Better than Madden. 7/10.
For a free game. This is a very, very good game. With surprising amounts of depth and customization.
However. There are some issues. So bad first, then we do wutz gud.
Tooltips:
Suck. No info. You have to put things together with intensive amounts of pattern recognition. Hands tells you it impacts fumble chance. I had a guy with 90 hands fumble 8 times on 80 carries. Okay. The tooltips say that the Pass stat determines catches in traffic. My guy with 108 pass and 90 hands gets mossed 50% of the time by players with 67 hands and 43 pass. Okay. My other cover with 83 Strength gets stiff-armed at the line every other play by a halfling with 34 strength... Okay? And it isn't dodge that counters stiff-arm either cus my cover with 90 hands has 73 dodge and he still gets cooked. And Press coverage "has a buffed catch chance"... No. It doesn't. But the Buff the gunners get to stiff arm and juke... That is very, very real.
And even tooltips you think are good, lie to you. For example. A sub race says it increases the players strength score. BUT in reality it doesn't do ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. I created a 24 team league of all Dwarves. And the Brass dwarf made up around 8% of the total players in league. Only 1 Brass Dwarf was in the top 32 for strength. Only 6 were in the top 100. 6% instead of the expected 33%.
That is impossible, if they were getting a bonus. Cus every other stat, on every other subrace. At least ten of the subrace are in the top 32 for the buffed stat. For any non-statisticians out there. If a subrace makes up 8% of the total pop of players, but holds the majority of the top spots on the leaderboard, that means the bonus is quantifiably significant. And warrants serious consideration. So in this example, The brass dwarf gets 2 very real debuffs to their stats, but only 1 buff to compensate. Making them a detriment to your team.
Overalls, don't matter. Never sort by gunner score or linebacker score or runner score. They are all lies. Literally. The game is mentally challenged. The lead rusher for my team every year is a nobody I pick up in the last half of the draft. The game over emphasizes skills the position doesn't use and hides the value of skills that it checks for every snap. It is insane how misrepresented this game is.
Too much Rng:
Choose between 4 coaches. BEFORE drafting a team. Coach proceeds to have -100 synergy with your team. Can't see any of your players synergies while drafting. Yes, u can turn off buff features. But why even implement them at all if they are going to be this thoughtless and unenjoyable.
Injuries. I got very frustrated and cheated a player up to 258 brutality. Still took him 3 games to get an injury... Meanwhile, the leagues rushing leader has 200 carries at 20 durability, and my blocker with 99 durability was injured twice before being killed by a backup demon. Mkay... Interesting. But then I figured out how it REALLY works... And now. I'm untouchable. Again. HORRIBLE, DISGUSTINGLY ♥♥♥♥ tooltips.
Team trainings and weekly events. Now, it doesn't say losing teams are more likely to get them... and I did the math... And it seemed pretty even between winners and losers. But my teams get maybe 10 a year, during an 18 game season.... And the next lowest team got 27... So like... Is it just human teams who get zero progression? I don't understand. Cus I am 6 games into an entirely new season and I had one week where I had 4 trainings and 5 weeks where I had 0. This is significant, cus this is the only way your players improve. MVP, doesn't matter. Championship winners, doesn't matter. Weekly trainings or bust. And it is pure rng. Team trainings should be weighted for benched players. Weekly trainings should be weighted for players who get awards. YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO PICK AT LEAST ONE PLAYER TO FOCOUS DEVELOPMENT ON. Having 0 control over the development of your players is just plain stupid. And yes. There is a cheat function. And yes you can totally break the game. But it feels so inorganic and hollow. And even then, you aren't likely to get the stat increases you are after. It is just a dumb system. Really drags the game down.
The DLC.
It is unfinished, unpolished trash. Everything I thought could be wrong with it, was. Tried to get a refund, didn't get it. So now I get to tell you all about it, so no one else has to buy it. "New" races are just lazy reskins. rats=cats. monkies=orcs. trees are worse trolls. The "Humanoid" tree is as follows, ahem: Worst(Illithids<Humans<Gnolls<Drakons<Dogs<<<<<<<<<<<<....<<<<!!!*BEARS*!!!)Best. etc. Satyrs are meh, birds are meh. BEARS ARE COMPLETELY BROKEN.... But not worth 10$.
On top of the "new" races being dogs#it. Any coach that has the misfortune of being any of the new races, they are hardcoded to have negative synergy with every player on your team. So those 4 coaches you get to choose from... Yep. If 3 of them are "new" races.... you really only have one option, or have to turn off a part of the game the dev wasted a quarter of their development hours on... It is a bold strategy cotton.
Da Team Menus:
Gross. A LOT. Of clicking. Looking for a certain team? Can you click the picture and chose for a scrollable list? Nope. Click left or right. Oh I am on ice dragons? Cool I am only a few clicks away from the junkers. Wait... What? How am I on boars? OH. the first click takes you to a different random team... Okay... sure. Might as well. You can't even save your league configuration for next time. If you should want to start over, you'll have to do it all over again.
God forbid you edit a team before being in the season menu. It ♥♥♥♥♥ everything up. You have to double click to change between teams and it skips teams. So if you don't random to a team that can get you to the team you are looking for... good luck. And I think there are duplicate teams. Cus I go past the same series of teams and one dumps me out at storm, and the other dumps me out at tranquil? Or something like that. It is super weird, and super lame.
You could say: "Why do teams matter that much? Just hit random and be done with it." You'd be right. But I like certain teams and dislike other teams. So personally, I need to do this. On a practical level, each team has their own field modifiers. And I like my divisions to be fun, intense and thematic.
Da fun sheet.
Stats and Skills:
ALL OF THEM ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING!!! And it is awesome and impressive and fun as hell when you actually sit down and spend 40 hours figuring out what's going on.
The Sim itself:
This is amazing. I have some small issues with quarterback play. But for the most part everything functions perfectly once you click start match. This is what madden was, this is what simulation football should be. Not 1 glitch. Not one animation... :') I'm so happy.
Just.... All the stuff:
Weather, team customization, field effects, THE MOD MENU... Wow. This is a really cool game. After you spend 40 hours deciphering how to play it. I will say this. Please finish character customization. Bears facial hair doesn't line up with anything. There is a mouth custom slider that literally does nothing. 2 races have misc. colors. Etc. Kinda lame as hell brah. No cap.
Drafting:
I've given a lot of ♥♥♥♥ to this game for developing players. But drafting them is fun as ♥♥♥♥. And teams do more or less okay drafting. It can be hard to tell. Cus of injuries and the games reliance on a worthless overall system. I'm being genuine when I say this. For example. A team I played had a 90 overall drow. 90 hands, 70 strength, 60 speed, 65 blocking, 12 durability. Can you guess where they were lined up? If you said offensive line across from my 800 pound troll with 97 brutality... you'd be exactly right. They lasted 9 offensive plays before they were torn in half. A 90 overall 1st round pick, gone in game 3 cus the cpu is retarded. Crazy. Clearly should have been a gunner... Make it make sense.
Out of words. Game fun.
Hope this helps.
