Franchise Hockey Manager 8 Reviews

Final summary: Buy version 7 instead. Every version of FHM improved on the one before until this one. New bugs to crucial elements and lazy slapdash fixes for AI problems made 8 worse than the previous version, and it's not getting fixed. Let's see if 9 gets it together. ------------------------ Long version: I've sunk literally hundreds of hours into every iteration of this series so far, easily my favorite and most played games ever by an order of magnitude. (Seriously, my LEAST played FHM has over 200 hours.) I started version 8 and quickly found out while certain aspects of trading are now smarter and more realistic, the values somehow been so borked that, as only one example, AI GMs get angry at me for offering 3x 1st round picks for a second pair defender. Until this is fixed, I can't recommend version 8. I will update this review if this changes. Edit 13: Christ in heaven the trade logic in 8 is somehow even worse after the new update. Making sure you get high value pieces for elite players is a great idea in theory, but when PRIME AGE Drysdale, Matthews, Svechnikov, and Wallstedt ALL TOGETHER are not considered sufficient value for a single star prospect, @#&^ off. Best LW in the league. 2nd best center. 5th best G. Top line D. I am literally offering to make a team the instant Stanley Cup favorite and they won't give up a 4.5 potential prospect. Buy version 7 instead. Edit 12: 340 hours playtime in because I am a madman, I have become certain that waiver rules are incorrect in ways I do not remember from previous versions. Newly signed NHL entry level contracts for 24 year olds should, as far as I know, make them waiver exempt for 2 years/60 NHL games. I currently have THREE players who are claimable on the 1st year, 0 NHL games. Buy version 7 instead. Edit 11: Another thing I've never seen is 1000+ hours playing this series before version 8 is free agents negotiating against me, GM of the Maple Leafs, with the threat of signing with the Maple Leafs, who have given them a generous offer. Two players are doing this right now. Buy version 7 instead. Edit 10: When a "Win Now" NHL team with strong F/D is failing because they're ranked last in goaltending (with only a single even AHL level goalie) and won't offer a 1st for a 4.0/5.0 star 21yo career .920 goalie on a 7 year $2.5 million contract, that's pure horse... droppings. I've found workarounds for many of the trade logic fails in version 8 but this one REALLY irks me. Even a lottery pick would be worth going straight to contender status. Come on. Edit 9: Been released for months, I'm 200+ hours of playtime in, and the OOTP devs still haven't made basic fixes to trade logic. I am literally, at this exact moment, playing the game and unable to get a mid-20s 2.5/2.5 rated D for FIVE first round picks. I don't even get the "almost ok" message. Holy hell guys how are your change logs mentioning tweaking the AI trade frequency in the OHL or not when THIS is still unfixed? Buy version 7 instead. Edit 8: I'm now comfortable saying that Free Agency logic is also hosed in version 8. Top 3 players in the world at their position with multiple Cup rings, All-Star appearances, etc. should not be signing in minor European leagues for 1 year/1.2m, at age 29, when the manager notifications specifically indicate multiple NHL teams have interest. This should not happen, it never happened in previous versions, and might not be often but it definitely happens regularly in version 8. Buy version 7 instead. Edit 7: Good news first: Trading for 1st round picks is consistently much more nuanced now, there is an actual difference between high and low that goes beyond the "don't trade top 10 picks ever." logic from previous versions. Two thumbs up. Bad news next: The NHL Draft Review algorithm is special. Stars have the "best" draft with 7 picks and the best player they chose was 0.5/2 stars. Blues rated second with 4 picks, best player 0.5/1.5 and all others 0.5/0.5. Meanwhile every team rated "worst" came out with potential top 6 players. Pretty sure I never saw anything this off target in previous versions. This where Peter Chiarelli finally found a new job? Edit #!&%ing SIX: After more extensive testing of basic strategies than anyone on their team apparently did, I can say that No Trade/Movement clauses are newly busted for version 8. Players are, and I emphasize, UNLIKE PREVIOUS VERSIONS OF THE GAME, completely unwilling to waive them, ever. For example, if I've got a team tied for last place in the NHL, you would think the older players would want to go to contenders rather than rebuild until retirement. I've been there and gone through every combination of player and team, and not one player would accept a trade to even a top 5 team. Also perma-injured unofficially retired 38 year olds apparently care who cuts their cheques and won't accept trades. Come on. Yet another reason you literally need commissioner mode on. Still playing the crap out of the game so an Edit 7 is probably inevitable. Edit 5: Making the version 8 trade logic worse, trading at the deadline doesn't calculate space accrued from IR properly so trades are incorrectly declared impossible. I'm trying to bring players on for the playoffs with the cap space gained from having $11 mil on IR for months. Yet another very normal thing you have to force with commissioner mode on. Edit 4: I presume the new trading issues in 8 were an attempt to close perceived exploits in the trading system. To test their success, I played through a year of a brand new game to see how far I could exploit the logic. By the end of a brand new game as the 2021 Toronto Maple Leafs, I have accumulated EIGHT first round picks without trading a star player away. EIGHT. (In fairness, doing this takes an unconscionable amount of time and annoying multi-step micromanagement.) Dudes, I've sunk 1000+ hours into this franchise, I know how to beat the AI. The changes in 8 don't fix the exploitable stuff, they just mess up valid, real-life-accurate strategies. I'm still going to play this game to death but I'd like to not experience regular annoyance in the process. Edit 3: If I claim a NHL player on waivers, he somehow gets a No Movement Clause. Happened eight times in a row. FFS how do you think I was able to claim the dude? This is an exciting new bug for version 8 and yet another reason you need to play in commissioner mode or it's broken. To reiterate, this is literally my favorite game series I would KIND OF ENJOY being able to play it normally. Edit 2: Trade values for helping with dead money are also messed up in this version. Given what we see IRL, if I'm a NHL GM trading a 3-star 25 year old for a 7 million player who'll never play again like Kesler or Seabrook, and the AI won't even throw in a 2nd, that's ridiculous. Given 3 stars is mid-low 1st round tier, a still-young fully developed player should be worth more than that to a contender straight up. Still having to roleplay trades because the trade logic fixes for version 8 broke more than they fixed. Edit 1: Two updates have been pushed out and the trades are still completely broken. I am trying to offer a rebuilding team FIVE first round draft picks for a late 20s 2.5 star D and it's not enough. Yet if I offer a team a younger AND better player, the other GM is unhappy at even being asked for a 1st rounder. What the actual hell. I should not have to roleplay trades. Version 8 is not playable without commissioner mode on right now. Stick to 7.

