Pro Yakyu Spirits 4
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Pro Yakyu Spirits 4 (PYS4) is a Japan-only baseball game made in 2007 by Konami for the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 video game consoles. The game sports numerous new features and game fixes over the flawed Pro Yakyu Spirits 3, which was for the Xbox 360.
The first major improvement (especially on PlayStation 3) was for graphics, which many fans and critics alike said were very close to the real thing. Another praised element of the game was the atmosphere, which was also authentic to the Pro Yakyu experience.
Gameplay is very much different than American baseball games like Sony's MLB: The Show and 2K Sports' Major League Baseball series. For one, the game only features all 12 Nippon Professional Baseball teams, and both the Pacific League and Central League All-Star teams (circa 2006, but with changes made for traded and/or retired players).
Another major difference in the gameplay is in difficulty. The game can be made as easy or as hard as the player wants. The easiest mode will appeal to younger players who have probably never played a baseball game before in their lives, and the hardest mode--known as Spirits Mode--will give even the most experienced and advanced players a challenge with superior AI. Other modes can be selected in a sort of pseudo-gameplay sliders mode as found in most American games. For instance, gameplay speed can be increased, as well as pitch speed (which can be set to "real" speed).
However, the biggest gameplay difference is the batting system, which has been taken from the Jikkyou Powerful Pro Yakyu series. The basic batting interface is a silhouette of a bat which influences how the ball will travel. Depending on when and where contact was made, that influences where the ball goes. Also, there are four swing options. In contact mode, the circle button commands your player to make a "slap hit," hitting the ball to the opposite field. Hitting the X button will make for a "pull hit," which will make your player hit the ball to the same field, which is conducive for extra-base hits. Holding down R2 will put your player into bunt mode, where you can lay one down a baseline. Pressing R1 will turn the larger batting cursor into a smaller one, and if good contact and timing is made (and also depending on the player's power), then your player will hit a home run.
Pitching is also different, but also very similar to Major League Baseball 2K7's system. The pitching is a 2-click system where the player selects his pitch around a grid, presses X to start his delivery, then pressing X as one circle converges on another to try and perfectly time the pitch. However even on the easiest setting, the CPU will crush mistake pitches. Strategic pitching and perfect pitch timing is much more crucial to pitching well on the higher difficulty levels.
Players, instead of numerical values, are rated on letter grades on a scale from G to S (G being the lowest, S being the highest). Depending on the attribute, the numerical grade means either the player is proficient or terrible in that area.
Game modes include Exhibition, Strike Pitch Competition, Home Run Competition, Pennant Mode, MVP Mode, Spirits Mode, and Online, with Exhibition and Home Run Competition being standard modes.
Perhaps the most criticized mode in PYS4 is the Online Mode. Before release, Konami stated that it would be no different than playing somebody right in their own room. The reality was that the game had terrible lag issues, for which Konami got highly criticized for. As such, activity on PYS4 online has been practically non-existent.
Another major criticism of PYS4's online mode was that a player had to go and get a Konami ID from the official website. The problems started when players who imported PYS4 couldn't read sufficient Japanese to get the Konami ID to get online in the first place (Konami's official website where the ID is obtained is all-Japanese). Another problem is that the Konami ID is tied to one copy of the game, so if the player's copy of PYS4 was lost or stolen, the same ID could not be used on another copy of the game.
More criticism came to PYS4 in the form of an unstable frame rate for the PlayStation 3 version. The PlayStation 2 version of PYS4 had a stable frame rate that only got bogged down when somebody tried to attempt a suicide squeeze bunt with the bases loaded. However, the PS3 version suffers from the same random frame rate hiccups that plague most first-generation PS3 games. While minor, this did affect gameplay, such as on hard line drives ground balls that would require some good defense to stop.
The game scored well with fans and critics, as Famitsu magazine gave the PlayStation 3 version a score of 9/8/9/9, and the PS2 version got 8/8/8/8 for scores of 35/40 and 32/40 respectively. Fans praised the realism of the game on both platforms, and while the online play was terrible, the depth of Pennant Mode and MVP Modes kept players entertained.
