Beyond the Road to the Madden 19 Coins Show as well as the obligatory franchise style, the big focus is the Ultimate Team-esque Diamond Dynasty style, which has MLB The Show 18 players collecting MLB The Show 18 players as they construct their own group. I have never been a massive fan of these manners, however there are some cool tweaks which make this slightly more interesting. For one, there is a Conquest mode that essentially turns the game into a baseball-themed Risk, in which battles are won and lost on the baseball field, and there are a bunch of legendary MLB The Show 18 players that can be unlocked. It never really clicked to me I'll keep on playing it, but that is completely a personal thing as opposed to an indictment of the design.

That's the online servers, that have been erratically offline since the Madden NFL Overdrive Coins game started. That kills a vast majority of the non-career concentrated modes such as Diamond Dynasty and the weekly challenge. These are undesirable problems to be needing at launch, and it sours an otherwise stellar experience.

It's really too bad that MLB The Show 18 launched in its current state. Virtually everything about the sport, from the way that it handles difficulty to ensuring each part of Madden 19 skill baseball feels dynamic, is handled brilliantly and is the result of years of hard work coming together. That sum of polish makes it even more jarring that Sony has failed to find the online working shortly after so many iterations of this yearly show. It very well could be the best baseball game ever created, but it must come with a enormous asterisk right now.