GREAT ass baseball game. I was genuinely surprised with how much i liked the game. Batting feels crisp, fielding and pitching also feels great, graphic is also good and optimized, the sound for the hitting and the ball getting into the mitt is *chef's kiss*. There are a couple of game modes here that play a lot so i'll be talking about that.

Spirits mode, which is a poker game mode that requires you to match cards and getting the best hand possible to obtain points. These points can be used to build a player, which includes obtaining skills and improving their stats. The player you make can be used in the Star Player mode. You can make GODLY players here, the highest i made was a 800 star pitcher so yeah if you want players who's on crack make it here. Check out guides on youtube for making players here and also search up awakening players on Spirits mode.

Hakkyu no Kiseki is a unique game mode to PBS 2024-2025. It's a game mode where you become a baseball coach to a highschool you make at the start of the game mode. You can choose what region your highschool is in, and depending on the region you might have to fight harder for that Koshien spot since some region have more highschools than other regions. Between tournaments and games, you can train your students with cards. This might get confusing but essentially you can choose up to 3 cards to train your students. There are variations like 3 cards on regular days and 5 cards on a training camp which usually happens a week or two before summer koshien and after new year (i think) and these training camps increases the exp gained from your cards. And by picking 2 or more card of the same type (for example 2 batting card in one session), you'll get bonus exp for said training per card of the same type. You can also adjust what each of your students should be training on (batting, pitching etc), depending on what training menu your students are on, they might or might not benefit from the cards you choose. Once the summer koshien ends, your 3rd year students will retire and they can get drafted by NPB (this happens in December). If they get drafted, you can use them in Star Player mode as the character you control or as an NPC! Pretty cool. The more prestigious your highschool is, the easier it is for you to nurture players to the highest level. TMI but the darker your field is the more exp the students gain from the training, the field level is tied directly to your school's reputation. There's a lot more here but I yapped too much about it already lol. Great game mode, had a great time managing my team.

Star Player mode is just your standard career mode. You can use the character you made on Spirits Mode, your students from HnK mode, or make a brand new character for that playthrough. There are some interesting mechanics within Star Player mode like dating and friendship among other things. Dating is self-explanatory, you can choose between 3 girls to date (note: if your character is 17 years old, you wouldn't be able to date, buy cars and apartments). Friendship is a system where you can make friends with other players, and by completing the friendship gauge you can either get bonus exp for your training or obtain one of his skills. By the end of the season (which is around December) new players are going to be drafted, where you can decide if the players you make on Spirits mode or graduated students on HnK get drafted or not. You can choose up to 100 players, you won't be able to choose what team they're going to be on and you also won't be able to control the drafted players at all. Still, I think it's pretty fun to go against my students or the characters I made through gambling for hours LOL.

I honestly think there aren't that much bad thing i could say about the game except that there's no english localization (which is understandable). I genuinely love this game and i'd recommend it to anyone who love baseball. This game genuinely fills out the draught of baseball game on PC and i'm all here for it. spent 30+ hours on my first 2 days of getting this game, if that means anything LOL. No P2W as far as i experienced on those 3 game modes.

100/10 for me. Also use OCR, it'll help out a TON in terms of translating majority of the game's content for you (which is on a text box). Check out the channel "Checked Swing" on youtube, helped me out a lot with setting up the game and understanding the available game modes.