A limey looks on .... and ponders ...

[jokermanalias]

I'm English and American football looks interesting ... especially as soccer is becoming a bit tedious now .... I'm not sure of all the rules tho ... will I learn as I go along with this game?
Is this the American equivalent of Football Manager? I do love that.

[Froz]

This is an attempt at Football Manager, but for American football, yeah. There's kind of a level where you're just making decisions that involve getting the best players on your team and you don't really need to understand how the game works to do that, but going into any depth at all, or controlling any aspect of the in-game stuff will require knowledge of American football that this game doesn't teach you.

That said, this game isn't where it needs to be in order to be playable yet. Devs are still actively patching it but seem to have little/no internal testing and are just responding to problems as players bring them up.

This dev, Wolverine Studios, has an entire catalog of these types of sims across many different sports. I can't speak to the quality of any of them but they do seem to work hard at delivering a good product. As far as American football, you might try Front Office Football 8? It has the best mechanics and simulation, but an absolutely awful windows 95-style UI and the same problem of assuming you know all about American football already.

Out of the Park baseball is overall excellent and baseball is probably easier to learn than American football. This is probably the closest to Football Manager in scope and popularity.

Motorsport Manager doesn't have too much depth to dive into but lets you live the fantasy of a race engineer/team principal with easy-to-understand mechanics. Highly recommend if you like F1.

[jokermanalias]

Cheers ... I've watched several Utube videos on American football and feel confident enough to try this now ... I'm intrigued. Thanks

[jokermanalias]

Just bought Front Office Football 7 for a few pounds ... I'll be watching this game tho

[jaypat6909]

Took me a long time to get into this game. You have dig down a little to get the most out of it. Setting up packages and formations is important because they determine who is on the field during games. You can't just bring in your 2nd string running back in the middle of the game unless you set it up before hand.

Putting all the best overall rated players on the field doesn't always mean you have the best chance to win either. Setting up packages for certain situations really works.

I haven't completely figured out the strategy options yet.. but if you are playing a team with a high powered offense you can do yourself a favor and run your offense at a slow tempo so you keep them off the field. There are a lot of moving parts that determine your success and they aren't always obvious.. right down to the coaches you hire.

I don't think they have mastered the team chemistry thing yet.. the penalties don't always make sense and there are some important parts of the game missing.. like fake punts... or any special teams in general. But the more I play this the better it is getting. I'm starting to figure out how things work together... the importance of how a player fits my system and not just go completely by overall ratings. I made a league out of the old USFL league and connected it to my DDS college football 2020 league so I could import my draft classes.. lots of fun being had over here!

Watching players go from high school all the way through a college and pro career is pretty neat. They have some stuff they can make better but I play this game to death even as it is. I bought it directly from the company and not through steam.