Simple, addictive, but repetitive.
First the game start with 5 top European league -- England, France, Germany, Spain and Italy which feature two divisions each with promotion and relegation system. The game kick-off with group of player, i believe around 25, greet you with their introduction one by one in lighthearted mood, just like The Sims.
Once your player step inside the training ground, here's thing become interesting. You have to set-up your own training module on each facilities. Then you just simply drag and drop your player on the desirable module and your player will start their training. You have main pitch, running track, physio's room, gymnasium, small pitch, running track etc. which serve different purpose. Your player have 3 main areas that can be improved with specific training -- Technical, Tactical (Mentality) and Physical.
As the time progress, there will be a popup remind you the regular training hour has passed. You can decide whether to call it a day or just ignore it and continue to overwork your squad. Each action will have consequence in long run. Your player might get better technical-wise but their psychology, mood and happiness might not, which bring me to the next point.
Another main feature of the game -- the nightlife. After each training session end, your squad will embark in their own nightlife. There are needs and desire need to be fulfilled such as gambling, alcohol, party, ego, sex (nothing explicit), food et cetera. At first things is pretty straightforward, you don't have to pay attention much. But as the season progress you need to keep an eye on your squad as they might grow addictions or inadequate needs which directly affect the player abilities directly in negative way. However don't worry, you can still reverse the effect by sending the player under therapy or punishment, each with different success rate and psychological impact.
Then it's crunch time, the match day in fully 3D engine. You can customize your team tactics, set-piece taker, formation, captaincy, everything you can expect from a football game although it isn't complex as Football Manager. My honest opinion, the graphics suddenly worsen during match day. Dodgy animation here and there, weird ball physics, aesthetically everything look outdated. Though the AI is still dependable on most part. The CPU always provide ample challenge, but fair, never cheat. There's no rubber-band moment where's the AI suddenly turn the situation to their advantage, none. You can also control player action and pause the game, this is compulsory as your team-mate AI sometime isn't capable of making decisive action in split moment due to the limitation of the engine.
As you completed your tasks, made some progress you'll unlock bunch of stuff and useful upgrade that can help your player trains better. It's not just cosmetic upgrade. This aspect make the game more interesting and addictive as you always wonder what else in store after making good progress.
While the premise sound and look fairly exciting the developer made quite costly mistake with the exclusion of pause function during daytime and night time. This made worse with fast time progression. You simply don't have sufficient time to take care and pay attention to every details. The game even running in real-time in tactical / game plan menu, when you browse for information like standings, result, schedule. The game basically running in real-time all of the time. This will make you feel rushed, and easily miss lots of attention to details like your squad stats and needs. It become like the old pen & paper game when you have to jot-down important notes to make sure you won't forget which area that needs specific attention. Don't forget you have 25 unique individuals, currently it's a daunting task to keep track of everything.
Since the game somewhat fall under "budget title" there's another downside -- repetitive. After few hours of gameplay you'll start noticing the pattern. The calender system work like this: Training - Nightlife - Matchday, rinse and repeat, no gap in between. The game not using realistic calender such as 5 days for training, weekend for match day. There's nothing else to do, no media interview, no player interview, no random event. The transfer market also very simplified. You just have to create wishlist on which player position do you want and which player do you want to sell. The game will take care the rest automatically. In general the game is rather simplistic, aimed for casual rather than hardcore football fans.
The positive is the developer heard the customer's concern and already start working on patch mainly focused on the missing pause function. Although it draw comparison with The Sims but it's an unfair one, Lords of Football isn't nowhere near as The Sims in budget and marketing (at one point had no publisher) and the game obviously not competing with Football Manager since it's not a managerial simulator. Think of it as a whole different game, but centered around football. $30 for the game is spot-on if you're the target audience as hours of entertainment is guaranteed. I have to give credit to Geniaware for trying something different.
Pros:
- Good, beautiful, colourful presentation.
- Pick up & play.
- Tons of unlockable.
- Fun, different concept.
Cons:
- No ability to pause the game.
- Dated match day engine.
- Get repetitive after a while.