Buy Draft Day Sports Pro Basketball 4

The UI is so messed up you can't do anything in the game. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the gameplay, but the UI doesn't allow for me to click on anything I want to do. Example: I can't sign any free agents or change my strategies as they are covered by overlapping UI. Very bad design, hopefully will get fixed otherwise a waste of money

One of the better bball simulaters out there but not without it's (many) warts.

1) Bugs, yeah when your franchise bugs out after 10 years and you can't advance because draft don't progress, it really sucks and you start over.

2) Protected lottery picks and three team trades... let's get them no?

Still, if you like simulated sports, it's not a bad little program. recommended, but barely.

As far as NBA or basketball sims go these days, this is probably at the top in the pure management / statistics market.

I've been playing the DDS:PB series for years, and it has evolved into a solid management simulation with good attention to detail and a fairly accurate simulation model.

To get it out of the way early, yes there are some bugs. The match engine is fine, it has more to do with the interface. One example is when you go to draft a player in the NBA draft, only to see no players available. Deselecting a position in the player filter and reselecting fixes this, but it can lead to some confusion.

More annoying is you will occasionally get an exception error while playing. My recommendation is to click okay, save, and then quit and restart the game. This has been an issue with 3 as well, but as the game is updated these bugs get narrowed out. Unfortunately I was unable to get the gamecast function to work as this error would occur every time. 2D play works fine, or you can quick sim. Hope they fix that. EDIT: The crossed out issues can be fixed if you run the game as an administrator.

You can expand the league to new cities if you wish (Seattle and Las Vegas are the default new cities), or you can customize the game settings to your liking. Real rosters are included, though team names and logos are different. But that's fine for me, since real players are all I wanted to begin with. You can also generate random players.

Playing games or quick-simming them is an option, and there is a full free agency period and coach hiring phase as well. There is some commentary during the draft, though it can be a bit buggy if trades pop up after a selection is made.

Coaching is well done, and you can play as both a coach and GM, or as either alone. Your owner will have expectations for you in GM mode, though you can disable GM firings if you wish.

Once you get the hang of the new interface (quite different from 3 and 2) it seems to navigate well.

The market is quite shallow for good basketball management sims (World Basketball Simulator is not worth recommending). This and the 2K series are your best bets.

I enjoy this franchise immensely, so give it a shot if a deep management sim is what you're looking for. But for those looking for NBA action on the court, stick to NBA 2K.

I can only hope they do something about all the bugs in the long run, seriously im so glad I didnt pay £20 for this and got it in the auctions because its unplayable, thats right UNPLAYABLE bugs every chance it gets, a massive shame cos frankly it really shines the few times it has worked for 5 minutes or so and its a fantastic idea could easily be the football manager of basketball however, unless the developers spend a lot of time filling the cracks im afraid its not at all worth it and literally a waste of money

After 50 hours of play I ran into my first bug. (it involves not being able to offer contracts to my returning minimum contract players so it's not devastating I have only found the one bug (so far) and it looks like the game is routinely updated so hopefully it will get fixed.

I'm very much enjoying the game and find myself loosing track of time a lot more than I anticipated. Even though the game does tell you what you have to do, there's still a good bit of trial and error and I would recommend not expecting to play through your first game but use it as a learning experiment only. I would also recommend not generating all new players until you are well versed at reading the stats. Case in point, when I generated all new players I had a VERY hard time putting together a powerhouse team but when I used existing players I went 16-2 in the playoffs and swept the championship series. (SPOILER: If you use existing players... in my first season Anthony Davis was MVP and DPOY)

Probably the buggiest game i've played, don't waste your money.