eBaseball: Pro Spirit 2026 Review
I’ve spent more hours than I’d like to admit with MLB The Show over the last decade. As such, I’ve sort of given up on expecting a baseball game to ever feel new again. At least, I did. But then eBaseball: Pro Spirit 2026 landed on my desk. I immediately had painful flashbacks to the early-2010s when I discovered Konami was hiding the best soccer game on the planet – Winning Eleven – from the Western world.
Putting my PTSD aside, I fired eBaseball up with pure fervor, expecting Konami to once again blow me away with their take on simulation sports. And, you know something? They did. This isn’t just the baseball game I’ve been waiting for; it’s the sports game I’ve desperately wanted.
For starters, eBaseball is gorgeous. It runs on Unreal Engine alongside the studio’s proprietary eBaseball Engine, beautifully rendering players, turf, and crowds. Sweat beads on a pitcher’s brow between deliveries. Dugout chatter animates in the background instead of coming from players who are frozen in place. Little touches like these permeate the eBaseball experience, making for one of the most fleshed-out visual presentations I’ve ever seen. From the first pitch, you know you’re not playing The Show, and that’s a good thing.
Learning Curve
Though that depth doesn’t necessarily extend everywhere. Pitching and hitting both currently lag behind the competition. There’s essentially one way to throw a pitch and one way to swing the bat. None of the customizable visual aids or stick controls that MLB The Show built its reputation on made the trip over. Baserunning is the worst offender, utilizing an odd control setup that still doesn’t make a ton of sense after dozens of hours. These issues are also compounded by eBaseball’s steep learning curve. This is a tough game, even on the easier difficulties, and it’s going to take most players time to get the hitting down. My first few hours with eBaseball saw more strikeouts than I’ll ever admit. Push through, though, and the payoff is absolutely stellar. Once my timing and positioning clicked, squaring up a fastball turned into one of the more satisfying moments I’ve had with a baseball game in years.
But the satisfaction doesn’t stop on the field. Star Player mode is what I’ve been waiting a long, long time for. I talk about it all the time in my sports game reviews, but every single one of them these days lacks the feeling of actually living like a superstar. Making personal decisions away from the game, like which house to buy or where to invest your money, is what a career mode should be built upon. Yes, the actual games are important, too. But if I’m focusing on building a single athlete, I want to develop every aspect of their life.
He’s a Phenom
eBaseball fixes this. I built a lanky, long-haired phenom who bears a striking resemblance to Tim Lincecum, and began working him through the farm system. The ups and downs of his career, the personal contemplations, and a lousy final few years complete with a decline phase that actually dented his velocity readings, had me feeling like a kid again.
Hakkyu no Kiseki is my “comfort” mode, though. This is where you develop an entire high school team from scratch. It’s in-depth, well-paced, and tons of fun, with literally hundreds of things to discover. This year’s version adds the DH rule, an option the mode has never had before. It sounds minor, but it reshaped how I draw a lineup around a pitcher who can’t hit. I recruited underclassmen and managed grades and morale alongside batting practice. I spent an entire evening chasing a Koshien berth, one I didn’t reach until my third simulated season. Grand Prix and Spirits round out the offline options with smaller time commitments for nights when you just want to swing a bat and throw a ball.
Unfortunately, the depth of the single-player modes doesn’t extend online. Multiplayer exists, but it skips the deep community franchises, diamond dynasties (no, I don’t want microtransactions in eBaseball), and ranked seasons. Those features have kept MLB The Show’s online scene alive for a long time. Roster variety compounds the issue. Only twelve teams are available in eBaseball, all sourced straight from the NPB. MLB clubs and international squads are nowhere to be found.
WBC Woes
But here’s what by far stings the most about eBaseball. The World Baseball Classic. Naturally, it brings in international stars like Aaron Judge and Fernando Tatis Jr., rendered with the same scanning technology as the NPB rosters. Painfully, Konami has restricted the mode to Japan and a handful of Asian regions. North American players can only get access by changing their account region, and it isn’t a workaround I’d recommend to anyone without patience for import-account headaches. For a release clearly trying to court a Western audience, locking out one of its best modes from that exact audience is a bizarre, disappointing call.
So does eBaseball: Pro Spirit 2026 knock The Show off its perch? That depends on what type of player you are. If you only care about a solid single-player experience, then yes, eBaseball is your new go-to baseball simulator. But if online multiplayer is where you tend to spend your time, then you’re going to be feeling underwhelmed.
Few sports titles have left the kind of mark on me that eBaseball: Pro Spirit 2026 has. Konami built something with real identity here, wrapped around the types of career modes I’ve been dying to see in sports games. It certainly has issues, don’t get me wrong. We’ve gotta expand the online offerings. Lock down more team licenses. Give hitters and pitchers more room to work with. And for the love of God, let us Westerners play the WBC. Do all this, and it won’t ever be a question of whether or not Konami is chasing MLB The Show. They’ll have left it in the dust.
***A PS5 code was provided for this review***
The Good
- Excellent visuals
- Deep career modes
- Satisfying gameplay
The Bad
- Lack of pitching/hitting options
- WBC not available in the West
- Serious lack of online modes
