Football, Tactics & Glory seems like an odd game that’s targeted at a specific audience. Combining football rules with turn-based mechanics is quite a weird design choice in terms of gameplay. Yet, it strangely works.
In Football, Tactics & Glory you pick a football (or soccer, if you’re American) team and ‘manage’ it to increase its fanbase and win all kinds of competitions. Instead of simulating the football experience, like FIFA and PES do, this game plays like a turn-based RPG. Sounds strange, doesn’t it? Every match sets up both teams on the playing field, in the formation, you ordered them to do. You get three turns to execute several commands, like taking a shot at the goal or move your team around to set up a defense. Once your turns are over, your opponent gets to execute his commands. This goes on until the time limit is up and ends with the announcement of the winning team.
This sounds like a barebones setup for a game, but it actually has some deeper mechanics to it. As I said earlier, you can change the formation of your team to increase your chances against, for example, an aggressive opponent who tries to make as many goals as possible. Then there’s the turns system that requires you to think several steps ahead and predict your opponents’ movements, as is a defining mechanic in turn-based games. Lastly, there are also stats attached to every player on your team. There are four stats to keep an eye on during a match, being Accuracy, Passing, Defense, and Control. The higher the scores on these stats, the ‘stronger’ your player is. Someone with 30 Defense will most likely block a shot made by a player with 15 Accuracy. However, a high stat score does not automatically mean that player will succeed in with he will do. This is due to the RNG mechanic. Whenever a player does something, a figurative dice is being rolled that determines whether the action will succeed or not. Someone with high stat scores will have a better chance at successfully executing an action, but there’s still a chance he could fail. This randomized outcome is implemented to ensure that a strong team doesn’t plow through 80% of the teams without any effort. It may be off-putting to some that the outcome of actions isn’t 100% determined beforehand, but I think this mechanic works better since it still requires you to think ahead, even if you have a strong team.
While the gameplay is pretty fun at first, the lack of any additional game modes hurts the overall experience I had with the game. Technically, there are more game modes, but these consist of Multiplayer, Practice, and Simulation with the latter playing the game on its own. There are no modes or minigames that change up the gameplay in any way, making the game itself get repetitive after a while. I guess this could be said about a lot of turn-based games, though.
Before I end this review, I want to mention one more thing. The visuals in Football, Tactics & Glory are the textbook definition of ‘okay’, with one minor issue. The characters are a mix of realistic and cartoony designs, which results in normal-sized bodies with a slightly oversized head. I assume the developer designed them like this to give the game a somewhat unique look, but all I see are deformed bodies that are still a work in progress. It’s not a big issue that distracted me or whatever, just a minor one that I felt I should mention.
Conclusion
Football, Tactics & Glory is a strategic game that that sounds like a concept that couldn’t work, yet surprisingly does. The mix between turn-based mechanics and football results in a game that should be enjoyable for casual players and perhaps even those that regularly play strategy and football games. The lack of additional game modes makes it difficult to enjoy the game for long stretches of time, but since it’s made by a small independent studio, that could be forgiven. It’s not made for everyone, but it wouldn’t hurt to try this one out if the concept intrigues you.
