Are you a huge Diamond Dynasty fan? That’s awesome, I am not. It’s not that I hate it; it’s just that it was too complex, time-consuming, and set up to extract as much money from you as possible through microtransactions. Simply put, it’s not my cup of tea…but maybe it could be.
This year, San Diego Studios is making significant changes to MLB The Show 25’s Diamond Dynasty mode. So far, I’m tempted to jump in or at least get my toes wet when the game comes out on March 18th or maybe even during the early access window starting on March 14th (assuming it’s playable then).
Diamond Dynasty has never performed as well as similar game modes in titles like Madden or NBA 2K (partly due to the fact that they sell way more copies than MLB The Show) which rake in unfathomable amounts of cash through microtransactions. I guarantee you that Sony is desperate for that type of money scheme, and that’s why we are seeing such drastic changes to the game mode. If it doesn’t work the first eleven times, just keep changing it; they’ll definitely hit on something eventually.
That eventuality may just come in MLB The Show 25, at least for me. One of the biggest hurdles for me into getting into this game mode, was the seemingly unnecessary structure of the seasons and sets that made roster control and management a nightmare. The seasons never hooked me, and it was just boring after a while. Now the seasons and sets are gone, eliminating the ridiculous restrictions and opening up the game for more possibilities.
One of those possibilities will be realized in the form of “Diamond Quest,” a new mode in Diamond Dynasty that has already piqued my interest even with the limited knowledge we have of it. It’s a board game-like mode where you travel around a 90’s-style computer game-looking area where you’ll presumably get to choose which tiles on the board you’ll move to. The assumption on my end is that certain tiles will have certain missions that you’ll get; beating the mission will get you a reward while losing it could mean the end of your travels.
The mode is a roguelike, according to the official MLB The Show 25 website, so we should expect a different tile layout every time we have to start from the beginning. We don’t know yet what the goal of the game is; if there is any, it could just be an endless stream of missions, events, and rewards that doesn’t stop until you die (honestly, that’s kind of how I would describe Diamond Dynasty as whole).
What excites me about this mode is the sense of nostalgia I get when I look at the layout and hear what the mechanics are. It reminds me so much of Mario Superstar Baseball’s challenge mode, where you would move around a terrain that was similar to a Mario party board, and you compete in different missions to recruit players for your team, with the ultimate goal of defeating Bowser in the final game! If it turns out that at the end of the board in Diamond Quest, you have to face off against Bowser with your team of major leaguers that you earned through past missions, I would simply pass away. It would be the ultimate collab!
The other game doesn’t quite pull at my nostalgia strings as much. It’s a highly competitive online mode that essentially replaces the main season mode within the game. Instead of the seasons, which were restrictive and boring, this “Weekend Classic” mode seems to have a lot more life. It’s a short-term league every weekend for players online to battle out in a highly competitive tournament to win what has been promised to be some of the best rewards in the game.
I’ll probably check it out, get absolutely wrecked in the first game, and never touch it again, but for people who are actually good at the game (against humans, I’m fantastic against computers), this should be a really fun mode.
Another new feature that I am excited about is the new revamped reward system. You can now have team-specific rewards based on different “Team Affinity programs” in the game, which should offer more gameplay opportunities and the ability to play your way up to your favorite player. It’s similar to the team-specific programs in Madden.
They’ve also hyped up the new rewards system a lot, which isn’t unusual. But I’m curious to see exactly what they’ll change and how they’ll make it more balanced, but dynamic at the same time. They’ll be giving more details on those points in the Diamond Dynasty deep dive on March 4th and in the feature premiere on March 6th.
Published: Feb 24, 2025 12:23 pm