Franchise Hockey Manager 7 Reviews

It's getting much closer to being a true replacement for the old EHM games. It get's better with each iteration.

This game has a stellar concept, and I thoroughly enjoyed the management aspect of Franchise Mode in NHL 19. So I bought this game in hopes that it would be everything I was looking for. However, it appears that this game series is in dire need of quality control, as there are a number of unforgivable, game-breaking bugs which severely hamper the ability to enjoy the overall experience. That said, if the developers were able to smooth out all the bugs one day, this game would easily be the best Franchise Mode for hockey games on the market. I think the five-star rating from OOTP Developments is a much better system than NHL's numerical ratings, and you can tell that the developers do put a lot of heart into trying to recreate the experience of being a GM or head coach in real life. I think it's awesome that this game exists, and I feel really bad that the devs lack the means to put more money and time into quality control. However, it's just too frustrating when you put several hours into a game only to have to start all over again thanks to some spontaneous game-breaking issue. I asked for a refund since $45 is a lot of money for me, but I will definitely be back when you guys smooth out the bugs! :)

A great sports management game even if you don't like hockey. UI presentation got a big overhaul, scouting gets a needed re-work, and the 2d match engine is extremely fun. There is a huge historical international database upgrade, so literally any hockey you can imagine can be run here, not just NHL. If you have FHM6, I do think it's a worthwhile upgrade, but if you dont watch games or dont play historical stuff, then you might wanna wait fora sale.

Having played every game in the series over a hundred hours since FHM 3, I consider this iteration to already be, on launch day, the biggest leap yet. The price is steep - but I've definitely come to think of the premium as a donation to the small but extremely dedicated team of devs. A definite recommend to any fans of the series. I'd also recommend this particular iteration to any players who had left the series due to the impression of an imbalanced tedium-to-satisfaction ratio in the gameplay loop. Micro-management is still a plenty (especially when setting up your team for the first time), but the revamped scouting goes a long way to make things bearable and the payoff, in the form of new 2D simulation, although still rough around the edges, is quite worth it. That said, anyone looking for a PC equivalent of EASports' NHL Franchise mode should understand that the two are very much different beasts. Expect a jump similar to going from 4X strategy games to Grand strategy games. Having come from the console games myself, I must say I'm particularly happy with my leap of faith, but do keep an open mind. Finally, a few very early FYIs from my gameplay: - Do not enable the 2D as default simulation if you have selected to make all leagues playable, as I can confirm that simulating a single day takes half a minute on a Ryzen 3950x overclocked to 4.5GHz on all cores. This may be an optimization issue however as it would appear that the processing is handled by only a few cores. - As pointed out by the developers, in its current state, the 2D simulation will lead to slightly different results than the classic simulation. Most notably, expect lower shot totals. I am expecting this to be fixed quite early on, but in the mean time, I will gladly take the fact that both my goalies set GAA records despite ranking league bottom in save percentage... :)

Franchise Hockey Manager Hockey is this the game we can come to love? Does the 2D engine features compare to EHM? The pure and straight answer is no. I really feel like OOTP really dropped a big opportunity to win some support on this product. For me here are many turnoffs on this game as I will go into detail. The nice graphical map is fine for scouting prospects. Where it faults is how do you scout the short list. In prior version you were able to assign both players and scouts to the short for reporting. The option to assign a scout to the short list does not seam to be available in this latest version. So now instead of using the short list now you have a watch list. If the short list is not applicable anymore why keep it as an option. The menu system is still the same as the prior version I don't love it or hate it. Does take some time getting use to. Database issues.... Yes they still exist. I started a game in the QMJHL and right out of the gate I notice issues with the roster. My roster showed players on my active and depth list but for some reason they were assign to another team within the league. The first assumption was the player was on a loan to another team. This was not the case, as the only option I had was to trade for the player. I checked the the players rights status and notice my team was the owner. So how can another team own this player when I own his rights? According to OOTP "It looks like there's a database issue with a few players who have moved between QMJHL teams this season". These types of issues should not occur in a 7th generation product. It gets better. One of my players obtains a major injury fractured hip which causes him to be on the IR for several months. Remember this is a major injury. Two months later the development report comes out and this player receives increase in acceleration. What? I could understand the month the player was injured to receive some kind of bonus but how does a player increase in acceleration with said injury, no practice or gameplay an entire month? OOTP "Injuries significantly reduce development speed, but don't eliminate development entirely - if he was close to improving before the injury, the limited increase that happens while he was hurt can still be enough for him to get another point.". This make absolutely no sense to me. A player with an injury of that magnitude would have lost the increase at best. The 2D engine has major flaws. During puck dump ins, puck clearings and other scenarios players will drift following the puck to the goaltender red line prior to reacting or will sit at the red line waiting for the puck. Cannot tell you how many times I was scored on to lose a game due to this flaw. Lets talk about last seconds scoring in the game, geez this will irritate you to no end but it's even better when the opposing team starts getting momentum and you can see what the program logic is doing and know your going to lose. In addition the goaltender on point shots from defenders don't even move at times (or should I say alot). This is frustrating beyond belief. After the faceoff is won by the opposing team defender moves to the middle of the ice and scores shooting the opposite post. Hold on my goaltender never moved from his original stance at the face off to react. What? Let's now touch on last second breakaways where your defenders move out the way letting the opposing offensive players one on one with your goaltender. Huh? This is the first version of the 2D engine and did not expect perfection by any means but this appears to had no play test time. There are many other issues that I could speak of but wanted to provide a few examples for the sake of time. Many of these issues have been reported to OOTP for addressing. At this point I feel more like a play tester than a customer enjoying a product. I really question their quality control methods on this or other products they produce. This product does have promise but they need to get the basic programming logic resolved to make this a suitable product. This is a complete utter failure on execution. After playing this product I will not purchase a future FHM game until all major issues have been resolved. I gave you the information and now it's up to you decide if you want to purchase. If your asking my opinion stay away and continue playing EHM.

