The first let down is when you choose your team, only English Premiership, French division 1, French division 2 and Pro12 teams. This means that you cannot play as an international team or any of the Southern Hemisphere teams, a real let down for Super Rugby fans.
The game has a promising that with a very slick menu page
offering you to view; messages, selection, business etc. This start point is
taken directly from Football Manager however;
this is where the comparison ends.
The financial constraints are something that makes all
management games challenging. In Rugby
Manager it is very difficult to stay in control of the finances. Despite
being able to see the ‘remaining budget’ as a figure, it is impossible to see
how much you lose each month. Therefore, it is very easy to fall into the trap
of debt, particularly if you play as a Welsh region. Although the Welsh do have smaller budgets, they are not equal budgets as they are in reality with the Ospreys have £5 millions more than the Dragons. There is also no hint of a salary cap being enforced in England, lacks the realism factor.
The reason it is so easy to fall into debt is that when you
buy players in your first season; as you will no doubt do like a child in a
sweet shop, you are forced to pay compensation to the other team. This is fine
and is the way rugby does work, the downside is that it is impossible to ‘offer’
your players to teams for transfer. Therefore, the only way to lower the wage
bill is to release them by buying out the contracts yourself, nightmare!
So if you have kept enough money to survive until the start
of the season the real game can begin. I was expecting an in-depth tactics
manager, in the style of Football Manager
games, but what you get is frankly lazy. I was looking forward to shaping
my team to play an attractive brand of rugby akin to Mark Hammett’s Hurricanes.
There are no options for this. You can merely select your
players and move ‘defence’ and ‘kick’ sliders left and right, I am sure they
are supposed to do something but if they do it is minimal. That is the limit of
the tactical area, no options to play wide or to keep it tight. This is all
automatically done for you by the players that you select. Basically if you
have a strong pack the team ‘automatically’ plays a forward based game.
During the game it gets worse. It resembles American Football games as the only way to score is from the set-piece and the user selects the play to run. Most the plays never come off and outside of set-piece the game simply ticks over until another lineout or scrum. It is infuriating the amount of times there is a clear overlap but the players do not take it because they have not had those instructions. They also do not offload the ball, it is simply try this play, wait for a line out, try another play, and it gets tedious quickly.
There are also no explanations for the penalties in the game which is very irritating. I played against Toulon and Leigh Halfpenny kicked 7 goals. I wanted to know if I could change anything (no doubt I couldn’t unless it was controlled by the ‘defence’ or ‘kick’ sliders) but without knowing why you are being penalised that is impossible.
The games themselves are a futile task and may as well be
simulated as you do not provide anything to the team, so far as I can tell. It
is even difficult to sub players as a glitch in the game won’t let you bring on
a sub as they have ‘already been on the field’. This is not helpful when your
front row is tiring and getting bullied upfront!
Overall, Rugby Manager
2015 is a real let down. I was very excited about it and wanted it to be somewhere
near as good as its football counterparts but it falls down in so many areas, particularly
on the tactical front. It is fun for the first few moments as you buy rugby
superstars, from then on the problems start and it drifts downhill.
RATING: 4/10
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