R.B.I. Baseball 21

Please for the love of God put The Show '21 on Steam. I'll even take it on UPlay at this point.

Definitely good enough to tide you over until The Show comes to PC.

stay away. Purchased the game with no expectations that it was comparable to The Show or any other baseball game. I have to say honestly it was worse than i expected. The game looks OKish (no ultra widescreen support, that's OK though it did have widescreen with black bars vs stretch) and that is where the good part of the review is going to end. Not going to touch on the fact that the rosters were from 2020 as spring ball is going on at the moment and i would expect a roster update to drop in a few weeks to fix all of the issues there. lets get into how i spent my 90 minutes in R.B.I baseball 21. first i picked two teams and setup an exhibition match, i want to go over a few impressions to help people out right away: 1. the sound is terrible, not just laughable bad but outright terrible, the cut between the sentence and then the players name is sometimes two different voices and it is very noticeable. 2. the controls when fielding are very clunky and unenjoyable. 3. batting felt OK. 4. pitching was also OK, one note here, the AI will not swing at balls, no matter how close you are to the strike zone the AI will not flinch. so now to what happened in the exhibition game, bottom of the 9th O's down to the Nat's 6-5 with a runner on first and third and 2 outs. I pop up towards 3rd and send all my runners in hopes the third baseman drops the ball. well, the runner on third scores before the out and the game counts the run and we go to extras..... you have to be kidding me MLB created this game and it appears they did not put the correct rules of baseball in, i lose 7-6 in the 10th but hey that's O's baesball.... after that bad taste in my mouth i head over to the franchise, first goal? lets get rid of crush and resign manny. I get a pop up right away that the AI will evaluate all trades. (x) doubt i ended up offloading the majority of the orioles roster and hauled in; Betts, Stanton, Judge, Altuve, Machado, Tatis, Kershaw, Price, Severino, Strasburg, Kelly and Britton. Salary cap? nah. any offers rejected? nah. I then started to simulate my way through a season and eventually some players got hurt (naturally as injuries were enabled), the game would not let me go any further without changing my roster BUT it did not have an injury report as to who was injured so i could swap them out. at this point i hopped out of the game and requested a refund (still awaiting). i have more hope for the Orioles to win 60 games this season than MLB to fix the problems with this game before they make another cash grab next year with R.B.I. Baseball 22.

Very disappointed in the RBI franchise, MLB and Steam for releasing such a horrible product. The 'tutorial' has wrong buttons identified, the 'Control Setup' is wrong (Shows LT but is actually RT). The fielding is a joke, the ball can be far away from the player, and they will catch it. In multiple instances baseball rules arent being followed. Example: Runner on 2nd and 3rd with 2 outs. Batter hits a long fly ball that is caught for out 3, however both runners were running and 'scored' - and those runs COUNTED. This game is a joke .... Test it at least a little before releasing ...... DO NOT BUY !!!!

For those of you looking for a playable up-to-date baseball experience that is fun look no further. Are there things wrong with this game such as bugs and missed animations? Sure. But I think the graphics overhaul and the commentary one could look past that. I enjoyed the time I spent in the game. I like the addition of the tutorial at the beginning get one accustomed to the new "modern" controls for the game. Bugs I noticed that weren't deal breakers but were annoying are: 1. The button to steal for Xbox One controller shows LT but I failed to complete the challenge tutorial until hitting the RT button. 2. The same thing happened when I went to complete the diving catch tutorial the tutorial says to press the RT button but it ends up actually being the LT button. There are a few broken animations as well when it comes to catching the ball or hitting the ball but that is a bit annoying to watch and some glitches when fielding the ball but overall the game is awesome.

If you're looking for a N64 style baseball game, I guess it's okay. Fielding animations are extremely janky, and you rarely look like you catch the ball. Batting is mostly fine, and pitching is the star of the show. Very unpolished, and needs a lot of funding or just more development in general. The RBI series feels like it's been pushed back in time to the Mid 2000's again, and in a world where the most popular baseball game isn't on PC (a travesty), they need to put forth a lot more effort.

Do I recommend this game yes, but let's be clear this is a very bare bones baseball game. If you are looking from something to rival MLB The Show you are in for a bad time but seeing how it is the only MLB game on PC at the moment it is what it is. The graphics look old and dated, there is no player intros, the announcer only calls play by play no commentary, sound is good and controller support is good as well. So if you want to play MLB on PC I'd say pick this up just don't expect too much but then again they aren't asking full price either so at the end of the day I am okay with it.

The main thing this game has going for it is that MLB The Show isn't available for PC yet. It's not awful, but it launched with some serious glitches that I don't really understand how they weren't ironed out before launch. I use a PS4 controller and have a lot of issues with it: If I connect my controller before launching the game, neither of my triggers work at all, and there is AWFUL input lag/dropped input. If I start the game first and THEN connect my controller, everything works perfectly. You can also disconnect/reconnect the controller to get it working while in game. They need to patch it so this isn't necessary, but in the meantime it seems to be a consistent work around. The animations are really bad. There are catches made while players aren't under the ball, or diving stops where it hits your ankles but end up in your gloves, etc. Throws are made with the players arm facing one direction and the ball going the complete opposite direction... it's really a mess. There also seems to be some weird glitches: I've had a couple of foul balls hit where I didn't even swing the bat. I also had a runner get CLEARLY picked off while stealing, and it came up and just said "Safe" while he was still standing like 5 feet off the bag. On the positive side, it's a baseball game with fairly good looking graphics and it's officially licensed so you are using real ball players instead of goofy big headed avatars. The stadiums look good too. It's still pretty fun as far as arcadey sorts of baseball games go, and I'm hoping it improves over time with patches (but really... how do you release a game with broken controller support??? I'm not alone with this issue). I still recommend it because the price is pretty fair, and because if you like baseball games (and not management games), this is the one to get (until if/when MLB The Show comes out on PC... and then maybe it's a tougher decision). I'd give it a solid 6.5/10 as-is, but would bump that up to 7/10 if the controllers were better at launch (or once they are patched), and then maybe even an 7.5/10 once the glitchy anomalies are cleaned up. If the animations were cleaner it'd get a whole 8! But I find that to be unlikely lol. The whole game industry requires more QA/QC in my opinion...... preaching to the choir I'm sure.

I've never posted a review on a game ever, but if I can stop 1 person from wasting their money on this game I will. 1. Getting a base hit on this game is nearly impossible because the game takes control of the player on either side and they dive for every ball and always catch it. If they arent anywhere near the ball the game literally glitches the fielder near the ball and dives for the out. 2. The only way to score seems to be homeruns, but if it's anywhere near the wall, they will jump the wall and rob it. 3. You cant manufacture runs because of getting base hits is hard as hell, but stealing a base is almost impossible as well...for the user. The AI seems to be able to steal no matter how good your catcher is. You can keep throwing over and keeping the base runner honest, but if they are going to steal its almost impossible to throw them out even if you throw the pitch up and away. 4. I have hit home runs and saw them bounce in the seats, but all of the sudden the outfielder jumps and you are out. 5. Pitching is stupid because even though there is a zone box, you can get strikes by throwing way outside the zone anyways and so can the AI pitcher, so getting walked is hard to do. Please save your money. You can buy RBI 20 for cheaper and its the same game, just maybe without updated rosters. But the rosters don't mean anything anyway because the game hardly gets the real player's attributes right anyway. I hope this helps someone on the fence about buying this game.