Front Office Football Nine

I will start out by saying that I am new to FOF - but but not the sports management genre nor this type of text based sim. 100s of hours in most every Madden franchise mode from 06-22, the Zen GM games, Fastbreak Pro Basketball 2013 (of which I am a years long member of a rp league), the EA NCAA football games, the 2k basketball games, WMMA5, and several browser and mobile games. 100s of hours in each. I've dabbled a bit in OOTP, but I don't like baseball very much so I can't really get into it. My favorite of all time though, by far, is NFL Head Coach 09. The emulation doesn't work very well on my system. All this to say - this is the frame of mind I came into FOF9 with. Wanting a replacement for NFL HC 09, with no prior bias to earlier entries in the series. TL;DR FOF 9 is a deep yet relatively streamlined experience with the most realistic GM gameplay I have ever seen in a sports management game. You can go as deep in the weeds in the coaching as wanted, you can set a guided plan, let your coordinators handle everything, or you can design a playbook from the ground up. Very fast sim, probably the fastest I've ever played. The biggest pet peeve I have with this game, though, is the frustrating lack of flexibility. Positions and depth charts are rigid things, not doing something the right way at the right time may screw something up, and there's not really any league customization passed the basic offerings you'd expect. Some examples; - The Depth Chart is completely stiff and has obvious missing functionality. A Linebacker cannot come down to play DE without completely changing position. A DE, however, for some reason, can play LB no problem. Also, somehow, when you recommend a line up, the AI can put players wherever they want, but the player is unable. This is clearly an unfinished part of the game, and for me it's a pretty important one, and it seems like it'd be a simple fix considering the functionality is clearly already there. Really frustrating. To top this all off, some pos can be dragged and dropped from the depth chart, but others cannot. DL can be moved willy nilly, but CBs require you to pull them from the player list. - roster minimums are, quite frankly, limiting to roster building and likewise frustrating. The 3 QB rule is often cited as why you're required to have 3 QBs active on gameday, but the real rule only requires them to be on the 53 - not active unless they were elevated that week... bold choice to interpret that as "3 QBs must always be active" (also, there's a rule where if you carry 8 OL, you get 48 actives on gameday, but this rule is in no way implemented?). Likewise, instead of having a blanket min for OL, you're REQUIRED to have at least one C, 2 Gs, 2 Ts active. If you choose to carry 1 C and 3-4 guards (as NFL teams often do, using a guard as a G/C) and the C gets injured, now you either have to permanently change the Guard's position, or sign a new Center. 3 TEs, the same way. Inside LB vs Outside LB, despite you maybe playing a listed outside linebacker mainly at MLB, still can't go below a certain amount of "official" ILB. For seemingly no reason at all but to be difficult. - way less frustrating then the above, and a bit more understandable, but the lack of expansion functionality and any type of gameplay sliders and/or rule changes is sorely missed. - trades are just a bit... disappointing. For all the "best I've seen"s I gave the game earlier, this is the most basic I have ever seen. You Cannot do player for player trades. Only pick for player or pick for pick. No multi player trades either. You cannot build out an offer, or really haggle at all, you can only accept the Ai's offer or not accept it. Overall, I do really enjoy the game. That's why these are so frustrating, and so far in its life, I really feel like some of these shouldn't be happening, especially at this price point. Please, if you fix just the most frustrating and seemingly fixable of these flaws, I could wholeheartedly rec this as a masterpiece. As for now though, I can still rec it, just as a mostly enjoyable albeit occasionally frustrating experience.

I've loved this series for a decade+ now. The depth of player traits and performance is brilliant. It's incredibly frustrating seeing this series stall at this though. Depth chart management is still terrible and surface-level at best. The complete inability to manage back-ups leads the game logic to stupid decisions like playing a WR at RT instead of a guard, or insisting that a FB is your best relief back for an outside zone run scheme. The worlds built in the game actually feel more hollow that in FOF8 with the reduction of almanac and player focus, instead put more towards the financial/economic management. It's wildly disappointing seeing the single dev for Football Coach: College Dynasty come out of nowhere and build a game with more life in it. While also being actually engaging and responsive to players and constantly improving the game. WIth his intent to build a pro league game, I fear FOF is at it's death-knell unless Soliseismic is willing to treat this game with time and respect. 1 update of substance in ~2 years, and it made no improvement to actual gameplay. I've gone from an absolute FOF junkie to someone who can't see past what this game should be at this point

I was hoping for a realistic football management experience, but it honestly feels more like an Excel simulator than a game. The interface is extremely dated, the menus are clunky, and the entire experience feels like something from 15-20 years ago. It doesn’t feel intuitive or engaging. There’s no presentation or immersion. You get text, stats, and endless clicking through confusing menus. It’s hard to get a real sense of building or managing a team when everything feels so flat and lifeless. I was also hoping for some kind of feedback from coaches or staff. Anything to make it feel like your decisions matter. Instead, you get what comes from the news section, and even that’s sparse and repetitive. The one thing that this game had going for it were the NFL rosters. You have to navigate the dusty corners of the internet to get everything else (logos and team names) though. The concept has potential, but the execution is rough. For the price, I expected something more polished, modern, and user-friendly. As it stands, Front Office Football 9 feels like what it is; a spreadsheet disguised as a football sim.