A noticeable improvement over its predecessor, this iteration is deeper and more user friendly, especially with respect to scouting and contract negotiations. While the 2D match welcome is well executed and certainly welcome, I don't coach games, so it doesn't really affect my review. My qualm, rather, is with the stability of the game: in less than four hours of play I've had six crashes while simulating between games. If and when stability improves, I will happily change my thumbs-down to thumbs-up, as this is otherwise an impressive feat.

I've played every game in this series. I've played all of them for quite a few hours. Over 200 hours per game. There is one that was almost 600 hours. I've also played Eastside Hockey Manager extensively with over 400 hours since it came to steam, and many more under Eastside Hockey Manager 2007. This game in the series adds quite a bit onto what they were building. There is now a 2D engine. You can control your farm team and scouts much more. Overall I like the improvements and will be playing quite a bit. I have also imported my most recent saved game from Franchise Hockey Manager 6 and everything imported nicely. If you enjoy sports management games, and hockey managers I would say this is a good purchase.

Good game, improves things that in my opinion were needed to improve from FHM6. Price tag is tad too much but as person that got almost 800hours from FHM6 in 4months or so i expect to it be worth it.

Strongly not recommended, unless you want to pay full price to become a BETA tester for OOTP. This game is so full of bugs that you are inevitably going to encounter a show stopper that will render your hours of engagement moot. This is now the SEVENTH release of this same game and as you can see on their web site bug report forum, they already have, as of this writing, 169 separate bug report threads posted. Many, many of those bugs being full blown immersion and / or game play breakers. Never mind trying to also calculate the amount of play-ability issues that are raised on their general forum pages. And I again I should not need to point out this is a SEVENTH release of this game and it is not being offered as an early release game, nor is it being priced as such. Apart from the many bugs and even discounting the many other illogical game mechanics that are present, it begs the question' why is it that now after 7 versions of this game, OOTP still cannot provide its paying customers a relatively bug free core game play experience? Rather we see this small development group (... as we are constantly reminded) choose to devote their attentions to instead introducing "new" features that are clearly incomplete and not ready for prime time, and that inevitably add yet more bugs to the basic game. Would it be too much to ask to instead apply those scarce resources to finally fixing the foundations of the product they are selling before add a new shiny gazebo. Lastly, despite all the structures and options for adjusting your personnel (on & off the office) tweaking your line-ups, developing strategies, tactics etc I feel the game still does an extremely poor job of providing any meaningful / actionable feedback to you, the player, regarding the changes you might make or have already made to your club. And with so many bugs and other inconsistencies that are readily apparent in the game, one cannot help but then question, how sound and 'realistic / logical' are we to then believe the results that are being generated behind the scenes by the match engine? Its like a we have been presented with a Potemkim village of a game where the facade looks nice but the reality behind that facade is not a very believable hockey management simulation. P.S. I have purchased all 7 versions of this game, hoping against hope each year that they have finally nailed the basics. So I'm not coming at this as a newbie... alas they have not. Shame on me.

I have been a long time supporter of the OOTP games, which are made by the same company. OOTP has taken its time to become the amazing game that it is, though it is still short of what I'd like it to be because they keep focusing on useless features that nobody is really asking for, and ignoring the flaws in the game. However, it is still the best sports management game available. This brings me to FHM 7. The best sports management game is being developed down the hall, and consistently, year after year, I get duped into buying this crap because I think to myself that the game has to improve, the FHM team has to have found their way to talk to the OOTP Dev team. Yet again, however, I was wrong and wasted my money buying a game that would be great in 2007, though honestly EHM was better then than this is now. If I were to imagine the worst UI I possibly could, where finding the information needed took a couple too many clicks, the right mouse button was ineffective, and screens went without any kind of explanation what effect they had, it would still be better than whatever the FHM 7 team came up with. For example, there is a whole scouting screen where you can assemble a crack team of scouts, see these pretty maps of the hockey world broken down into zones, and even assign a couple scouts to more important jobs. You even get to set the priorities for what those scouts do. In my first go, in an historical league, does that mean I get to see who my scouts are watching, or get reports on who they've seen in the last month, or even which of those zones they are watching? Of course not. It took me 15 minutes just to find a list of prospects to add to my watch list so those scouts could get around to seeing them, and even then I couldn't differentiate between players that have been selected in a previous draft and those that might be available in the upcoming draft. Overall, half a star out of 5, get your act together FHM.