Sports Interactive has been churning out excellent Football Manager entries year after year with admirable consistency for a long time now, and after an off year, the series has now returned with what’s been purported as a landmark entry. For the first time in years, with Football Manager 26, the management sim series is moving to a new engine and overhauling many of its core elements and systems, in the hopes of delivering a yet more improved and evolved version of FM’s tried and tested formula. The end result? A largely successful reinvention thanks to some key improvements and shake ups, even if it does admittedly stumble in some areas.
Built on the Unity engine for the first time in the series’ history, one of Football Manager 26’s headlining changes is a completely overhauled matchday experience. This has never been the series’ strong suit – which, of course, has always been understandable given its absolute focus on the actual management and tactics side of things – but FM 26 makes some big upgrades. There’s a handful of swanky new camera angles and cutscenes to build up the excitement before matches, stadiums and crowds look better and more detailed, and most importantly, significantly better and more realistic animations and physics make matches much more enjoyable to witness.
“In a nutshell, in addition to having an overarching scheme of tactics that you train your team in, you now also set tactics for both, when your team is in and out of possession..”
Don’t get me wrong- the on-pitch visuals still very much look behind the times when compared to something like the EA Sports FC series- but then again, that has never quite been the point as far as Football Manager is concerned. In spite of the marked improvement in the matchday experience, FM 26 is still first and foremost about everything that goes on off the pitch, so with that in mind, the new matchday engine comes across as an impressive upgrade over past years. You’ll still see some frustrating physics and animation glitches that’ll be familiar to anyone who has put considerable time into Football Manager over the years, but given the fact that FM 26 is still built on Sports Interactive’s long-standing codebase in spite of switching to a new engine, that doesn’t necessarily come as a massive surprise.
And what about the aforementioned aspects of the Football Manager experience that the series has always been known for first and foremost- the tactics and management simulation? On those fronts, Football Manager 26 is an unaspiringly engaging, true to the series’ reputation- though interestingly enough, it goes about achieving those results in a number of new ways that shake up the series’ familiar formula quite meaningfully.
The biggest of those changes is Football Manager 26’s shift in focus to tactics that are largely formation-driven, rather than positioning-driven. In a nutshell, in addition to having an overarching scheme of tactics that you train your team in, you now also set tactics for both, when your team is in and out of possession. FM 26 tasks managers with choosing separate formations, roles, and directions for each scenario, and it’s something that you’ll find yourself constantly fiddling with during games.
“The other department where Football Manager 26 makes radical changes is the user interface- which might be the area where the game stumbles most prominently.”
It’s essentially a different avenue to the same destination, allowing players to micromanage and get really zoomed in with their mid-game tactical switches and strategies. That also means experimenting with different playing styles and philosophies in preparation of specific matches (or, say, during pre season training camps) feels somewhat more viable than it has in the past- though of course, ultimately, you’re going to want to stick with a specific vision if you really want to become successful with your team.
Outside of the switch in the core tactics system, Football Manager 26 also introduces a variety of smaller tweaks and changes to everything from transfers and recruitment to training and more, though in those areas, the experience won’t feel as significantly changed to past players from past years. That, of course, means that the same brand of addictive, detail driven management sim experience that Football Manager games have always been known for has been carried over successfully in this reinvention- though so, too, have some of the series’ more enduring flaws, like frequently ineffectual player interactions and media interviews that quickly become repetitive and end up not contributing much to the gameplay experience (besides turning into busywork).
The other department where Football Manager 26 makes radical changes is the user interface- which might be the area where the game stumbles most prominently. In the lead up to its release, FM 26 has drawn plenty of not so positive attention during its beta period due to its new UI and the many issues that it comes with- and it does unfortunately come with plenty of those. For a game like Football Manager, some of those issues aren’t particularly easy to overlook.
There is, of course, the fact that for anyone coming off of prolonged exposure to past Football Manager games, the new UI is going to take some getting used to. That has certainly been my experience. FM games have obviously made UI adjustments here and there in the past, but after having stuck to largely the same core interface, FM 26’s complete UI overhaul is a bit disorienting at first. For new players, it’s not going to be an issue, but if you’re coming in as a series veteran, you’re going to have to rewire your brain on more than a few occasions.
“At its core, Football Manager 26 is another solid management sim experience that football fanatics are going to have no trouble pouring dozens (if not hundreds) of hours into.”
Beyond that, however, the UI does also have plenty of maddening issues. From basic quality of life features being missing to some of past games’ legitimately useful tools having been done away with and more, several issues come together to make navigating FM 26’s menus quite a  frustrating experience from time to time. Given how much time you spend scrolling and sifting through menus, submenus, graphs, lists, charts, and what have you in a Football Manager game, such flaws feel doubly troublesome. My hope, of course, is that with time and updates, Sports Interactive will be able to iron out at least the most significant of these wrinkles, because beyond the problematic UI, there really is quite a lot to love in Football Manager 26.
Speaking of much needed updates, FM 26 is also going to need at least a handful of those to address some of its more prevalent technical issues. From buttons and links randomly not functioning and instances of unreadable text to frequent frame rate drops during matches and a startling amount of jarring freezes, the game has a number of technical issues that mar the experience somewhat. In isolation, they’re rarely game-breaking, but put together – especially with the aforementioned UI issues also taken into account – they could easily detract from the experience.
At its core, Football Manager 26 is another solid management sim experience that football fanatics are going to have no trouble pouring dozens (if not hundreds) of hours into. It comes with some notable issues, some of which are to be expected from an engine change and a gameplay reinvention- though the more significantly of those should ideally be tackled with updates at the earliest to bring those aspects of the experience up to the same level of quality as the rest of the game. Even as it stands, however, FM 26 is a predictably engaging and addictive experience that lays down exciting foundations for the series’ next era.
This game was reviewed on the PC.
