Football Manager Touch 2018 review for Nintendo Switch, PC

First things first: Football Manager Touch 2018 is a much better fit on the Switch than Football Manager 2014 was on the Vita. Where the venerable franchise chugged along on Sony?s handheld, attempting to cram a full-fledged experience onto hardware that couldn?t quite handle it, here performance is much improved. True, there?s still lots going on all at once on every given screen (more on that in moment), plus this version is apparently a somewhat streamlined hybrid of the desktop and mobile versions, but all in all, it?s a good fit in that you never feel like your Switch is about to catch fire from over exerting itself.

This doesn?t mean the game is without its issues. First and foremost, it?s still incredibly challenging for newcomers. By this, I mean that if you?re going into Football Manager Touch 2018 without an understanding of what goes into managing all aspects of a soccer team, you?ll be totally at sea. The game may tell you how transfer windows work, for example, but it gives those rules to you in all their arcane, detailed glory, with no simplified explanations to be found. Obviously, if you?re the kind of person who?s interested in Football Manager in the first place, that?s less of a concern for you, but if you only have a passing interest in the sport (say, one that coincides with the World Cup every four years), be aware that this game isn?t going to hold your hand.

The other issue is that, even if you do know what you?re doing, there are a lot of text and menus to work your way through. Touch controls lessen this burden a little, but chances are good that you?ll spend your first several hours with Football Manager Touch 2018 just figuring out where everything is. In an ideal world, the game would have included some kind of tutorial, just to help players get started, but again, this game is meant to be for the hardcore soccer fans, and it?s not interested in wasting time with people who don?t know what they?re doing.

As someone who doesn?t know what they?re doing, then, you can imagine how much I enjoyed my time with the game, particularly at first. Even so, I eventually was able to get into a bit of a rhythm, and mostly enjoy myself. As someone who?s always loved building teams in other sports games, it was pretty fun to have so much control over your destiny here. Even more importantly, watching the games play out on the field was pretty enjoyable here. I wouldn?t say that Football Manager Touch 2018 is about to challenge FIFA or anything in the looks department, but it?s still pleasant to look at.

Mind you, I imagine those things are probably secondary to the people who really enjoy Football Manager games. If they?re anything like me when it comes to baseball, what matters is how much control the game gives you over every aspect of running a team out onto the field. And on that front, Football Manager Touch 2018 absolutely delivers.

Sega provided us with a Football Manager Touch 2018 Switch code for review purposes.