Esports were only a niche a few years back. With games like League of Legends, Dota, Counter-Strike, Super Smash Bros., StarCraft, and Fortnite that all changed. Thanks to youtube and twitch the audience reached by these events became massive making Esports huge all over the globe. With increasing fame comes more sponsors which led to teams going pro. When players need to focus on improving their game and playing as care-free as possible, the manager comes into play to make all this happen. ESport Manager puts you right in those shoes.
MOBA or FPS
In ESport Manager, you have two options. You can either choose to manage a MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) team or an FPS (First Person Shooter) team of 5 players. Which game type you choose doesn’t really alter the gameplay that much. There are small differences but for the most part, the game plays out the same. It comes down to personal preference I guess. In the MOBA team, you decide each players character class while in the FPS team, you decide which weapon type each player handles. Once you named all your players and customize their appearance you end up in your HQ. This base of operation acts as the hub from where all your actions will hopefully lead to a successful ESports team.
Keep them in shape
Each of the 5 team members has a meter indicating the state they are in. Keeping this maxed out as much as possible will reflect positively on the results of your team. Each member has 3 bars showing their fitness, fatigue and hunger level. Managing when each player goes to the gym or when they eat and sleep/rest will take up most of your time while no match is being played. Upgrading the HQ with earned money from the matches can greatly improve the overall level of your team members. Managing when to spend money on upgrading the environment and when to focus more on individual needs like new computers or monitors, will be the key to success.
Perks
As the team plays matches, they’ll earn money and experience. The experience can won’t level up any team member as you might expect. Instead, this is used as currency to buy individual or team perks. At first, I thought I needed a well-balanced bag of perks to maximize the impact during the matches. It turns out, the specific perks don’t matter all that much, just make sure you equip your players with some of them to have the advantage. A more refined strategic edge would’ve been a nice addition in my opinion. As you progress, stronger perks get unlocked which can grant you an even bigger advantage.
Sponsors and social media
Finding sponsors and a good social media presence are essential things needed with an ESport Team. Once you played some low ranked matches and earned some money, you’ll be able to buy a social media studio and a room to give presentations to potential sponsors. These rooms can eventually be upgraded further to improve on their effectiveness. Potentially growing your notoriety even further. Winning matches is pretty essential but making it all look good might be equally as important.
Play to win
Once all the daily things are managed and you bought the best potential upgrades to maximize your impact, it’s time to go to the virtual battlefield. In matches, you decide the starting line-up and the used perks. In MOBA you also pick a class, while in FPS you pick the type of gun. Most of these choices seem to have little impact on the outcome of the match. Managing in which “lane” each member starts and how aggressive or defensive they need to be, seems to have the biggest impact. Once a match starts, you basically just watch everything unfold. You can change the tactic if you notice things aren’t going your way. This part of the game felt like watching paint dry so I started simulating most of these to get it over with. Not a good thing if the most boring part of a game called ESport Manager, is the Esport itself.
Badly ported
ESport Manager was originally released on PC only about a year ago. The game just got ported on the Nintendo Switch. Now managing games tend to work pretty well on PC because it mostly involves a lot of “menu-ing”. Porting these type of games to consoles without adjusting the controls is never a good idea. Sadly ESport Manager got this exact treatment. Getting around the menu’s is pure evil. Moving the joystick (or using the D-pad) jumps the focus from one button to the other but with so many buttons on-screen, this becomes an extremely tedious thing to work with. Touchscreen controls could’ve made a huge difference but sadly those aren’t implemented. An on-screen pointer is also absent.
Conclusion
The idea for this game sounds great but the execution is not. The awful controls totally kill what little enjoyment I might’ve had with this game. I stuck with those controls only to find out the game is just not deep enough and that the gameplay becomes repetitive once you found out some good strategies. This might be better on PC but to Nintendo Switch owners, I wouldn’t recommend this one at all.
3/10
Tested on Nintendo Switch