Boston went 26-0-1 to start the season. Wtf mate? As a Canucks fan, I disapprove of this. Canucks cursed by the injury bug as always, but somehow managed to make the playoffs and get swept in the first round. As a Canucks fan, I approve of this.

So I think I can finally say that the game has reached a point where it can be recommended in its own right, rather than as a blueprint for something that might eventually maybe scratch the itch of the old EHM. It's not a perfect game by any means, you can tear aspects of it apart as still not fully fleshed out. However, the game is just getting better and better every year with a growing feature set that draws on the OOTP baseball model with a lot of great implementations from that series added here. There's enough meat on the bones now that you can enjoy the game for what it is today rather than just buying in to what it could be in three years. As a hockey simulator it is top notch, as a management game it is still just "pretty good" but finally getting there. I finally feel like player profiles are intuitive and have enough interesting information about the player to help me make decisions. I finally feel the scouting is meaningful. I finally feel on-ice strategy matters. I finally feel like there's a world going on off the ice with financials and better news implementation. The 2D ice play is still a bit wonky but they're obviously making its implementation and improvement a top priority from the dev logs so I'm totally fine with where it's at for now. Menu design, while still a bit clinical, is coming along as well. My major advice to the devs is that the following areas need improvement: -Trade logic needs to be refined so that multi-asset deals are a bit more common. Right now it's rare to see trades that aren't one-for-one player-for-prospect or player-for-draft-pick. As the financial system gets more in depth and refined would be nice to see cash trades with the CPU as well. -As many hyperlinks as there are, there need to be more. In a game like this navigation has got to be as easy as possible. Pretty much anytime I see a team or a player name it's got to be clickable and take me right to their team page or player profile. Game scores should always be clickable if there's a box score available. This needs to be aded to the news stories already present as well as new ones, including the infoboxes at the bottom right of the news screen. -There needs to be a league-wide transactions hub that actually lists all the transactions in the league. As far as I can tell right now, the hub just shows you trading blocks and available free agents. I need a league-wide record of everything that happened so I don't have to navigate to individual team pages to see what transactions they made. While my wishlist items are: -Natural league expansion, rules and financial evolution like there is in OOTP. Especially with regards to the salary cap and broadcast revenue developing over time. League-wide rule changes which develop over time naturally like changing the draft age, rules about contracts and salaries. -Draft pick protection rules and the trade logic that allows them to be actually implemented by the CPU with itself. -Players seem to stick like glue to the franchise that drafted them. Would be interesting, especially in light of the Jack Eichel situation, to see (very occasional) storylines happen that lead to a breakdown of the relationship between a player and a team. There could even be specific choices to be made by the player if one of these ever comes up and depending on how well they know the players' personality they could make the right or wrong choice and end up losing a star or keeping them over it. Happens in real life, could totally happen in the game. -Rivalry system as it it is implemented now is interesting, but could definitely be fleshed out. I think it's fair to have a main rival and then maybe one or two other rivals. Not sure if this is in the game or not but playoff series should contribute more to the rivalry score. Could be workable to even have short-term rivals that change frequently and long-term rivals that change rarely. For instance in my save Florida and Vegas have played each other for the Cup three straight years, that should lead to a long-lasting rivalry.

