I would love to get into Football Manager or OOTP Baseball but I hate the yearly-purchase monetization scheme.
I wish there was a good indie alternative, or something that scratches a similar itch.
An upside of SI tending to have very minor year-on-year upgrades between FM editions is that most people don’t buy it every year. It’s common to buy every two or three years, unless a momentous change is implemented. The sortitoutsi.net site has squad updates among its mods that let you play older games for longer.
Not that I want to be encouraging you to take it up, the game is literally like crack and I don’t let myself play it anymore.
It’s closer to FIFA (but way better). It started as a beloved mod for ePES/Pro Evolution. Then the developer(s) took the manager mode and built it into a standalone, free title that still works with other mods. It’s crazy deep even without extra mods, but you can add in (amazing) team-and-player-and-country-specific chants, stadiums, player faces, balls, shoes, teams, fields, new announcers, it’s fucking wild. I love that you can take a rookie, use him well, and it actually reflects in his stats. Then you trade him on a few years later for huge bucks. So addictive. If you get it all going, it is the most-fun, most-immersive soccer experience I’ve had. It’s here, another updated version apparently incoming soon.
I’ll take a look at it, but like I said above I don’t let myself play FM anymore and this sounds equally dangerous. Do you need a PES install to play or is it fully standalone?
Oh, it is dangerous. Fully standalone and free. When PES went Free-to-Play, the developers spun the single-player/management component out into its own thing.
I would love to get into Football Manager or OOTP Baseball but I hate the yearly-purchase monetization scheme. I wish there was a good indie alternative, or something that scratches a similar itch.
An upside of SI tending to have very minor year-on-year upgrades between FM editions is that most people don’t buy it every year. It’s common to buy every two or three years, unless a momentous change is implemented. The sortitoutsi.net site has squad updates among its mods that let you play older games for longer.
Not that I want to be encouraging you to take it up, the game is literally like crack and I don’t let myself play it anymore.
Ever tried SmokePatch Football Life for ePES? So good. Also totally free.
I have not. How does it compare to FM?
It’s closer to FIFA (but way better). It started as a beloved mod for ePES/Pro Evolution. Then the developer(s) took the manager mode and built it into a standalone, free title that still works with other mods. It’s crazy deep even without extra mods, but you can add in (amazing) team-and-player-and-country-specific chants, stadiums, player faces, balls, shoes, teams, fields, new announcers, it’s fucking wild. I love that you can take a rookie, use him well, and it actually reflects in his stats. Then you trade him on a few years later for huge bucks. So addictive. If you get it all going, it is the most-fun, most-immersive soccer experience I’ve had. It’s here, another updated version apparently incoming soon.
I’ll take a look at it, but like I said above I don’t let myself play FM anymore and this sounds equally dangerous. Do you need a PES install to play or is it fully standalone?
Oh, it is dangerous. Fully standalone and free. When PES went Free-to-Play, the developers spun the single-player/management component out into its own thing.
piracy is always there if you need it