Baseball Club

Genre: Arcade / Sports (Baseball)

Players: 1

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Review:

Baseball Club is a Baseball-themed Arcade-style game released on mobile devices in 2022 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2023. Rather than being a traditional game of Baseball, Baseball Club is instead more of a contest between a pitcher and batter, with two “players” each getting three chances to land their best hit on a ball pitched by the other, with the combined total distance of the hits determining the winner.

At this point, this game’s disgusting monetization needs to be discussed. Before going on, I will note that the Nintendo Switch version of Baseball Club does not itself feature any microtransactions or any other monetization beyond its $10 price tag. However, the nasty excesses of microtransactions are still readily apparent here. You can tell that in its prior release, Baseball Club was pay-to-win, with loofboxes that gave players stat-boosting equipment, upgrades that could be purchased with in-game coins, and a season pass for those who wanted to subscribe their way to success. Virtually all of this game’s content is locked behind these paywalls, or in the case of the Nintendo Switch release, grind-walls. As added insult, you’re not even playing against real opponents in this version, only AI opponents masquerading as real people.

The gameplay here isn’t terrible, but it’s so minimal that it’s hard to see it holding your attention for very long. Players bat by holding down a button and moving a reticule representing a bat, hoping to line it up with a reticule representing the ball and release the button in time with a moving bar representing the ball’s distance. Likewise, you pitch by holding down a button representing where you’re aiming your pitch, and then again to determine the ball’s curving path through the air, with the timing of your release determining the speed of your pitch. Alternately, you can do much the same thing with touchscreen controls, what this game was clearly built around in the first place. In either case, that’s about as deep as the gameplay gets here.

I suppose the game’s colorful, cartoony 3D visuals are decent but nothing impressive (safe for the extremely simple 2D fans in the stands, who are just plain ugly), and its cheesy announcer and synthesized organ music are sufficient but equally unimpressive.

In the end, if you absolutely desire to play what is essentially a Baseball-themed Arcade-style minigame, Baseball Club may keep you entertained for a few minutes, but at $10 this game needs to do far more than that, and all the ugly remnants of this game’s gross past monetization still leave a terrible taste in my mouth. If you want a cheap baseball game, get WBSC eBaseball: Power Pros. If you want a great Baseball game, save up a bit more money. But in neither case should you get this game.

tl;dr – Baseball Club is a Baseball-themed Arcade-style game where players take turns as pitcher and batter for three throws of the ball each, trying to be the one to get the highest combined distance with their hits. It’s a game that was sadly built around aggressive monetization, and even if that monetization no longer exists, the hollow experience it created still does, with this release not even having multiplayer. At $10, this is a rip-off. Save your money up to get a better Baseball game instead.

Grade: D+

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2023 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Worst Monetization / Scam

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