Overall fun sim. Interface takes getting used to, highly addictive once you get the flow of things.
This game is definitely not for the casual fan of football series. This is not a twitch game, as it puts you in the role of the head coach/gm. There is a lot of micromanagement, but it is presented in a much more pleasing way , in my humble opinion, then front office football is. There are also aspects of the game, such as the motivational side and the importance put on practices that I have not seen elsewhere.
There is a definite learning curve involved. It will take a few times going through a task, or game before you get the swing of things in that task. Game day seemed very taunting at first, feeling like I had no time, but by the end of the preseason you are flying through things with time to spare.
A major complaint i read is that some tasks are rigid and can not be swapped out, office hours specifically. While it is true you can not do much during office hours, you can change your calendar which is the main reason I feel it is in there between every practice. If they made it where you could swap out your office hours the simple problem with that is a) you would be locked into your tasks if they are a bunch of practices in a row (where you can't get to your calendar to swap out tasks), and b) the balance of how much time you have would either be gone, or they would halve the number of tasks you can do in a day, which would end up with people complaining about that. However, what I do find annoying in this system is occasionally an assistant coach will call you during office hours and ask you to pencil in another practice when most of the time, all your available time is packed with practices.
The natural relationship development between you and your assistants runs smooth. You have a trust level with your boss (owner) and all your subordinates (coaches), and this seems to work out well. If the players they are responsible for are not doing well, the trust level naturally declines due to conversations you will have with them. And at certain points in conversations you can choose to take a trust hit in a hope to enlighten them (stat increases for them) by dressing them down.
The players themselves have a range within which their stats will fluctuate. They seem to fluctuate a bit too much imho, making it so that it seems your well prepared qb at the top of his rating due to a good week of practices drops to the middle or low part of his range if he is sacked. Motivation is unpredictable enough where it is always a risk, but you learn which players on your team react good or bad based on certain situations, and learn how to have the best chance of manipulating your team.
There are definite opportunities for improvement, and I truly hope this is a series that lives on via patches and future versions. There are occasional AI glitches during games that make you shake your head a little bit, but they are not common enough to ruin the experience. The multiplayer portion could have done much better with online leagues being an option. The play designed feature could have been done a LOT better. Simple file management in the play designer is a chore. All in all a very good sim if you are into micromanaging the day to day activities of a pro team.
On a strategic level, one of my very few disappointments in this game is the same I have had with madden, in that the defensive players don't seem to really play true football defense, in the sense of different schemes (ie: 1 gap vs 2 gap), but I remain hopefull for the future.
I suggest you do not read reviews written by those who have only played the demo, and stick to the reviews of those who have invested some decent time into the game. If you like sports-management sims, or madden franchise mode (and don't mind that it isn't a twitch game, you are watching all the action just making the calls), this is a good game with some nice graphics to it. If those are not the kinds of games for you, neither is this.
This game is definitely a niche game.