First season, my Dolphins went 16-1, and then Tua got hurt the last game - right before the playoffs. Backup quarterback, Tyler Huntley, put on a majestic 3 interception performance, we get blown out by the Bills, and we still haven't won a playoff game since 2000. 10/10 realism. UI is pretty clean once you get used to it. The real world rosters are great but using random rosters is pretty cool too, lots of replay value there. I just do the GM stuff and let the AI handle the playbook/in-game coaching. The simplicity of free agency, trading, drafting is pretty great to me. Only negative is I wish there was facegen for generated players but you can use custom images for this.

Addictive, immersive and user friendly. I am from the UK and have learnt more about this type of football and from snaqZaddy ix youtube channel videos. Totally hooked after just 33 hrs play. I now have over 800 hours on this game and my previous review was accurate however I must add because I have an imagination it is the best game I have ever had the pleasure to experience. After the initial education of the GUI it became fully exposed, you can read a game result and see where things went right or wrong. You can choose to use this to develop your team in many many ways. You can play aggressively or passively it is your ability to imagine that restrains you. It is like reading a story in a book or online, it is only your imagination that determines the worth of it. The engine running in the game is peerless I have never experienced something so true to life. The man that created this is a true genius and I wish him the very best in life. You actually become the author of his work writing the story in which ever way you choose. A marvel to behold.

There is a lot to like about this game, but all the small things it does wrong add up to the game being unenjoyable and nearly unplayable. - Trading system is awful and is the most egregiously bad thing about FOF9. Teams will have 100% interest and enough draft capital to offer, yet the system doesn't allow it. They will (VERY OFTEN) give away every single available draft pick, resulting in them being awful for years while they recover (assuming they don't trade away those picks too). You are unable to actually create your own trades, you simply select a team and a draft pick/player, then hit the offer button and be given a trade. Its not at all interactable. You can't shop picks and players together, you have to choose one and see what the computer offers. Since it is AWFUL at its job, you are forced to navigate the dreadful trade UI to find a team that will actually put together a trade. It's so horrible. - Parts of the UI are unintuitive and hide important things from the player. It took me about 20 hours to discover where the All-Pro lists were despite looking through resources online. It is also very obtuse to reorder your depth chart and to navigate menus. - Your save files WILL get corrupted. Unless you are actively backing up every single save, corruption is inevitable. I have backed up multiple saves in a row just for each one of them to not work, losing hours worth of progress. You, as a player, should not be responsible for ensuring your save files don't corrupt on every single save. - Less features than FOF8. I haven't played it too much so take this with a grain of salt, but FOF9 lacks a lot of QOL features its previous title had. There are no quick options to change team names and logos as you have to manually edit the game files. There is no option to check what positions you need to draft. - FOF9 focuses too hard on the financial management portion (IMO), resulting which causes the roster management portion of the game to suffer. Players feel more like numbers and statistics than actual players. For example: 1. Occasionally, players will sharply regress and lose their potential. There is no (from what I could discern) explanation as to why this happens and doesn't get brought up at all. It rarely lines up with a major injury or age regression. If you keep them on the roster long enough they may randomly go back up to having potential. 2. Retirement is sudden and has zero warning signs (besides players just being old, at best). Players sometimes randomly retire, even if they are young, with a high overall and no major injury history. 3. Overall rarely truly matters. a 90 overall player can simulate worse than a 40 overall player. 4. Players don't request for trades if they are unhappy, they just have contract holdouts. The game doesn't make it clear if having high loyalty affects contract negotiations. 5. Drafting players in incredibly dull and uninteractive. You can't scout payers individually, you just get an estimate based off the scouting skill of your staff. This means that more often than not you end up simming until your next pick, skimming the estimates without any real thought behind it. 6. There is little feedback on how your players are progressing. The only way to check is by looking directly at their stats. It would be nice to get notified about major improvements or regression from players 7. There isn't a practice squad, so you generally are unable to strategically plan backups. Special teams are also lacking, as it boils down to a simple yes or no "is this player participating in special teams?" 8. While there is a system to show synergy/affinity between some players, it is only on offense and doesn't have a noticeable impact on simulation performance. - The simulation sy stem will sometimes do things that make zero sense. It will start your RB3 even if your RB1 is completely healthy and activated. It will start FBs at WR, NTs and CB, ect. - Players get injured far too often on the default settings. Even lowering them down to half typically results in a starting player getting a major injury every game Overall, I highly recommend you to *NOT* spend 30 bucks on this. There are far better options for American football simulation games. FOF8 is ten dollars cheaper and fully fleshed out if you want a similar game as this. Football Coach: College Dynasty is also 10 dollars cheaper with workshop support, better UI, and more QOL that FOF9 does.

This game is for Out of the Park Baseball players who wish there was an NFL equivalent. Its not quite as fleshed out as OOTP, but its pretty well done. I'm unsure whether this game is still being developed and supported, but Its quite playable and the interface will be very familiar to OOTP players. If you haven't experienced OOTP then its going to be a steep learning curve, both the UI and the game itself. If you're looking for a game where you can watch players pass, run and catch, look elsewhere. If you're not so much interested in coaching and watching plays as building a team and a history as a GM then this is worth a look if spreadsheets turn you on. I've invested a few thousand hours in OOTP and FOF scratches that itch.

Been playing this series of games since the beginning. Best American Football simulator that exists. Developer is also active and listens to the FOF community about improvements/problems.

Should probably stick to werewolf games or whatever it is you guys do. Not a good revision of what used to be a fun game.

If you like sports management simulations, this is the best one for gridiron football. It's not pretty, but it's the most accurate simulation you'll find.