I prefer the Manager option; it is just the right speed for me, but it’s all about options and that is always a good thing. In fact if you’d rather just play the week, month, or half-season you can cut right to the chase.
Outside of the games themselves, which provide some fun and strategy (you’ll become familiar with the double switch in the AL in the early 70s), you’ll also have to negotiate with players to sign and re-sign them, and make trades.
Quite a bit has been made of the Tradezilla system, but either we as ordinary joes don’t realize how many trade offers are made between teams or the system is out of control. It seems that not a week goes by where I’m provided with some sort of trade option. It actually gets to the point of being annoying. You can turn them off and just initiate trades instead of receiving requests for them, and that does make the game better. The trades themselves do not seem horribly out of whack (no Roger Clemens for a rookie A player), but there just seems to be way too many requests for a trade.
Another issue I noticed in the game is over the course of one season, I had one player with a wealth of injuries – Javy Lopez had a dislocated hip and was out for six weeks, and then the next day back, he had a broken forearm and was out again. I guess it’s not outside the realm of possibility but I had quite a few injuries over a few different seasons. The types of injuries varied and the length of time players were out changed, but it seemed like players on my teams were complete wusses.
In certain areas such as stats and player ratings, the depth of the game is incredible. Everything is sortable and exportable which makes it easy to play leagues via email. There’s no online play, but there is a Baseball Mogul online software sold separately.
Overall the game play itself is rather addicting in ways you wouldn’t normally think…quite often I found myself checking back to see if my team was profitable or if I needed to change ticket prices. I was doing a lot more than just playing a game of baseball and I was enjoying it. Load times and database creation times are reasonable. Baseball Mogul 2007 is a satisfying game and for $19.99, you’ll sure get your money’s worth. - Dan Clarke.