[Funkycorm]

For coming from 20, I personally think that 20 delivers a better franchise mode than 21.

Graphics are great on both 20 and 21, though I can't speak directly about 21 on PS4 as I have it on the PS5.

Why I would take 20 over 21 for franchise is for a few reasons. First, contract logic is better on 20. You don't have players with 1.000 service time happily taking 200k/2 year deals. Morale is gone so that is a mixed bag. It still impacts negotiations in 21 and doesn't impact on field play but it kept contract demands more realistic. You can sign a Juan Soto to a 6 year/$120m deal in his prime at 26 years old and he is ecstatic. Those above are not realistic.

Next, the depth chart screen is not worth it. You can better assess the knowledge it provides on your roster screen as well as the info it provides ignores potential ratings so it is not even accurate.

Trade logic is worse than it has been. Both for user attempted trades and cpu to cpu trades. Keeping the trade slider at max 5 helped this as well as house rules. But again, that should not be needed to be done when it hasn't had to be done in past versions.

I will say that the budget logic is easier to understand because it shows yearly numbers now. But you can no longer trade stubs in for extra franchise budget and while sponsorships are still there to help supplement, it doesn't increase your budget by the huge numbers extra budget did. Essentially it makes your stubs being gained in franchise games useless.

For on the field play, I will say it depends on what settings you use as to what experience you get there. I struggled to find anything that worked for me in my time playing 21 using classic/directional. I will say though that on field play on 20 feels better as a whole to me. Something just felt off about the gameplay on 21.

For the record, I had 100 hours into 21 before I uninstalled it and fully went back to 20 so that is a fair share of time to be able to compare the two games.

If it were someone I knew, I would say if you only care about franchise, either stay with 20 or if you don't own 20, buy 20 for cheap.

I am not bitter about or toward 21, but I am disappointed in 21. And 21 is not without merit. Adding roster spots to 93 helps with some of the free agency issues but you still see players 79 and under overall being ignored in free agency when they would be upgrades. So I would give 21 the edge in this.

To answer the question about progression: It is about the same in 20 vs 21. I will give 21 the slight edge in this but like 20, it is very performance dependent and with both you can have players at 33-34 years old still have growth in categories. It is not enough to sway my opinion of 21 though.