Good to hear
Well, I’ve done 20 hours of FM26 and my advice to anyone thinking of buying it is…Don’t.
The positives are: The new 3d match engine looks better but is still a work in progress and the new out of possession tactics.
The negatives are: This is a soul-less game, that looks like it’s designed for playing on a phone, lacking in the depth that FM is known for. It feels like a rival game studio has attempted to make a rival product on the cheap with very little testing. The bugs are everywhere as are the poor design and content decisions.
I’m going to wait until release day because SI Games might have worked very hard over this weekend to make the game much better. But even if every bug is fixed, this game comes up short in so many ways. If the feedback I and thousands of Beta players have given has been ignored, if the game remains poorly optimised for PC users and it remains a shallow arcade game, then I’m going back to FM24. Possibly forever.
1.5 out of 10.
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This is why you don’t do a beta so close to release. Leaves you zero wiggle room.
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A really bad release on the heels of a cancelled game could really put the series in jeopardy. Surely a rival developer or two will be raising an eyebrow if this crashes and burns.
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Thought the same. I didn’t even realise this was coming out so soon when I heard about the beta.
Certainly get the feeling that were pushed to get this out ASAP even if the game needed more time in the oven.
I guess after this they’re back to yearly iterations of the game so the hope is that they nail the next one.
I do worry that Sega will pull the plug. I honestly think it’s a possibility, apparently the sunk cost of moving to the Unity engine has been £116m.
I’m still convinced that Miles is behind some poor decision-making. In the promo videos he went to great lengths to explain to older players that they’ll need 30 hours to get used to the new UI.
The problem is, Miles was wrong, once the newness of the UI stops being an issue, the more I’m noticing how inadequate it is, how buggy it is and how so many useful screens and functions FM24 had that have now disappeared completely from the game.
It’s like Football Manager-lite.
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He might as well have called them “legacy players”
Haven’t seen that much of an old goal quote in gaming since that Ubisoft guy said people should get used to not owning their games.
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Exactly, and he was so defensive when the topic of the game being “console-fied” was brought up, and saying that wasn’t a bad thing.
If you somehow managed to make the game no worse for PC players, but opened it up to more console players then sure! But that’s not what’s happened here. To the extent that on more than one occasion they’ve suggested PC players try using a controller for a “different experience” 
I think they’ve looked at their audience from a pure numbers perspective, and decided console/mobile etc. is the focus - not realising/caring that most of those players:
a) only got the game cause it was free on Netflix; and
b) played it for an hour compared to the hundreds/thousands of hours PC players dedicate to it
If it takes an experienced PC player X hours to get used to the new UI, (and X isn’t a silly number), then that’s fine so long as when that player is used to it they get a better/more efficient experience. But after said player puts in 20/30 hours of boring “training time”, they’re still left in a worse position than they were in before.
I hope that next year there is a game, and either they split it from the console version, or amend it back so PC players get a decent experience, but I’m not certain about any of that.
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Something else to say while on this note, I would hate to play this on console. One strength of Football Manager is letting it ‘simulate’ in the background while I do something else…like playing another game or something.
Actually having to sit down and actively play Football Manager sounds terrible lol.
I’ve been reading on the SI forums that there are an estimated 13,000 bugs reported during the Beta period. While I’d take that figure with a pinch of salt, I did count around 35 just loading the game, watching a Champions League match, then closing it again tonight, including 2 new ones that have only appeared since the last patch.
Worse, SI have confirmed the game will release in this sorry state and will hopefully receive its first post-release patch on Wednesday evening. The reviews are going to be brutal.
If they were smart, they’d delay the release.
Any bad PR from delaying the launch is no match for the shitty PR they’ll get from releasing it in this condition.
This will be the first FM in a long time that I haven’t bought.
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Great to see lessons are forgotten. When FM2013 arrived, that game was a mess until the final patch and it hurt the early sales of FM2014 and created a cult-following around FM2012.
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Yes, there are still data updates for FM2012 on the various download websites.
It’s worth mentioning here that anyone thinking of dipping their toes into the world of Football Manager, they have only a few hours before FM24 (or FM Classic as I’ll be calling it) disappears from digital stores.
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Official launch today. Also on Netflix subscriptions I believe.
And for console 
A lovely buggy and laggy experience for all you console players.
Anybody downloaded the mobile game yet ?
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Tempted, but it requires a Netflix subscription which I don’t have.
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78% of the reviews on Steam so far are negative 