It's that time of the year again and I'm providing my take on this season's Football Manager.

I didn't really play the game until the winter update patch, barring a few hours upon release. It's hard to say if the usual adage of 'I'll start after they've finished patching it' holds up again. My usual feeling is that the game (engine) works best in the beta stages, then withers down due to balancing changes. This observation holds here as well.

I felt FM 2017 was a bit of a letdown, offering an altogether unsatisfying experience. Although its successor bears the sins of its ancestor(s), it works well enough for me to actually recommend it.

As usual, I play with my lower league clubs, climbing my way up until I lose patience with the game. Before I got some steam workshop help with a solid 4-1-2-3-1 tactic, I felt lost and frustrated, because I lacked consistency. My preferred, big-picture approach was hampered by the plethora of details that need tending to, especially tactically. It seems like it's not enough to go out on the standard settings of a tried-and-tested 4-3-3, you actually need to put in the work and spend some time on the team instructions screen. That's not my favourite past-time. If something really bugs me about this endless whirlpool of details it's the function of player roles. I rarely find players to be perfectly suited for specific on-field roles, but if you've played that one, single role for half a season, training for it every day, you should be mastering it to a certain degree of competence after a while. It seems to take forever in-game to get proper role familiarity.

There were some visual and interface changes that felt terribly counter-intuitive, but the one add-on to FM 2018 that I've appreciated has been the squad dynamics. It evolves naturally, provides good feedback on how you're managing relationships within the team, and gives you a proper indication of the transfer market decisions you want to take. Respecting leaders and highly influential players is a given normally, but before the squad dynamics screen, it was hard to interpret who fit which category. What's truly surprising is how well the players can actually be handled, without acting out in illogical ways when faced with reality. This is probably the improvement that has swayed me most towards enjoying the game.

None of it would matter if the match engine were horrendous. It's not excellent, that's for sure, as you'll come across matches with way too many shots at/on goal, alongside some frustratingly repetitive patterns, but overall it works just well enough. If anything, it feels like we're playing too good a football for the lower leagues my club is in. The in-match shouts actually feel like they're doing something, which empowers me as a virtual manager and strokes my ego every once in a while. E.g. upon demanding of the team that they 'show some passion', players whip out their phones and send loved ones a couple of romantic stanzas. Of course, I'm the loved one in this scenario and the romantic stanzas are forty-yard screamers that find the corner of the net.

Important changes were made in the scouting and in the medical/sports science department - or so it was advertised. I can't say that I've ever really gotten the hang of the new scouting system, although I have an inkling of how it should work, but never required it for my lowly League One club. The medical reports even less so, but I assume state of the art facilities and top staff will lead to some reduction in injuries, something that I've never had big trouble with.

There are still many, niggling misfires, starting with the team talks (ask players to take revenge for some loss and those who react weren't even present when the loss occurred), wage negotiations (one day it's 1k per week, the next it's 10k, especially around the troublesome end of season release window), strange player choices (players having played successfully for me on loan, had me as a favourite manager, but would prefer loans in the next season to a different club in the same league), and the terrifying option to praise a player after a good game (the amount of times players have become despondent because I thought they played well but chose the inappropriate praise).

Ultimately, though, I find myself coming back to it and wanting to play 'just one more game'. It's not a unanimous feeling, as the friend I'm playing with has had four frustration filled seasons and just yesterday expressed his desire to 'never see this (insert blasphemy here) game again!'. FM 2018 is as capricious as any dramatic affair, but it just about manages to squeeze out a few authentic ounces of crazed, keyboard-smashing despair-turned-self-enlightenment.