Football Manager 26

FM26 managed to waste several hours of my time through a bug in one of the most basic functions of the pre-game editor. I created a custom club, a full squad of players, and an extensive coaching staff. Because the editor includes a Duplicate function, I sensibly used it to create players and staff from templates rather than entering every field from scratch. The editor displayed the correct data: players with fixed 200 Potential Ability, Current Ability set close to the editor’s own Recommended Current Ability, and the attributes and staff ratings I had deliberately assigned. When I started a new game, much of that data had been corrupted. Players assigned 200 PA appeared with substantially lower and apparently arbitrary potential. Some Current Ability ratings were raised far beyond what I entered; others were reduced. Staff data was similarly unreliable. This is not user error or ordinary CA reconciliation. The game simply does not faithfully import records created with a function the editor expressly provides. The apparent solution is to delete the affected people and manually recreate every player and coach without using Duplicate. That would require several more hours merely to reconstruct work I already completed correctly. I am not doing that. A database editor that cannot reliably copy and save a database record is not fit for purpose. This would be irritating in any edition. It is indefensible in a game that skipped an annual release, canceled FM25, and supposedly used the additional development time to rebuild the series properly. Instead, established functionality has been removed, degraded, or shipped broken. Meanwhile, Sports Interactive devoted substantial resources to adding women’s football—a feature for which it has produced no public evidence of meaningful customer demand—and then implemented it in the most intrusive way possible. Men’s and women’s leagues are bundled together during game setup. Adding a men’s league automatically adds the corresponding women’s league, while attempting to remove the women’s league can remove the men’s league as well. Users are not even given a straightforward independent choice about which competitions to load. The objection is not that women’s football exists. The objection is that SI prioritized a large optional expansion of unproven commercial value, forced it into the setup structure, and simultaneously failed to preserve basic functionality that existing customers actually use. FM26 is a textbook example of disastrous product management: broaden the scope, remove user choice, break mature features, and release the resulting mess as an upgrade. I lost hours of work because the editor cannot perform a basic copying operation reliably. That alone is enough to make the game impossible to recommend.

Worst FM, Just dont.

FM 26 has been a massive disappointment and is nowhere near good enough. I have played a lot of hours on FM26 but I will not be buying FM27 (if it gets released) until I have read significant reviews and I believe I will get a game that actually works.

