Football Manager Touch 2017 (Android) Review

After creating an avatar that serves as the head coach of a real-life team, Football Manager Touch 2017 displays literally every possible metric a new head coach would wish to know. Player stats, information regarding match tactics, training, player transfers and more are all easily accessible. There's a massive amount of depth to the information available, so reviewing it all can be a somewhat daunting task, yet one that some sectors of the gaming community will absolutely relish.

One of the most noticeably questionable design choices, though, is the lack of any sort of intuitive layout or overall design in terms of the interface. The menus don't tab in and out easily, and the in-match menus are an absolute mess to navigate during a high-pressure game. There's so much to keep track of, and the menus do not make on the fly changes easy. While there is a pause system that can be used to slow down the pace of the matches, it still doesn't feel natural to use, at least right at first.

The matches themselves are impressively rendered for a mobile title. Team-mates move and act much like someone would expect from a regular football title. It's not console levels of detail, but it's a nice interface for viewing the progress of each competitive fixture. It's frequently broken up by menus and charts, and it serves as more of a highlight for actual goals, but it definitely adds some flavour while adjusting team strategies.

It's really interesting to see all the different metrics that a coach can use to impact the flow through team management, and having control of all of those is definitely a different experience. It's kind of mind-boggling right off the bat, and it's not really an experience that is the friendliest for newcomers. Eventually, however, a comfortable rhythm can be reached, but it's definitely rough going for a while.

The one, extremely pressing, issue is the frequent updates the app seems to require. In just a week of using the app, it went through over three updates, each taking over twenty minutes to complete. Opening the game takes quite a while, too, and matches can take ages to load in and out of. Along with frequent bugs and random crashes, it's not a super steady experience, and one that doesn't feel suited to portability.

As a side note, injuries can be treated through in-app purchases, but that honestly just feels lazy. On top of the existing price tag for the title, the in-game purchases feel a little absurd. They aren't necessary to succeed, especially as the team's funds grow with repeated success, but it's hard to feel good about a mechanic like this in a paid game. Throw in the fact that a large sector of the Android community will struggle to get this to even work on their devices, and although Football Manager Touch 2017 may not have given away a penalty, it certainly has done one too many niggling challenges and picked up a yellow card.