An updated FM10 player database, some new features, and new (and old) bugs.
This is FM10 with some added on features, and added on bugs. Some minor, some plain annoying, and some major.
I sadly feel that the yearly release of the FM series is starting to wear on the game. There is never any time in development to add significant changes to the game. It just feels like FM10 + a small add-on pack.
Problem also is that some of the short comings of FM09 and FM10 are still in the game, and most likely will be there in FM12 too. None of these are major show stoppers, but they are annoyances that I feel could have been dealt with, if SI was given the time to do a proper development cycle of at least 18 months.
Currently the game suffers from a transfer market in shambles. Many high-profile players are unloaded on frees, and the market is saturated with free players, making it very hard to actually sell off your own players.
I think the reason for this is that the players in the game act like 5 year old when not getting their way. The new Private Chat feature is a mine field. Make the wrong interaction choice and you will have a player demanding a transfer immediately. The players are way too touchy. Sometimes you can have players not wanting to talk to you for years after telling them that they (as a Hot Prospect 18-year old) should start in the Reserves and learn from there.
There are some major annoyances too, like re-working the training screens, making a huge click fest to actually set up training schedules for your players. It seems like it was deliberately difficult to make individual training schedules.
Tutoring was changed, and in normal SI style, there is NO documentation on how it works or what they changed. Eventually forumites found out how it does work (sort of), and it makes no sense. F.x. a Tutor has to have 40 points more in Reputation score than the youngster he is to tutor. Problem is there is NO way in the game you can actually see that score. So you'll have to use an editor like Genie Scout or FMRTE to see the databse values, which is stupid.
Bugs like Set piece formations not being saved by the game, so you'll have to set them up every 2-3 games, is just something that pulls out the fun of the game.
Custom made views in various screens are not save either, so you keep having to redo them after a reload of the game.
They have added a lot more "life" to the stadiums and their surroundings. But all stadium look the same from top to bottom division sides. The crowd still looks like something taken from a manager game from the 80s.
It is just the many smaller things that make this game in patch 1 less fun than it should be. Hopefully after patch 3 it will be much better. But that is not scheduled until February. And from there they have to start development of FM12, giving them only 8 months to do it in. Which again means that FM12 will have a lot of issues.
FM series is still the best one around by miles, and it is still playable in the current version. But the series is starting to feel more like a cash cow, where they just release stuff each year to get easy money without actually developing the series.
I gave 7,5 because it is playable and enjoyable most of the time, but there are too many annoyances and bugs still. Hopefully patch 3 can get it up near the 8,5-9 mark. Time will tell.