I’ve been reviewing Football Manager games for a number of years now and most of the time they’re a bit of a dichotomy.

On one hand they’re usually pretty easy to review; I mean it’s not like they change is it? Add a slightly different skin, slightly nicer match graphics and, if we’re in a crazy year, add a new interview process or something. You liked it last year, you’ll like it now. Standard.

On the other hand, they often prove to be some of the hardest titles to properly review because, really, how do you review a game that changes so little, when all is said or done? Sure, the match graphics might be a bit sleeker, the menus may be a bit better organised and that new interview process might make that part of the game that bit more interesting, but all in all you’re doing the same thing on the same interface. You try filling a meaningful and interesting review based on stuff like that! (I like to think I’ve done ok over the years, but still…)

Football Manager 2015 then… How hard/easy could it be?

Well, as it turns out, Sports Interactive have given me a similar issue this year, but in completely different way!

This year’s iteration of everyone’s favourite football management simulator (shut up all three of the Championship Manager fans out there) boasts the biggest set of changes in recent times, certainly the most since the fabled Football Manager/Championship Manager split. I kid you not, I wrote a list of all the changes to be made that I noticed myself while playing and they came to near 300 words, which is a hell of a lot for a list of new features. In context; that’s just under a third of the standard word count for a review on this site.

That makes reviewing the game both easy and hard at the same time, as before, but this time it’s going to be hard to do justice to the changes made, without degenerating into a list of new features.

Right, well, best get started then! Easily the most obvious change is the completely overhauled user interface. The UI has been pretty consistent and familiar for a long time, with most of the main pages and features being located in the same place over the years. Not any more my friend. The new edition took the flash-style interface adjustments of 2014 and scales up hugely. Now, the interface is a sleek mix of bright, slick panels that slide and animate their way across each other as you navigate, feeling very professional and well put together. The second thing you’ll notice is that many of the familiar shortcuts and menu sections have been moved. They’re still there, but now instead of being located in the top menu bar dropdowns, they’ve been integrated into a permanent left sidebar. This sidebar now holds all of the main sections you will use in the game and many features have been combined together; amalgamated into more intuitive sections. It all works very well, but it will lead to a few situations early on where returning players will have to adjust. For example, I spent a good 5 minutes trying to find my ‘Staff Responsibilities’ page and couldn’t for the life of me track it down. For the record it’s now a sub section of the ‘Training’ section, which, to my immense shame, I had to Google the answer to…

On top of the new user interface is the way the player stats are depicted. On the player profiles the numbers appear as they have done for some time, with a couple of changes. Creativity is gone, to be replaced with the new ‘Vision’ stat, for example. The big change is when viewing the tactics screen. Players’ relative abilities are depicted in the form of a spherical graph bar around a coloured star. The colour of the star denotes how accustomed to the position the player is i.e. is he a natural, accomplished, competent, untrained etc. The circular bar graph denotes the player’s competency at the specific role in that position, which is a hell of a handy feature. Up until now you had to use the 5 star rating, which was vague at best. Now you have a much more granular indication of a player’s ability. Not only that, but the position has a drop down box that shows the players in the squad who can play that position in a descending order of their competency level. I cannot begin to describe how useful this is.

In addition there’s the usual batch of new player roles. This year you have the Roaming Playmaker for DMC & CM positions, a Raumdeuter for the wings, Inverted Wingback for the Wing backs and Wide Playmaker for MR&L. nothing too major, but still handy.

The other big changes have been in game structure and mechanics. The one you will notice at the start of the game is the addition of stats for you, the player. Now you have to choose whether to be a tracksuit or a tactical manager, apply a level of coaching qualification to yourself and then distribute points into either coaching or tactical skills. The skills are all the same ones that coaches in the game have, effectively making you another coach for your team, allowing you to assign yourself to a coaching category. In addition, the tactical stats can have effects on how your squad interacts with you, such as a higher discipline meaning players are less likely to come to you with problems. It’s a big change, but fits in well with the overall mechanics of the game.

The other major change that I noticed was with squad and player interactions. I noticed a significant increase in player discussions being created around a lot of issues and, also, groups of players can come to you with issues, or you can discuss one issue with several players affected at the same time. One standout moment was when my entire squad decided to call a team meeting with me because I wasn’t selecting a specific striker and they all agreed with him that I was wrong. The team meeting allowed a number of options for how to tackle the issue and it resulted in a magnanimous climb-down by me and more game time for the player in question. This increase in player interaction options, coupled with pre and post-match tunnel interviews and the ability to talk to outgoing loan players about your intentions really does help make the game more intuitive.

Football manager 2015 feels like it has more changes that the last three versions combined, which could make long-time players wary. However, as I long-term player myself, I can assure you these changes are nothing but excellent and complimentary additions to the franchise. There’s far more that’s been changed for this version that I could realistically cover here, with hundreds, if not thousands, of little changes having been made across the whole game. However, I’ve covered some of the biggest and most impactful changes.

The funny thing is, while the challenge of reviewing Football Manager was completely different this year, the actual review ended up being more or less the same; Football Manager 2015 builds upon the previous versions of the game, keeping the core experience the same while improving the process and remains far and away the best football management game out there. As ever, if you love this series, you will continue to love it with this year’s version and, like me, you’ll probably love it that little bit more.

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