Recent reviews by joris.thielen

I would not recommend the game in the current state. There are plenty of bugs in the player and staff interactions, match engine and long term balance between countries. The graphics engine of the matches looks (very) outdated as well. Wait until the next updates are released (february/march) and read the reviews after that.

After the early March update: some work was done on the ME, but not enough to make this an enjoyable experience. The long term balance between countries and AI youth development are still in an unacceptable state (after 20 season long simulations). Would still not recommend.

I will update my review after any new updates.

Sports Interactive has done it again: releasing a beta with a match engine (ME) which gave plenty of entertainment, but was too easy. Once the full game was released, the match engine was patched, somehow resulting in a step back to a FM20esque ME, although not as bad (luckily). Several styles of play were possible and you could get results with anything you wanted.

However, with update 21.2, it all went down the drain again. Strikers have become complety useless, only 1 style of play which seems to give results.

On top of the match engine issues, the game is riddled with bugs: not enough newgens being generated so long term saves are impossible (going from a 50000 player database at the start to 15000 several seasons in), a user interface being several steps back, in game statistics being completely false etc.

This game is going into the waiting list again, hoping for a new update soonish. A refund is not possible since I played it too long already, actually enjoying it. SI pushing through updates without any option to avoid them, roll them back or switch between them, fundamentally changing how the game is to be played, really sucks.

Nice new features like the development center, club philosophy etc, together with improvements in general to the game. All these things should improve the already impressive replayability of FM.

HOWEVER, the match engine has disappointed me again. It has similar flaws the FM19 match engine had: strikers are nearly useless, no overlapping runs from central midfield, no through balls attempted, to name a few. Even worse, wingplay has become a joke with wingers and full backs blasting shots at goal from impossible angels. All this after a lot of feedback SI got from the community during FM19 and the FM20 beta.

I hope they can improve the match engine. Until then, this game gets a low score from me and I'll stick to the older FM18.

Update 25 February 2020:
SI has released a big patch earlier this month, also including the transfer updates up until that date. The match engine was changed as well, but this update didn't improve the experience significantly enough to change my initial review of this game.

For future games, I suggest to wait to buy the game until after the winter update as you can then ask for a refund if the game doesn't fulfil your expectations. Now it's impossible to do that because you only get to see the final version of the game 4 months after the initial release.

Update 8 April 2020:
SI have confirmed on the SI community forum they won't release a new update for this game. As such, my negative recommendation will not change.