3.