Hockey Legacy Manager 22 is the currently newest release in the HLM series. I have played this game for over 500 hours now and wanted to set a review on this game.
HLM 22 is in my opinion the Management game that strikes me as having the best balance between depth and fast paced and interesting gameplay. If we compare it to many other hockey management games or management games in general the thing that really stands out here for me is the simplicity in making changes. This makes te gameplay not feel slow and boring as I feel many management games can feel at times. One example of this can be that little extra detail like that you can lock players to a certain position in your line up. This makes it so that you can basically use the best lines tool if someone gets injured without loosing the general lineup you had from the beginning. This accompanied with a very fast simulation time makes it so that the game always feels refreshing and you get the feeling of that your team is progressing and not staying the same for a long time.
This game also has a pro version that I believe at $5, if I remember correctly, is definitely worth it if you like the game. Because the game has this pro version it does use ads in the regular version, but this is probably the least likely reason for you to buy the pro version as they in my opinion barely interfere with the gameplay at all, as there are no video ads or popup ads the ads never actually cover the gameplay. I think the pro version is such amazing value just because all the content you get. You get the ability to play more than i think it’s 8 seasons with a club, you get a history mode where you can play with teams as far back as 1917 when the NHL first started for real. A battle royale mode where the worst teams get eliminated each year. You get fantasy, and expansion drafts. Community rosters. The chance to make your own rosters. More settings to play around with including many other features.
It can sometimes feel like you might be a little restrained on the free version, but I would almost rather like to call the free version for a demo. Definitely not a bad demo like some games come out with, but something you still can play and if you feel like it’s worth the buy you have the choice to buy the full game, at an in my opinion very cheap price tag.
Something to keep in mind though is that this game is made by a small group of people resulting in it having a lot of bugs in the earlier versions and still today the game might crash sometimes, which can get a little frustrating at times.
The games trading system can also feel a little unrealistic at times, especially with draft picks as the high picks in the draft could be worth an insane amount at the end of the season
This is why I can really give the game a full 10 and opt for a 9.5 I think the game itself is almost as good as it gets, but with some bugs and a little scuffed trading system It in my opinion isn’t a perfect game.