Ok I’ve just been playing some more rugby league 26, post the two patches that have arrived over the last 24 hours.
From a gameplay perspective it does seem that the hooker is arriving significantly quicker to rucks and that’s a good thing.
Although I have been playing a season of NRL and up until those two patches I was gradually getting to grips with the game on amateur and I was starting to post scores of 18-6 and 20-4, up from winning some and losing some about 6-0 originally.
Since those two patches it has seemed harder to score again, add my scores have dropped down again. The AI seems tougher and seems to score tries, that are putting the ball everywhere rapidly and almost impossible to stop for me.
AI players which I had noted were getting in the road of offloads immediately after release of the game, did seem to have been patched to not be in the intercept line of where you intend to offload. Now they seem to be back and doing that again.
It’s my number one annoyance, opposition players hovering around my side of the tackle waiting for an offload and preventing any possibility, or else it’s an intercept.
There still seems to be a problem with when you make a break that your support is often 10-15m behind you and that the opposition seems to be able to instantly do a 180 and sprint up on you almost straight away.
When you have someone break the defensive line in a real game of rugby league, that defensive line has to turn around and run fast in the opposite direction (which nowadays they are good at), but it is impossible for them to turn and chase as fast as they sometimes do in this game.
Since the patches I have noticed it is a lot easier to give away high tackles, now even if you don’t sprint at all you can still get done for a high tackle.
Also I’m not massively hung up on stats, but seriously this game has nothing. Nothing at all. We need to be told that this is being worked on. The game seriously lacks depth without them.
It also needs international teams sooner rather than later.
I’m not as much a rugby league fan as I am a rugby union fan, but I generally like this game a lot. It makes what has been released as rugby 25 look like a total joke and if I’m totally honest an insult really.
Rugby league 26 is in a vastly superior state to rugby 25 and I really hope it continues to improve.