NHL 21 certainly doesn’t reinvent the genre in any major way, but that’s largely because it doesn’t have to. The NHL games are largely okay at their core and when they’re working as intended. NHL 21’s biggest problem is not what it’s missing, it’s how ineptly it brings it’s pieces together despite having a reliable blueprint and plenty of fan feedback to go by. I would have gladly accepted an NHL game with half of the content of this one, if everything just worked better.

But as it stands, NHL 21 is a feature heavy game that is surprisingly light on polish and bit too tone-deaf when it comes to what its fans actually want from it. I appreciate the shots that NHL takes at improving the formula, but at the end of the day, most of those shots are too little too late, and end up making the overall experience just barely better than mediocre.

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