Lords of Football offers a fresh perspective on the football management genre by giving you complete control over your entire team. Very similar to the Football Manager series, Lords of Football includes a micromanagement system that allows you to interact with your teammates.
This is going to sound clichéd, but the micromanagement portion of the game is a lot like playing EA’s The Sims. Aside from being a football manager, it is also a life simulator. This portion of the game is truly unique, allowing you to tailor each teammate on your team.
This includes training and exercising, but you can also control their nightlife as well. This is where things can become rather tricky as you juggle your teammates and micromanage their lives. While it can be frustrating, it does become easier the longer you play the game.
The players from your team have a mind of their own, but it’s up to you to instill control and discipline. Without proper guidance, your teammates will soon develop bad habits such as gambling, ego problems and eating disorders, among other things. These bad habits can seem harmless at first, but going without treatment for too long can lead to serious addictions. Once a player has formed an addiction, their performance will suffer during matches and they will no longer have any interest in playing.
Basically, Lords of Football combines multiple genres into a single game. The life simulator is the micromanagement portion of the game, while the football manager segment resembles the Football Manager franchise that we are all familiar with.
Instead of dealing with your team’s statistics from a dashboard, everything is located on a world map. If you need to buy or trade a player for example, it’s as simple as visiting the main office, which is located on the Training Campus. Everything you need is located on the world map, making simple tasks easy and even enjoyable. It also eliminates all the overlapping menus seen in other football managers. Executing commands during a match such as ‘movement’, and even ‘steal and tackle’, is quite easy.
If you don’t enjoy managing the matches yourself, there is an option to ‘simulate’ the matches like in Football Manager. Managing an entire team isn’t for everyone. Some gamers will find this feature exciting, while others may not; it’s a matter of preference. However, the game does include numerous features that cater to gamers of skill levels.
The only drawback to Lords of Football is its lack of official teams. This can be considered both good and bad depending on how you look at it. Not having official teams allows the player to customize their team members, allowing for name changes, team colors, logos, etc. If you dedicate enough time, you can develop your own ‘specialized’ team with the features provide; the possibilities are absolutely endless.
Lords of Football is more than just a football manager; it’s for football enthusiasts that have a passion for the sport. It’s the type of simulator that you will continue to play long after the sequel is released.
James ‘Daripp3r’ Pittaro
Platform: PC
Developer: Geniaware SrI
Publisher: Fish Eagle
ESRB: N/A
Price: $24.99
Lords of Football’s Official Website
| Review Score | |
|---|---|
| Graphics |   |
| Fantastic and extremely realistic; complete with changing weather and other physics that sets Lords of Football apart from the rest. | |
| Sound | |
| The music is simply gorgeous; everything else regarding the sound is spot on. | |
| Gameplay | |
| Lords of Football is a brilliant football simulator that offers the right amount of simulation and micromanagement. | |
| Overall | |
|---|---|
| If you are looking for a football simulator that gives you more than just statistics, then Lords of Football is the right game for you. It gives you control over every aspect of each team member through micromanagement, giving you a truly unique gameplay experience that you simply can't find anywhere else. | |
