Wow...No excitement for Pawapuro 15?

He's lost a lot of faith in the Pawapuro series ever since the 13th installment. Both Pawapuro 13 and 14 (and their Ketteiban installments, for that matter) have been steaming piles of crap compared to the sterling examples of baseball that Pawapuro 10-12 were. To Bigman, Pawapuro is dead and has been surpassed by Pro Yakyu Spirits, which is excellent.

Admittedly, I haven't gotten around to playing Pawapuro since I haven't modded my PS2, but I'll definitely play them at some point.

What he said.

I was burned a few too many times. Pawapuro is pretty much dead to me. Did you know that there's going to be no Ketteiban this year? A sign of the dying popularity, in my opinion. Maybe if they actually listened to the community, they'd still be going strong. Instead they do exactly what happened to Winning Eleven. Release about 1000 different versions with international releases, all crappy.

This is what they'd have to do to win me back.

1. Go back to the old physics, AI, and gameplay. No more aggressive AI. The batting, especially digipad batting, hasn't felt the same in years. They messed with the feel of the cursors. The movement of the pitches is different, too.

2. Quit messing around with the PS2/Wii and step up to true next gen with the PS3.

3. Why is there no true online Pawapuro yet? How difficult can it be to code online for such a simple game? It's not exactly COD4.

4. Release downloadable rosters. It's 2008. I shouldn't have to enter 100 character passwords like this is an NES game or use the Arrange Mode anymore.

5. Instead of losing sales every single year due to pitches being too slow, how about copying an idea from every single other baseball game and having an option for pitch speed? I guess that'd make too much sense.

It seems like the Pawapuro guys are crazy about keeping up tradition when it comes to the most annoying aspects of the game like no editing and Arrange Mode, but they'll change EVERYTHING ELSE for the worse. That really ticks me off.

"Well, let's see here. Let's make the ball as heavy as a bowling ball, have the CPU batters swing at anything in the strike zone, and mess with the presentation so it looks like Pawapuro Spirits."

"How about including an edit mode like the fans ask for every year?"

"No way. We have to uphold tradition. Players are made with Success Mode and that's it."

Konami and their dinosaur ways have lost them a ton of money with this franchise, but they're probably making it up with the multi-console releases, so they could care less. At least I can say they lost me as a loyal fan.

I agree with a lot of BMZ said, though Pawapuro to me has continued to put out puny positives, in general it is confusing how it can be so easy to miss huge problems...

Even looking at PP15 previews... man... "matchups" that change the offense/defense in games? that smells like something out of some EA triple play game...

I'll admit I like the concept of Golden Nine, its just the rest of Success has become horrendous lately. You would think they could match the depth of scenarios from earlier games. And finally bringing out edit mode in MLB PPs but not in the JP version was plain dumb.

Same with the online mode. ugh. even more so for MLB PP2008, still no online.

I too would appreciate some sort of PYSish difficulty scaling. The way it is now, you kinda have to watch and wait for the next edition to tell if they learned anything...

I play MyLife a lot and wouldn't admit to being a good PP player, but I finally found PP14's batting to feel like it gave enough resistance to be enjoyable... but the pitching side... ugh.. just like BMZ said. Its annoying trying to pitch to whole lineups of A-B's-A's (by your 6th year, nearly every team is like this...) players and eeking by with just a bunch of hits... and maybe... maybe 1-2 SOs... meaning the whole other 30 or so batters faced are all reliant on defense.

Its rewarding to be successful like that. But at the same time so unreal... its not like we're trying to be Maddux with a 153 FB....

But I may get PP15 anyway. yea I just can't get enough of MyLife. Happily there is a Book-Off in my local area now, so I know where I can sell it off if it sucks. hahaha ^_^

Do u feel the same way for the pocket and portable series? I would easily play a ds version of spirits.

I haven't read BigMan's comments/criticisms of PawaPota on the PSP, but PawaPoke was great last year on the DS. The direction the series is taking seems to be to appeal more to children moreso than the people who have been playing PawaPuro since the beginning on Super Famicom, thus the success that they have with handhelds.