If you don't have some version of OOTP from the last 10 years, this is too good of a log cabin game not to have in your library. Especially when it goes on deep sale. I think it's worth it either way but I also think I like reading a baseball almanac better than I like playing video games. Internet is like $60/month these days and over $100 if you count your phone. This new version is starting to implement more advanced batted ball stats and isn't on the level of stathead or baseball savant but it's a full almanac of all the counting stats in MLB history that you can take offline. Is that worth it? If you only used the Internet for reading historical baseball stats, could you potentially replace your Internet bill with OOTP? Don't just take this as a joke, what are we really giving up any given day here, the X website? The 1000s of games I will never play on my wish list? Walter McCarty is not DMing you and if he does he will be gray and old.

Game's good. Possibly that good, but it's also good for me. It fulfills so many expectations about hobbies and leisure and gaming, and I haven't even played FTP leagues yet. I like the new ratings model enough to forget about the old one (from 24 and before) and I like the in-game graphics enough to play them when I’m watching balls in play. If you haven’t upgraded since 21 or so, it’s definitely an improvement in game and when generating player faces. I generate all my own player avatars on DALLE anyway, but the game lets you easily mod and implement custom user content. I am probably more of a JRPG player than I am a 2K or Show player and am probably wasting the insight, for whatever it’s worth, that Out of the Park Baseball might be the best JRPG on Steam. The emergent novelty of the game is more like the endgame of Suikoden or Final Fantasy Tactics. I could speak volumes about the whole history of JRPGs (including Japanese language baseball games), most of which I’ve played, and still attest that this might be the best one out right now. Especially if you play it like that and customize your team or leagues and so on. Such a shame to not have Nippon licenses, because I think it’s THEIR loss not to proliferate their brand to OOTP players or promote the JRPG nature of baseball or the baseball nature of JRPGs in a game and community that may or may not find this idea appalling. Which is hilarious as a bridge building concept. I love baseball.

And it sucks and I hate it. But that’s another story from 1000s of hours across a dozen versions that could equivocate to anyone’s particular gaming ouvre. You’re an idiot for playing these games this much when there are so many opportunities right now to utilize statcast or be a literal python dev in some front office for the amount of time it would take to play all of the game modes or commit to a historical playthrough week to week, inning to inning or dare I say even pitch by ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ pitch. What is wrong with you? Now imagine you’re me and you’ve played it 100x more. And I still managed to play Civ and Fallout and GTA and I’m not even that much of a weirdo or gamer. But I want to live in this game and I want there to be much much better options for baseball sims given all the modern metrics we have. How are there no truly modern MLB games on PC? OR is OOTP truly the modern MLB game? Once it truly implements batted ball behavior, what will be left to want out of a franchise sim?

Because this game does not implement batted ball behavior, in any way shape or form. It can’t be a sim. No baseball game has yet and that shouldn’t dissuade you from playing it. It’s just its own thing cause as of right now it has to be. Next year or possibly some mod a few weeks or months from now and it won’t need to be. It’s both a lifetime apart from real baseball and the best thing out there as a game about the Green Fields of the Mind. Of breaking your heart and being “designed to break your heart.”

I don't think it's a realistic simulation of baseball moment to moment or inning to inning. I don’t think you can truly intervene as a gamer to beat the odds, even though you can certainly minmax to your heart’s content when team building. The outcomes can still betray you and save scumming in this particular game can actually lead to you missing content. There is as much meat in getting fired and dabbling in a foreign or independent league as there is winning the pennant. What other licensed sports game can you imagine that being the case.

It's definitely still a video game and not some advanced assessment tool, but within the game it simulates those elements of sports knowledge/narcissism well. I've spent about as many $100s in fantasy baseball as I have on OOTP over the years but I'd definitively say I like playing OOTP more, and feel more fulfilled when guys I "picked" perform well. I also play with as few "out of 5" stars in the UI as possible. To me OOTP's greatest achievement is presenting fallibility in a way that your decisions, when they do go right, feel like achievements. But I also really love it when my scouts are wrong and I have to wade through all my bad decisions.

There are certainly RNG elements to this game, which may feel magnified in the early play while all the real players and teams seem to suitably reflect their real world counterparts. You will dismiss the game over and over again because it didn't make this player as good as you think they should be. You might even play god mode and edit their stats, but trust me you'll enjoy it more if you let it play out and let guys get injured and let yourself be wrong or use a sub-optimal coach. Had you simulated it again, it would have turned out differently every time. The other GMs are imbeciles and somehow pluck MVP caliber players from me year after year. I think I’m good at this game and think I could explain the ways you could consistently minmax being good at this game (with no commissioner mode) but I also like keeping fan favs around too long or overpaying the 7th best free agent. I once blew a 3-0 series lead. I regularly trade all of my draft picks and go $20 million over budget on minimum contract vets willing to toil in the minors. When you five-peat with those teams, you’ve pricked at the tapestry from which baseball is woven. This game can’t properly animate a play at home plate, but it can do that.