I'm streaming some MLB The Show 25 if you want to see that in action.
Edit: Here's the
archive. Enjoying it a lot so far, as they've made some nice changes to various parts of the game. Diamond Dynasty no longer has seasons, so you won't have the special cards that become unusable in a number of the single-player and multiplayer DD modes for the rest of the year. The new Diamond Quest game is a neat spin on the Conquest/XCOM-style mode but with a quicker pace and a roguelite risk of losing rewards you earn if you don't reach the end point of the map.
Road to the Show has some of the biggest changes, as they've gotten rid of the combine games from the start and replaced them with a high school state tournament, MLB Combine, and College World Series series of games you can play before getting to play professional baseball at the team of your choice. Through the high school games, you'll find out if any of the colleges offer a scholarship and if any MLB teams are interested in drafting you, which can continue in the MLB Combine as you get more of a spotlight with the various teams that might be interested in. From there, you pick a college team to commit to and then go to the draft, where you get a choice of either sticking with the team that drafted you at a lower spot than you might get if you go to college while missing out on three years of potential progress. I was surprised that your attributes don't get a small bump to cover the progress your coaches and the commentators talk about seeing in your game, but you do get some skill tokens to spend on stats.
How your attributes improve is the other big change as they've gotten rid of the system that's been in place for a while where your stats would just increase or decrese automatically as you play well or poorly, but they've gone to a hybrid system that keeps all of the little XP bonuses and deductions for the little things you do and turns that XP into skill tokens you spend on your attributes similarly to how the PS2/PS3 games worked. You get the option of spending those tokens on a category of attributes that adds one point to each attribute or you can spend tokens on individual stats if you know specific things you want to improve. They've also gotten rid of the perk cards that were in recent games and just have perks that unlock that you can spend those same tokens to progress through a perk's mini skill tree that can add additional stat bonuses. Equipment is still around, but instead of improving attributes, they just give a flat % improvement of all perks of certain types (hitting, fielding, pitching, etc). Once you get going in your career, you'll get a package of equipment every so often or you can spend DD currency on packages. The dynamic challenge stuff can also get you added XP and token bonuses for completing them.
Gameplay-wise, they've added a number of new options and such. PCI users have a new thing called Ambush hitting where you can push the right stick left or right to predict whether the ball will go inside or outside of the plate, which makes the cursor increase or shrink on that side off the plate. I'm not big on cursor-based hitting, so I gave it a shot for a while and turned it off. If you're baserunning in RTTS or locked player modes, they now show a ribbon of where a pitch in the dirt will roll to help you better see if it'll roll away from the catcher or not so you can try to get an extra base or not. You can also play your fielding position in RTTS in first-person if that interests you, though I find the third-person camera to still be too zoomed in enough to not want to do first-person.
Storylines has three new Negro League players and more fun story from Bob Kendrick that is great with three more being added in April and May. I haven't played Franchise yet since I wait until the season rosters are ready.