Bought this year's iteration of FHM and after playing for two seasons I still feel that Eastside Hockey Manager is the superior hockey simulation. The 2d match engine is laughably bad. The players often take the puck into the corner and skate back and forth for up to a minute straight. The visual simulation rarely looks like hockey at all. In my opinion the developers should remove the 2d match engine from the game until they improve it to the point it actually resembles hockey. Eastside Hockey Manager is leaps and bounds ahead in this respect. The rest of the game is average with a few encouraging aspects. The UI is a bit clunky at times. The AI trades can be very questionable. In just one season I have seen a Ryan Hartman for Dylan Cozens trade and a Bo Horvat for Dmitri Zavgorodny 1 for 1. At this point I can not recommend this game, especially not ahead of EHM.

So after simulating through an entire season and using the decision making option for a game, I can safely say this is the best Franchise Hockey Manager game to date. It's not perfect by any means, but since I began playing the game with FHM 4, the game has come a long way. First off, making decisions for players is a welcome addition to the game and adds to the overall immersion. However, decisions pop up quite often, which kills the overall flow of a game. A slider of sorts to adjust how often you make decisions would be a nice addition in the future. That said, I'd also like to see defensive decisions available in the future. Taking it a step further, the ability to change line via drop down menu as well. Also the AI seems a bit reluctant to shoot and or pass and often spend a lot of time moving around, but not doing much while passing up on open shots and or passes. So while the chalkboard is improved overall, there's still some fine tuning needed. I'd also like to see more in depth play by play in the future. Next up the new financial system, which is pretty simple overall and not very difficult to get the hang of. You adjust just how much you want to spend on improved scouting, player morale, and game promotions/arena operations at the beginning of each month. It's points based and it gives you your starting points and ending points based on the selections you make. How many points you end up with seems based on the success of your team as a whole. Cool addition, but haven't played enough yet to really see what differences it really makes. A nice smaller addition to this years game is the ability to save your lines. That way instead of having to go in and change all the lines again, you can simply load a saved lines. Note this is for all lines, not individual lines. The sim speed seems a little faster, but I recommend keeping the number of leagues selected to a minimum and setting the simulating option at the setup screen to "All Classic". It still takes a while before July 1, but that's because it's generating a lot of information at that time. I definitely recommend this game to any fan of hockey and fan of acting as a GM.

I really want to love this game and after playing 8 seasons, I can't recommend it to anyone who loves a good GM experience like OOTP or FM. I've played different version of this game since East Side Hockey and dumb bugs and poor UX design keep plaguing this series. As a professional software developer, it's mind boggling the lack of UX research done for this game because what seems like little UX issues show up everywhere and ruin the experience. Things like emails showing up in your inbox even though you excluded the category from the emails you want to receive, where a player would be slotted in your depth chart before you sign him, clearly laid out financial information so you can make educated cap decisions, warnings before you're about to go over the cap instead of letting you get a in situation you can only resolve by hacking salaries for your players in order for the game to move on, easier ways to quickly compare players, and on and on it goes. It feels like a game that was developed by solid devs without UX experience and who probably love hockey but lack basic understanding of what a GM must know to be successful in this GM sim.

I really only bought the EA NHL games to play as a manager, but I may never buy another EA game again. This game has better drafting, scouting, training, line-making, contract negotiation, coaching, and simulation than EA could dream of implementing. I do wish that watching a game was less visually-simple, but I would assume features like that could come with time. Easily a top-tier sports managing game.

