Today we are previewing soccer Manager. It’s a simulator game where you, like the title suggest, manage a soccer team. I am going to say right off the bat, I have no experience in these games whatsoever, nor am I the biggest soccer fan around. And a disclaimer that at the point of writing this preview, the game was still in progress.
I have to admit I was really skeptical about this game. I saw the steam reviews which were very negative. But I have to say those were apparently all Chinese people who were complaining that the game didn’t support their language.
Also, I saw screenshots of the last game on steam which totally were not promising. A little personal note to the developers, please don’t put screenshots of your game in progress on Steam. Those screenshots looked like a game I would make during software development at school (figuratively speaking of course). I say this because soccer manager 2017 actually looks very nice! So show it to the people on Steam! But I guess FM (I am just going to call it FM from now on) has a very dedicated fan base.
So the first thing I heard was nothing. To the point that I actually went to YouTube to see if my headphones worked. They worked. This game absolutely had no music in the beginning. The problem here is that I would have liked some music when I was creating my character. Another thing at the character creation screen is that I get to choose my nationality. But I can only choose one option. So there are some mistakes there. I also tried to search for the settings. But I can’t find them… I am not sure if they are there, but if they are, they are very hard to find.
Then I started to “play”. But this game is so fricking hard! I just could not figure out what to do first. I am completely new to the game so I did not knew the mechanics or what I had to do. The possibilities are endless and overwhelming. What this game needs is a proper tutorial. Because otherwise, you don’t get to play anything; like I did. But I also think a tutorial would take hours to go through. Maybe a special game mode? Something like the “dependency” mechanic in The Sims? 
I finally got to do something. But it wasn’t soccering. It was A LOT of reading. First reading emails, reports and so on. If you only want to play soccer this really is not the game for you. But if you are passionate about the tactics and if you are the man or woman shouting at the TV screen what the tactics should be, then congratulations because this game is perfect for you.
The little details they put in the game are fun. For instance, you can leave a press conference mad when you don’t like it. So they really thought about many things to put in this game. And to be honest it is not a case of quantity over quality. It is all really well made.
The loading times are a letdown. Sometimes they take forever to load. A good thing though is that you can switch effortlessly between your desktop and the game.
In my opinion, this game needs a lot of work. It is not welcoming to newcomers at this point in development and there are a few minor errors. For example not everything is in the same language, there is no music,… Although I do think that this game has a loyal fan-base which will buy the game every year. A big thumbs up to the graphics. The game looks really nice! This game is meant for you when you are very passionate about soccer and tactics. It is not for you if you want to play actual soccer. Because you will not be in control of the ball. The game translates the soccer managing feeling very well. It really feels authentic because you can do things a normal trainer would do.
