We managed to try the Football Manager 26 game demo recently during the week of Tokyo Game Show at the SEGA Tokyo Office. For avid football game fans, this is one of the most anticipated releases because, finally, after a long time of research and development, the women’s leagues will be included.
Note that the demo we tried was still in the middle of its development and polishing phase. Therefore, there were still bugs that needed fixing, and the graphics were yet to be refined. Nonetheless, we have managed to complete an almost three-hour playthrough of the game.
An Intricate UI
In this new iteration of the beloved football simulation, the revamped UI design contains more in-depth menu options, controls, and links for information accessibility and convenience. For longtime fans of Football Manager, getting used to the game’s new UI will be a hurdle to overcome, while for new-entry players, such as myself, tackling the UI only takes a while to get used to.
As someone who has little to no experience with football simulation games, I find that Football Manager 26 brings a straightforward yet highly detailed interface that explores the enormous scope of responsibilities of a football coach/manager.
The interface features an organized main menu bar where the big football goals are: the Portal, Squad, Recruitment, Match Day, Club, and Career. There are also sub-categories for each, featuring more specific tabs for your different responsibilities as the manager. These can go from messages/emails, calendar, news site, player database, tactics, etc.There are a myriad of tabs to tackle every specific topic, which are actually beneficial to the detail-oriented and organized manager-to-be. There is also an ‘overview’ tab under these to give a summary for that specific topic, which is very helpful if you want to see everything that is under that tab in one go.
While the interface can get really text-heavy, it is arranged in a way that the more important text or headlines are highlighted/colored properly to stand out from the body. If I were to put it succinctly, the interface readily spoke to me as the platform for professional managers/coaches. It holds itself as a very professional platform, and I can see that much effort has been put into crafting the menu particulars down to the minutest detail of linking every relevant topic with each other.
Studio Director for Football Manager, 26 Miles Jacobson, has mentioned in our recent panel interview that this is a completely new UI and you have to forget all you have experienced in the previous iterations and learn this, because there is a lot of potential in this refreshing new UI with all the intricate details and features they have added.
Just Go Along with the Flow
To the uninitiated, Football Manager 26 may seem daunting at first. I felt lost, even, because there were no cutscenes or introduction clips to immerse myself in the game. The game is simply straightforward—and perhaps that is what confused me at first, since I have been so used to introductory narrations and long storytelling.At the beginning of the demo, the game immediately guides you to character creation and customization, which is as detailed as its new main gameplay interface. While the design graphics still need more polish and more variations for tweaking, there are already a lot of options to toggle and to customize to fit your character profile as a football manager. Such options not only include the physical adjustments, but also your history and career in football, your coaching styles, tendencies, mental attributes, and personality.
After creating my character, I am thrust into the football manager portal and interface. Within a few clicks, I am already looking into my unread emails as a coach of the club I chose! Of course, I have chosen a female league in this playthrough (Chelsea).
Since this is a simulation game of being a football manager in professional leagues, the progress of the game is observed by the flow of time (literally). Once I have exhausted reading all my emails, club introductions, talking with my team members, and other daily mandatories, I simply proceed to the next day and rinse and repeat until the scheduled Matches happen.
Of course, I can spend a lot of time exploring every nook and cranny of the interface to be able to digest everything that the game offers. And there’s a lot! Information and tutorials are readily available about the game and football in general via the FMPedia (Football Manager encyclopedia, if you will).
While the game saves automatically after the end of each week, it is prudent to save manually because, as mentioned during the demo, there were still bugs that could be problematic to the gameplay experience. So I had to be careful in navigating the interface to not trigger any said bugs.
Nevertheless, the game assists you in a way that feels natural, even to new players of this sport, so don’t be afraid to explore. The daily emails and tasks double as a reminder that I may need to fix my team’s tactics and substitute injured players just in time for the matches. The game nudges you naturally here and there, and I am thankful for this because it literally is up to me to tackle our day-to-day in Football Manager 26. And there is just so much I can choose to do in the game that it can prolong my decision-making in what to do or not. Because there is no right or wrong way to play FM26. It all depends on each individual’s style and preference for managing a football team.
So with that being said, even if I did the bare minimum, I can still make something worthwhile for my club even during matches. And I’m happy to report that with the game guides and recommendations, I have managed to cycle through three different weekly matches with two wins and a tie under my belt. Not bad for a newbie!
Football Manager 26 Initial Impressions: An Ongoing Work In Progress
Playing Football Manager 26 truly feels like I’m transformed into a legitimate sports coach/manager. With how professional the user interface is, plus the well-thought-out details of salaries and contracts, I really feel like I am thrust into a big responsibility, despite my knowing that I have been simply playing a game all along.
Perhaps it is just me, but my ‘Time to work!’ mode has been activated while playing FM26 because of the email correspondences, the delegation of work to different assistants, planning strategies, negotiating contracts, and computing salaries, etc. It does feel very corporate and professional! However, curiously enough, it did not exactly feel like a ‘job’ per se, because I can still enjoy watching the match flow along with the game’s AI and get excited with the results of my play tactics [which are admittedly, mostly guesswork].
Football Manager 26 has been serious about the ‘simulation’ aspect of their niche. I have not been expecting that even attending press conferences is part of the immersion this game offers! As a manager, of course, it is normal for one to attend such conferences and speak on behalf of the club. Furthermore, choosing appropriate answers bears weight on your growth and the morale of the team. I had thought at first that such decision-making only applies to choosing the proper encouragement words for your team, but it seems that it can be applied elsewhere as well.
On the other hand, I notice that there is little to notice about the game’s soundscape that may help the immersive experience in navigating the new UI and the play-by-play videos. Perhaps, there can be more to be done with the game’s sound effects and music. Animation-wise, for the football matches, it is still a work-in-progress as well, and I believe there will be a more polished version coming later on.
There is a lot to unpack with Football Manager 26, and truly, this is something to look forward to for avid football fans and players alike. And while there are still some more technical tweaks to be done to further polish the game, things are looking up for FM26.