Rugby Challenge 2: Lions Tour Edition

Wellington Lions missing the RICOH sponsor logo on the front of the jersey and WRFU logo FTL. Looks so bare.

 

Agreed as is BOD these days.

Tackling is so much better. Animations are more realistic too. If you get the gameplay sliders right you end up with a pretty realistic game. Thank god there's no more offload hot potato type games.

 

Yay jumping for the ball is way better. In RC1 of you caught a ball from the sideline you'd run it out. Just caught a kick like 1 metre away from the sideline with Jane and that no longer happens. Much more realistic.

 

Much better player stats now too (in like career mode which is for the year and then personal best)

Games Played
Tries Scored
Tackle Attempts
Tackles
Line Breaks
Offloads
Kicks
Handling Errors
Conversion Attempts
Conversions
Field Goal Attempts
Field Goals
Penalty Attempts
Penalties
Points scored
Yellow cards
Red cards
Injuries
Penalties conceded
Running Metres
Kicking Metres

All this makes it a lot easier to analyze player's performances. Gonna help for CPL Union too

 

Under team stats it tells you stats for the season and then under each stat what it was for your latest match.

 

Then if you go to the fixtures and go to a played game it tells you all the stats for that game - possession/ territory, scorers, handling errors and so on.

This makes it so much better to analyze games and players as well. Especially if simming.

 

Just played someone online. It was a lil laggy but better than RC1.

He made 1 offload, I made none. People no longer spam it because there's very few reward!!!!

 

Ok so after playing this since like 4pm I can shed a little more light on my opinion.

First off adjusting the game sliders is pretty much essential if you want to play a more rugby simulation type game. All the offload related ones waaay down (just to make sure ) but I can confirm there's no longer wave after wave of offload, you barely notice offloads anymore because they don't happen as often. Attack and defensive urgency up a bit. Break tackle ability waay down. Pass success rate up. Essentially all the logical things which make it harder to score tries without having to slowly build them up. I only get about 6ish line breaks a game now with those sliders (playing hard). Opposition normally around 5ish as well. It means run away tries are harder and ultimately you have to work for tries, which I enjoy.

Also people that play a spread it to the wing type game for every phase will be punished (thankfully) little support = ball most likely stolen. Don't worry - if you do make a decent break and get tackled with little support, you can double tap the contest button to hold onto the ball to sometimes prevent it being stolen however you risk being penalised - nice added feature.

In terms of passing - the actual pass (ball in flight) seems better - not saying it's ground breaking but it's better, which seems to further help it from looking hectic. However the 40 metre passes are very unrealistic and I choose not to do them. Long passes get punished with interceptions as well if the line of defence is close by, as do short passes as well if your line is pretty flat.

Goal kicking and kicking is the same old which is a little disappointing but not game ending. The prepare kicker strategy is also a nice addition to have the player slot back for the kick or a drop kick, especially if you play without the slow motion.

Jumping for the ball is a lot more realistic, animation wise. You can actually catch the ball now near the sideline without running it out. Also quite neat how there's different catches depending on the player position and where the ball is coming down - some look pretty awkward which adds realism.

Tackling, well I like it. It looks and feels a lot more realistic. There's bigger hits and the tackle animations just look a lot more realistic now. Also the responsiveness of tackling is instant unlike RC1 where you had to press tackle like 3 times until the player would attempt to tackle.

Rucking once again is well done with the added features of contesting the ball and removing players from the ruck which is handy. You don't button mash heavy bind or quick bind (just like in RC1) like people have a tendency to do, it'll do you no favours whatsoever. You can't win every ruck and you have to know when to quick bind/ heavy bind and when to add players.

The strategies are a nice addition which add tactical decisions which need to be made. I still haven't really fully learnt them too well yet but being able to choose the line depth, line width are very handy and if done wrong will cause overlaps for the opposition to scoot through. They're also very handy on attack too depending on what you plan on doing for phases. Being able to bring the fullback into the line for both defence and attack is also very handy and needed too. I haven't really figured out the pod options yet so can't comment there but they definitely help a forward based game, as does the send right/ send left option which is nice for gaining metres around the fringes (generally with forwards) - essentially it's improved forward play, which is needed to build up tries now (realistic). I can't understand the ruck commitment really yet either (high, med or low) so can't comment there.

Scrums are the same except they barely make any metres now which makes that a lot better and you can do a no.8 pick up. I'm not a really a fan of the timing based approach for things like scrums, lineouts etc. but it does its job I suppose. Lineouts are the same except you get to choose how many players are in the lineout and you can also maul it from winning it as well. Mauls to me are pretty arcadey and button mashy but meh I guess.

With the basics of gameplay aside the one thing that annoys me is the player noises when tackled. It's not a game breaker by any means but it sounds like a sick old man coughing up a storm. It's weird. Whistle noises sometimes sound a bit silly too.

Now people have been complaining about a few bugs (they all seem pretty minor fixes and I have no doubt that they will be fixed in a patch) but personally I haven't really experienced too many so far. I had one where the whistle would not stop blowing for ages but apart from that nothing so far, which is good. The bugs all seem minor in the scheme of things but still very irritating by the sounds of it - they'll be fixed, I'm sure.

Now once again the licensing restrictions on like the French Comps are a pain. You can't buy any restricted players in career mode from these comps if you're not playing in them and you can't even create a custom team with them. I understand this isn't really anyone's fault apart from the holders of the licenses but it takes a little away from the full experience, ah well.

Another thing is the fact the ratings are pretty whack, even when you take in consideration forwards overall ratings aren't a good measure (due to low speed etc.) but they can all be edited I guess.

The team/ player stats in competition and career mode make it a lot more in depth. Especially if you're simming games or trying to look at other player's stats from other teams as you can now look at players individually to see how well they're doing. Always nice to see Savea with a large number next to running metres .

Overall RC2 is a pretty good improvement on RC1. It definitely feels a lot more like rugby (if you play it that way). It's also a lot harder difficulty wise in comparison to RC1. Atm I'm too good for normal but not good enough for hard type thing. In RC1 I cracked the hardest difficulty within hours of playing. It doesn't feel like I'm anywhere close as I'm still struggling on hard with very hard (or is pro - I forget) still to go.

If you're a rugby fan - get this
If you're an average rugby fan - get this
If you're just a sports gamer - rent it
If you hated RC1 - rent it
If you hate rugby - Get lost

As a rugby game I'd give RC2 an 8/10 - licensing restrictions, no player progression (from what I can see) in career mode, poor rating system, whack ratings for some players, some arcadey apsects of gameplay still (scrum, lineout, mauls, long passes) sort of take a little bit away from the game a little bit but it was never going to be perfect and it's still really good from the 6 hours I've played so far.

As a sports game I'd give RC2 a 5.5/10 - Let's face it there's no comparing a rugby game to big sports franchises like NBA 2k, Fifa and so on due to budgets, rugby being a niche sports game and so fourth but tbf that's why you shouldn't compare it to these kind of franchises.

Best rugby ever. "Best does not determine greatness however"

 

I only had a quick look at the Lions squad so I can't confirm or deny that. Regardless that can easily be edited.