Brutal Ball Manager 2

If you prefer the franchise management aspects of sports games (drafting, setting lineups, etc) to actually directly controlling the games.... and you like D&D and goofy fantasy races.... and you have a passing interest in American football... and you always thought the concept of Mutant Football League and Blood Bowl sounded cool, but wished that they either had more depth (the former) or didn't actively do everything they could to make playing them as frustrating and laborious as possible (the latter)... Well, then you're kind of weird and have a very weird and idiosyncratic set of interests. But also, you will probably like this game a lot. I played an entire season of the demo and loved it, so went ahead and took the dive. I've only just joined the Discord, but the community seems super welcoming so far. Looking forward to sinking too many hours into this.

Wow. I invested hundreds of hours into the first installment of Brutal Ball Manager, and after trying BBM2, it's going to be thousands of hours. My all-time favorites are OOTP Baseball and Football Manager - and Brutal Ball Manager fits comfortably into this group of top tier sports GM sims, at a fraction of the cost. The best part about this work of art is that we GM sim lovers get to learn a new sport, evaluate players based on numerous metrics, and watch it all unfold on the field. The game sims very well to your vision, from overall O/D approach to play-calling tendencies of your coach. This installment adds a solid layer of game plan levers to address strategies for any given matchup. I appreciate the updates to animations for the gameplay presentation as well. This game, with this Dev, just keeps getting better and better.

I feel like I can give this a recommendation now. Most of the worst day 1 bugs have been fixed. Very excited to see where this project goes.

The first game is one of my favorite sports simulation games. Even though at the time of this review, the game is still early access and still missing a few core features, the sequel is a definite improvement. And the developer is active, both with updating/patching the game and running community leagues. Early feedback was responded to and acted on immediately. If you have any interest in sports simulator games, or fantasy football, give this amazing game, or its prequel a try, both have free options available to dip your toes in before paying.

I am getting crushed in season 2 after losing some of my best players to free agency without paying attention, but I am having a great time with the sim so far just letting it do its thing on one monitor. I wish there was a way to Escape out of menus and screens. I also wish I there was an option to auto-sim every game but your teams in a week, unless I am just dumb and missed how to do that, other than the individual sim button on each game or watching them all sim through to yours in game(if that makes sense lol). Other than that this is old school fun so far. Next time your IRL friends bring up their fantasy players just talk about how your Orc D-lineman KO'd a guy last week.

I know very little about NFL, but BBM2 has been easy to pick up and a lot of fun. It feels like a good entry point because it has less positions, etc. Matches are fast, dynamic, and actually enjoyable to watch play out. I've liked drafting different styles of teams and seeing how they're reflected in the match engine. There are so many stats recorded and a HOF, which will be interesting to look at after a few seasons. It would be good to have some QOL features for starting new leagues. E.g. being able to save/load presets instead of creating them from scratch each time, and a quicker way of swapping teams. Maybe also a more visual way of displaying player attributes (although I'm sure I'll get used to how they looks now) and your line-up. An easy recommendation for anyone into sports management sims. A steal at this price, too. Definitely seems like a passion project for the dev, who's really active and helpful. Hope it does well.