Well I purchased FHM8 to give it a try, having spent 1200+ hours playing EHM, I play both games as a GM only. I kept a list of what I found to be good and bad with the game after 20 hours of play and this is my result: THE GOOD: 1. It is much harder to build a dynasty than with EHM, I am in my 3rd season and still have not made the playoffs, in EHM I would have been a contender this season. 2. The awards ceremony are much better done and the GM of the year is not just the guy who won the cup. In EHM I always skip the awards, but I found myself enjoying them in FHM 3. You cannot fire your coach unless the boss agrees, sometimes he will say no, other times yes, and then the in between, "I disagree but fire him if you want to, but it will look bad on you". 4. Players can progress past, or fall well short, of their potential rating. That is pretty cool to see a 2 star player work his butt off and become a 3 star player, or be lazy and drop from a 3 to a 1.5. 5. Lockouts are simulated 6. You can randomize the player pool, so in 2021 you can have Gretzky show up as a rookie 7. You can start a historical game from 1917 onwards with the flick of a mouse, unlike in EHM where you have to wait for someone to create the players then download and install, that is very cool. Now the BAD: 1. Not enough players in historical mode to fill the draft. The draft is 11 rounds (?) but after round 2 you are drafting 4th liners. In my last draft after round 8 there were no players left so the last 3 picks were phantom picks (no player). I posted about this on OOTP and was told it gets worse, one person stated in their consecutive drafts they only had between 34-68 players to draft from. The reason for this is thus: the developer is only using real people, so until he creates them all you have nothing, therefore your draft picks are worthless and best be used to trade away for established players. 2. The trade deadline moves around between Feb and Mar 3. Entry draft is in July after UFA 4. Trading is very frustrating. First you cannot set your team wishes, or look at a simple spread sheet like EHM and see what other teams want, so you have to go team by team seeing what their weakness is. Once you decide to trade you do not get a counter offer, only a "that is not fair", "that is close", or "accepted", you will then change your trade and come back with "that is close" over and over again, a counter offer would be helpful. I have since learnt that unless your adviser says "they will probably accept" don't bother offering. 5. Teams will offer to trade player A for B, but when you counter with player A for C and offer the trade it will state the offering team has no room! 6. Owner has no idea what he is doing. Season 1 he tells my brand new expansion team to rebuild, then complains that we are not winning and we had better. Season 2 he wants the playoffs then in season 3 he wants to rebuild but then complains we are not winning. This makes the "can't be fired" check box mandatory or else you will be fired after the first year each time. 7. Contract renewals SUCK! The player has all the power, I wanted to offer a RFA 3rd liner a new contract (1993), he wanted 765K x 3 years when other 3rd liners get 150K, so counter his request to 150K and all you get back is "I don't like that, how about 760K x 3 years? There is no way like in EHM to offer a contract in a "take it or leave it" manner, the players dictate what you pay you cannot dangle a contract and leave them unsigned (RFA) or take it. When offering a contract the only way you can submit a contract to a player is if HE likes it. The simming of the games and stuff is ok, it isn't better or worse then EHM although there do seem to be a lot of blow outs. Injuries are numerous on normal mode, and they are almost always 1 to 2 months long, thus injuries gets turned off, and just like EHM it is always your top guys going down, not your goon. So that is my take on it so far, do I recommend the game, sadly no, too much is left out or is wonky, the biggest being the draft and the contracts. I do appreciate the hard work the developer is doing to create real players, all the way back to 1917, but perhaps that is a bit too much.

I have no idea what I am doing and I have made so many players mad on the VGK team by because of poor management. Very realistic

Good game. My 2 main issues are: 1) When YOU claim a player on waiver, they get a no movement clause until the end of the season so you can't trade them or send them in the minors. This is done to prevent players from stock piling players and trading them for draft picks or better players. Problem is that the CPU is able to claim and then trade or send them down. I got a player claimed from me but I was able to trade back for him a week later and, when I tried to send him down, his no move clause blocked me. Why aren't CPU teams also affected by this no movement rule? And why would it apply to me after I traded for the guy? I'm not the one who claimed him on waivers. Another player was claimed by CPU and put back on waivers a week later. Again, the rule doesn't seems to apply to CPU. 2) A team who's in the bottom of the standing and rebuilding puts a 4 star player on the trading block. You try to trade for them using your prospects and it won't let you do it because they want an equal value player (aka 3.5 or 4 stars right now). Tried to offer two 2 stars players with 5 stars potential + a couple of 1st round picks and it still wouldn't take it. Not sure why a team rebuilding wouldn't trade a veteran who's on the last year of his contract, especially after putting him on the trading block, for that kind of return. You want him, trade him for another veteran with similar rating. Great game but there are a couple of logic holes here and there like these which makes it difficult to fully appreciate.