This is my first FM game, and I feel like trying to get into these games in their current form is... not great.
After first booting up the game, I found the UI completely inscrutable. The menu layout, information overload, and janky navigation adds so much (IMO unnecessary) friction into the process of actually playing the game that I think I probably would have bounced off completely had I not been able to send all my questions to a good friend who is obsessed with the series. Even now, some 40 odd hours into the game, menus still feel unintuitive and it can take a second before I remember how to actually do what I want to do.
There's also a ton of bugs, at least in the Game Pass version I'm playing. Many are merely annoying, but some have locked up the game, crashed me to desktop, corrupted saves or otherwise have resulted in hours of lost progress. This is incredibly frustrating in a simulation with this many hidden 'dice rolls': replaying a transfer window after a crashed game resulted in completely different outcomes and a vastly different football team than I had assembled the first time through.
I'm putting those gripes to one side, because FM24 has fully got its hooks in me. This is the ultimate 'one more turn' game for sports nerds. What I first found overwhelming-in-a-bad-way is now overwhelming-in-a-good-way; there are so many interacting systems to keep track of that it becomes inevitable that I will let something slip and entertaining chaos ensues. It's like spinning plates, except you get to smash the "throw water bottle" button in the change rooms when your little guys are playing like shit.
After first booting up the game, I found the UI completely inscrutable. The menu layout, information overload, and janky navigation adds so much (IMO unnecessary) friction into the process of actually playing the game that I think I probably would have bounced off completely had I not been able to send all my questions to a good friend who is obsessed with the series. Even now, some 40 odd hours into the game, menus still feel unintuitive and it can take a second before I remember how to actually do what I want to do.
There's also a ton of bugs, at least in the Game Pass version I'm playing. Many are merely annoying, but some have locked up the game, crashed me to desktop, corrupted saves or otherwise have resulted in hours of lost progress. This is incredibly frustrating in a simulation with this many hidden 'dice rolls': replaying a transfer window after a crashed game resulted in completely different outcomes and a vastly different football team than I had assembled the first time through.
I'm putting those gripes to one side, because FM24 has fully got its hooks in me. This is the ultimate 'one more turn' game for sports nerds. What I first found overwhelming-in-a-bad-way is now overwhelming-in-a-good-way; there are so many interacting systems to keep track of that it becomes inevitable that I will let something slip and entertaining chaos ensues. It's like spinning plates, except you get to smash the "throw water bottle" button in the change rooms when your little guys are playing like shit.