Last year, I said that that year’s incarnation of Out Of The Park Baseball had improvements and new features that weren’t perfect, but opened the way for endless possibilities in the future.

And while there still is room for improvement, the future is most definitely now, as almost every improvement or new feature from last season has been further improved, even more features have been added, and an official MLB license has made the game easier to set-up than ever.

The Good:

•  Same old, Same old. The core of OOTP is still in place, and that’s a good thing. It’s still about building baseball teams and managing (or general-managing) baseball teams– or simply simulating them if you would like. The settings, options, etc. are the same. And this is a good thing, because they are great. Look up my previous reviews to see screens and comments on those.
• Logos and Rosters are there from the start, and those that aren’t are easily modded in. With the acquisition of the MLB license, most of the MLB and other logos are now built-in, making it a lot easier to load them up and use them, as opposed to previously, where you had to mod them in. And, don’t worry, it’s easy to mod in those that aren’t there.
• The 3D stadiums work better now! The 3D stadiums were something of a work-in-progress last year and you often had to do a lot of work to get them working correctly as far as placement of players and ball locations. Now, most MLB stadiums are already installed!
• Rosters! International! The international and independent leagues have never been better, as more real-life stadiums and rosters are there than ever before. Basically every professional baseball league of prominence- even the super-duper-low Pecos League- is in there. It’s what makes the International Baseball Competition possible, since OOTP provides all of the players, managers and most of the stadiums right out of the box.
• Better role-playing, clubhouse and front office functions. Remember the Angels’ “30 Teams, 30 Posts” post? Remember this: That’s new this year. You can be given orders from the owner, and you’ll hear from folks in the clubhouse about the chemistry amongst the team. A nice addition that I hadn’t thought of before.
• Lots of other little changes and improvements, so many that I haven’t run into all of them yet!

The Bad:

• Lack of (realistic) Winter Leagues. It’s kind of a bummer we can’t have the Caribbean World Series or anything like that our players could take part in during the off-season.
• No built-in WBC features
• It doesn’t give you real-world money

Score: 9.7 out of 10.

Full Disclosure: I received a review copy from Out Of The Park Developments for this review.