Soccer Manager game is a sort-of-free, sort-of-3D, sort-of-management game online (played stand-alone on computer, but requires Internet access), in which we can take control of wide range of clubs from around the world and deal with updated squads and clubs. Well, we sort-of-can to be exact.
First of all the game has licensed club names and logos, photos of most of the players available, you can start in any of many available clubs and install the game for free. Those are the strong points of the game.
But unfortunately that is where the good news end - although you can install the game for free it is far from being freeware, you will be constantly reminded about micropayments, you will have to distribute points earned to progress in the game and most like pay to win (sooner or later).
The player parameters are quite extensive (they include height and weight, several physical, technical or mental parameters), but the problem is you can’t really notice their influence on the match events - player with low ball control and shooting skills may do wonders in the 3D scenes. But that statement again requires an asterisk since 3D match view is only a sort-of-3D view that does not give much insight into what is going on during the game. Similar with the match stats - only very basic info is available, if your player will get rating 6 or 4 you can only guess why was that.
Another problem is with the game concept - everything is based on gathering points and achievements, unlocking options and reaching another level of your manager "skills", media announcements that doesn’t have anything to do with your club, etc. For example to send scout to another continent you need to "unlock" that continent, to order particular type of training you need to "unlock" that type of training.
But the biggest problem is with atmosphere - there isn’t one. The interface looks like Power Point presentation, optimized for mobile users only, the players are only lists of parameters. The whole game is built for running top level clubs - if you will take small club in lower division you will have budget too small even to hire someone from free transfer list. At the same time you will be bombarded with news like
club X from another country is about to buy player Y for tens of millions of pounds and... I have absolutely no idea why such news are so important that I had to told. Also the game severely lacks preferences setup - you can’t adjust any views, switch on or off any of the news, etc.
To summarize: unfortunately Soccer Manager 2019 is a money slot with 3D engine attached to it. Well, sort-of-3D.
