Regardless of whether you are a hardcore know-it-all of the sport, or just a curious gamer that wants to see what it’s all about, Madden NFL 2003 is clearly a quality product and it can provide you with plenty of gameplay time to enjoy. Individual players can be coached and trained to achieve greatness, but it is also possible to just buy or loan them from other clubs, albeit for substantial amounts of cash. The manager mode received its fair share of improvements and additions as well, which means that you are able to take your team on the desired path to success, or watch them fail miserably with every game. The upgrades made a player creation tool possible, on the other hand, which means that you can create and customize your own players inside the game, in order to use them in custom-made teams, which is obviously tons of fun.
Realism is also emphasized by the good technical capabilities of the respective engines, although they are still just improved versions of the previous ones. Gameplay-wise, everything is smoother and more responsive, which in turn allows you to come up with more complicated tactics and use them during the matches, in order to catch the opponents by surprise.
There are many improvements over the previous episode, but there are obviously some new teams to talk about, not to mention the up-to-date transfers to keep up with the 2003 season. In addition, it included the right amount of teams and tools to make the experience unforgettable, as well as a fully-featured career mode in which to coach and manage your favorite NFL club. Madden NFL 2003 is one of the most iconic entries in the franchise, mostly because it managed to refine the gameplay as much as possible for the technology available at the time. Experience the sport as it was meant to be played EA SPORTS does have the talent to do just that on occasion, however, since they managed to do it with FIFA over the years a couple of times. Simulating a complicated sport such as American football can be quite demanding, especially if you want to provide the players with the ability to control almost everything out on the pitch and make the experience feel as authentic as possible.