Ok, so overall I'd give this game a 7.5/10 - which is good. The two strongest features - the fact that it looks great and is enjoyable enough that I consider my money well spent. For Sidhe's first game in the series I want to commend them for an outstanding effort - hopefully if they plan on releasing any more games in the next four years they'll have a fine template to build on.
There are, however, a lot of things to improve, and I don't think there's very much debate here either. I'll start with the easiest:
Customising Game
- Not being able to move players between the Premiership/ Pro12/ Top 14. I can't think of any other games with licensing rules this strict. Needs sorting.
- Not being able to add players to rosters without removing others. This just makes no sense.
- Instead of the 50 or so custom kits sidhe have designed, can we have templates (ie. hoops, quarters etc.) and fill them with whichever colours we want?
- Why did you have to make the unlicensed international kits look like flags? I think I'm playing rugby league every time I play with England...
Customising Players
- There should be a 'scrummaging' attribute, one for 'kick power'. While editing a player's attributes, his overall rating should be shown on the screen.
- An option for players to have tape around their heads
- An option for players to have their socks down
Rosters
- not all European players are that bad. Correcting rosters (and making them up to date for this season, in light of the licensing issues I mentioned above) is taking me AGES.
- For South Africans, I understand not having the license, but could you make all the players as real and then give them a name like T.Mwarirati, a B.de Lespis, a B.Haboona etc. so that it's easier to edit them?
Otherwise, as I said, superb. This next section may prove more difficult to correct:
Gameplay (all noted from playing on Hard)
- Passing. It's incredibly frustrating the amount of simple passes that are chucked miles behind the intended recipient. And no team is capable of scoring some of the tries I concede thanks to incredibly long ambitious passes infield that manage to find their target amongst a sea of my defenders.
- Tackling. Too many tackles are broken, it's unrealistic.
- Knock-ons. Too many knock-ons - unrealistic.
- Scrums. I like this feature, perhaps with a scrummaging stat added the average of the 3 front row players could make the scrum meter faster/ slower for each team depending on how good they are.
- Scoring tries. There needs to be an animation for sliding over the line.
- There needs to be an option for the 10 to sit back in the pocket.
- Drop goals - I don't need to say.
- TMO - when a player knocks on when trying to score, he gets the scrum 5. It should be the defending team.
- Goal kicking. Can you make the ring around which the slider goes darker or just more visible? Sometimes I can't pick it up at all, especially when the whitewash saying 22 is in the way.
Otherwise, as I said it's a fantastic game.
