izigame.me

This review provides my opinions mostly in comparison to SMB3, unless stated otherwise. Also, they reflect the sentiments of a person who does absolutely no online play. I only play Franchise locally and Exhibition locally with friends and family.
Pros
1. I appreciate the improved fluidity of player movements. This makes the game "feel" more lifelike. This comment should not be construed as referencing the cartoonish versus realistic nature of the animations.
2. I think the player traits combined with the new chemistry adds an extra layer of management complexity that is more entertaining and stimulating. I thought it was also interesting that a player's traits may be separate from their chemistry attribute. So, to maximize the benefit on their trait(s), they need other teammates to have the appropriate chemistry attribute.
3. There are a lot more traits. This really adds a lot of fun variety and opportunities for created teams and players.
4. When giving a player name, it now has a huge dictionary of pronounceable names to choose from. This is super cool, though not new to sports games in general. Sadly, there still isn't a PC sports game in all of existence that can say my last name: Youngblood. Come on people... How hard is this???
5. The colors pop, and there's more dynamic range in the images. Depending on the quality of your display, this may or may not be as much of a positive for you. On my monitor, the stadiums and scenery look beautiful.
6. The new stadiums are cool, and it's really neat that they added a top-down pic of each stadium, showing you the fence line and distances.
7. The addition to allow you to get first chance to keep your players is the BIGGEST improvement to the game. I hated that SMB3 made you randomly lose players to free agency between franchise seasons. To determine the price at which the players will stay, they've implemented a loyalty system. Random managerial events between games can make this go up or down for players, based on choices you make. You're given one of two choices during each "event". Whichever one you pick will cause the loyalty change stated. For example, you might be forced to choose between lowering one of two players loyalty. Basically, pick someone to upset. Alternatively, you might choose to raise the loyalty of one player or another. Basically, pick someone to make happier. Lastly, you might be forced to raise one player and lower another player loyalty (for this you pick which one to hurt and which one to favor). At the end of the year, higher loyalty lets you re-sign the player for less money. One thing I would like added to the loyalty minigame is two configurable meters, similar to the ego settings:
7.1) A a config for the frequency of managerial "events". If set to 99, managerial choices happen ALOT. If 1, they don't happen at all or almost never. And, everything else in between.
7.2) Add a config for the degree that the loyalty rises and falls. If set to 99, the positive and negative loyalty changes are huge (25-50 point swings). If 1, then the loyalty changes are tiny, no more than 1-3 point change on a single event.
8. This is not a change from SMB3, but I REALLY LIKE that you can continue to modify every aspect of every player as much or as little as you want. I read one professional game review that wants Metalhead/EA to put limits on player ratings based on pre-defined player templates (imagine something like NBA2K MyPlayer and having max ratings based on the position of the player you're creating). Metalhead, PLEASE NEVER DO THIS restriction. I like full customizability. I hope it will always let me create a superhero, compete loser, and anything in between if I want to.
Cons
1. The user interface looks fine, but navigating the menus, grids, and players is considerably more clunky. The amount of button presses to make changes is a lot more than SMB3. This was a really poor decision by the creators. Someone needs to have their bonus withheld for a quarter or two (unless the same person also put in the feature to let you resign your players in offseason, then I'll be forgiving). Previously, it had one of the easiest interfaces that I had used in a sports game.
I'm of the persuasion that the UI doesn't need to be drastically changed between releases. Focus on real features. Not eye candy. I absolutely will not slam Metalhead for "only a roster update" complaint for not fixing what is not broken. Create a stable, fast, easy-to-use UI and keep it for a decade(s) for all I care. Spend your energy adding real value in other places.
2. I don't care for the new line drive camera angle. I liked the old camera angles fine. This would really be better off as a configuration to accommodate different preferences.
3. No instant replay was added. It's 2023... shaking my head... Don't just add instantly replay. Let me save and accumulate them for creating a highlight video later.
4. No create-a-stadium feature. Worse, they charge extra for new ones. The smell of EA is all over this scheme. I imagine creating individual stadiums takes a decent amount of work, in which case I would suggest offloading that to us (the customers) who would have fun with it :)
Changes that I don't care one way or the other about.
1. The batting feels easier at higher Ego settings than SMB3. It might be my imagination, but it seems that way. Another observation is that if the game is close, the computer seems to try harder. So, even if I bump up my batting ego high (70+) and have the pitching ego around 30, and I don't score more much, the PC might starting beating my pitcher up. Variety in location and pitch type really helps mitigate this, but just be wary.
2. Some people have strong opinions about this, but the player head and body shapes make no difference to me between SMB3 and 4. To me, the differences between these 2 recent iterations isn't nearly as much as the earlier versions of the game that I thought were hideous.
3. I don't care at all about the legendary MLB players and may never use them. I like that this is a fictional world with fictional players.
4. The new draft mechanism is interesting in a gee-wiz way, but I don't know that I'll ever actually use it. Others love it, though.
5. Modifying the scaling of the player-to-field ratio compared to SMB3 is just something to get used to. I've noticed that slightly more ground balls make it past my infield, but it doesn't negatively impact my experience. Dives don't cover as much ground either. This added touch of realism might even be a slight positive for me. I could stop almost all ground balls before.
Miscellaneous notes:
1. My PC has a 5950x CPU (16 core), 11GB 1080Ti, 64GB of 3600MHz RAM, and Samsung 980 PRO NVMe SSD. The game runs buttery smooth. I have no screen tearing and no microstutters. It's capped at 60fps, but it stays there the entire time I'm playing, occasionally showing 59. The performance problems listed in other reviews do not show up on my build at all. My monitor is IPS, GSYNC compatible, and 144Hz. I could almost be persuaded that the game was engineered to run on machine specifically, it runs so well.
2. Regardless of whether or not you've played prior versions, the difficulty mechanism in this game continues to be wonderful. You have such granular control, and the observed changes make sense. You don't feel like the differences in difficulty are the computer cheating. Instead, you just have to actually have better coordination to succeed. If frustrates me to no end on RTS games that they raise the difficulty by letting the PC gather, build, and have better specs than you, instead of just playing smarter than you. Other games should take note from this company on their difficulty system. Imagine a 1st person or 3rd person game where you could directly configure things like damage dealt, damage received, run speed, jump height, enemy shot accuracy, etc... all on scales of 1-99. This is what they have for baseball. Cool!