Recent reviews by Wayletter

Pros:

• Perfect blend of fun freedom and unintimidating baseball.
  
• Surprisingly deep player progression and specialization.
  
• Keeps track of most relevant player stats.
  
• Great difficulty system.

Cons:

• Some crashing issues that force you to forfeit.
  
• Some very inconvenient player progression issues.

I've put in a lot more time into this game than I thought I would, and its due to its consistent fun and high ceiling of player progression. Batters and pitchers have specific offensive and defensive stats that can be boosted through modifiers placed in skill slots. I've played through five medium-length seasons and still haven't unlocked all the skill slots for my players. You can play against your old teams by starting a new team in a new season and adding the old teams in, which is a very cool bonus.

My game has occasionally crashed, which automatically hands you at 0-1 loss, which is frustrating. I've also experienced some inconsistencies with the available skill modifiers. For example, throughout my entire season with the Crocodons (a power pitching team), I had very very few useful pitching modifiers available to use.

Other than these two issues, SMB is a huge blast that is definitely worth the price tag if you like baseball. Very much looking forward to SMB 2!

Pros:

• Starts simple, adds complexity quickly.
  
• Very clever. And I mean very. Epiphanies everywhere.
  
• Not hand-holdy at all.
  
• Kicks you down and expects you to get back up.

Cons:

• No obvious storyline and no really gratifying ending.
  
• Some truly terrible puzzles near the end.
  
• Kicks you down and expects you to get back up.

Play this game if you love solving puzzles for the sake of solving puzzles and challenging the mind, and not for some clear end goal or storyline gratification. The core puzzle concept couldn't be simpler, and yet the complexities that are introduced are truly wow-inducing.

A huge part of this game is knowing when to walk away from a seemingly impossible puzzle and come back after picking up the necessary knowledge. I found this refreshing, but others will find it infuriating. There was a sequence of disappointingly uncreative puzzles near the end that literally gave me a headache, and I would've really liked a tangible plot.

All in all, I loved the journey and had a blast solving the huge variety of clever puzzle mechanics. Pick up this game when it's on sale for $20.