FM26 is by FAR the most disappointing FM title to have ever been released. All core mechanics and concept have either been made worse or completely destroyed, the UI and panels that will be what you spend the most time one are objectively terrible and the upside is nowhere to be seen. An engine change and one extra year in development for what? If you remove every single problem, issue and bug that FM26 has introduced it would still be a disappointing release. Pros: - In/Out of possession is a great idea, a smart and intuitive way to add tactical depth. - The new icons and visuals for teh tactic screen look good and fresh. Cons: Bugs Noticed (For now): - The amazing feature of crashing 1/3 times after a match finishes. IMPORTANT: If you are having this issue make sure whenever you are making tactic changes and especially subs do NOT use the undo button. This has caused most of my crashes. - Players beign dissapointed by not fulfilling pormises that you never made and the lovely fact that the only workaround is by using the paid in-game editor. UI/UX: - UI is terrible and unintuitive, things are placed all over the place, hard to find what you are looking for. - UX is even worse with key panels being 5-7 clicks away. On most panels that it takes you 5- 7 clicks to get there one back button will take you back around 4 clicks for no reason. Panels get stuck all the time during a match and you have to find what panel you need to navigate to and what options you need to press to finally get it unstuck almost as if you are defusing a bomb. - Managing, hiring, firing or doing anything related to stuff has just been made 3 times harder and 2 times less intuitive for no reason at all. - The messages screen has somehow become 10x worse. 9/10 messages you receive will be bloat/slop that is not relevant or useful, you get a lot mroe messages than you used to on previous versions. - Interacting with players or staff is a nightmare. The "Actions" button usually hides about 50 different options withotu any categorization and 99% of said options don't have any visual aid. Most used options (e.g. contracts, trainings/form praise/criticism, individual training) should have a visual cue or icon. - The competitions screen is a mess. Good luck trying to find the competition you are looking for and if you do, good luck finding the information you need. - Finances, even the most basic of information is burried tens of clicks away and navigating to it is a complete guessing game. Note: For a game that is 95% panels/UI I cannot believe what a massacre FM26 has been. It's as if they have no UI/UX Specialist working with them. Training: - Managing training is horrible. You can't copy paste sessions, picking what training you want to do is exactly the same but it was made visually worse and harder to use. You have to change every training one by one unlike previous versions where you could day by day. - Out of possession training never works. - Players are almost always complaining about their individual training. - If you want to change a player's individual training you'll have to first change it to none and THEN after passing some days change it to the different target otherwise they will keep nagging you about how their individual training is not beneficial. - Descriptions from individual training have been removed for some reason. - Individual in/out of possession position training, In possession pos has a list of all standard positions and then all roles for the selected position. Out of possession is split into "Defenders/Midfielders/Attackers" and each category has a dozen different roles. Why are these actions any different at all? Match Preparation/Tactics: - No quick subs. - Trying to swap a player on the combined view doesn't show the visual colors that represent how comfortable they are at said position. - That visual cue exists in the In/Out of possessions view BUT making changes on either will not affect the other so you will have to manually change the players on both views. - Sometimes if you make a change in the In/Out of possession views the player you subbed/swappped will be on a different side. For example you have 2 MCs you make a sub of the MC on the right side In possession, the newly added player will be on the left side when out of possession for some reason. - Quick tactic change uses horizontal arrows "< >" but if you open the detailed view of said tactic the appear vertical and have completely different icons while most don't have any icons at all. There is no consistency between menus that serve the same purpuse. - Some option are hidden behind the detailed view and can't be accessed using the left/right buttons. - When using the "< >" buttons, their hitbox is very small and if you miss it opens up the detailed display that you have to close out of. Match Engine: - Crowd audio will stop after 30 minutes of a match and will only come back if you restart the game only to stop playing again on the next. - Marking is broken. More prominent for player marking tactics that will become zonal out of nowhere for some time before reverting. - The AI is the same old, just as stupid as it's always been, simulation is not more accurate or more realistic. - Visually, player models are hard to distinguish in-match, the ball feels like a bouncy ball, visual clarity is not great especially when it's raining. - Shots hitting the woodwork. From controlled testing of 100 matches I found out an average of 2,84 woodworks against you but an average of 0,19 woodowrks for you. - Corners. When you are the stronger team, you will have most shots on target ending up in a corner and if you watch the highlghts you will see the most unlikely saves/stops you have ever seen. If the match engine decides a shot will end up as a corner don't make it a miracle save every time. - Player condition constantly bugs out going up and down so at a quick glance you have no idea how your team is doing. - Player feelings show only the face now and not the description so you have to hover over them if you want to see details. - Pressing Undo on a sub does undo the change but the In/Out icon still appears and will usually crash the game when the match ends. Youth: - Youth training is hidden away and so hard to find that a lot of people still think it's completely removed. - (Observation)Potential ability for players U18 seems off. Previous versions would get within 1 star. In this one even with 20 ability staff on average they are 2-3 stars off. Since I've only noticed this in youngsters this might be a design choice? Adult players have the regular discrepancy as seen in previous games. Conclusion: My disappointment is immeasurable and my FM experience is ruined. They have done so much damage to the game that they'll probably need to delay the next FM another year just to get on par with FM24 and that's a very sad thing I have to type out. Even if FM26 was a one-time free product it would still be the most disappointing FM version ever released.

I felt the urge to touch FM watching the worldcup having waited for 2 years until SI got their poopoo together. Can't be that bad ey? WRONG. They are basicallyu forcing you to play a console version on PC. Everything takes 2-3 clicks extra. All the detailed screens are hidden. It crashes so put your autosave on every week. It is still FM so I will play it since i paid for it but... After missing the last itteration, I hope for their sake part of this videcoded and not actually made by people because that would be pretty bad people working for SI. TL;DR: Play FM 2024. DO not spend your money on this.

Completely bloated and, frankly, a downgrade from previous titles in every conceivable way

Terrible UI, removed most of all immersion from the game. Gave it a chance finally since it was on sale. If FM27 is like this I will never buy another Football Manager game. Shame since FM24 is probably my favorite game of all time.