Football Manager 2024 was touted as ‘the most complete edition of the series’ by the game developer, Sports Interactive. With the much requested upgrade to set pieces, major match engine tweaks and cross-edition save compatibility…you can certainly see why.  But is it?  With 400 hours ploughed into the game, and with FM25 potentially 4-5 months away, I am using my blog today to share my thoughts on FM24.

Match Engine

Well, well, well.  I’ve said in previous reviews of earlier FMs…I place huge emphasis on how good the match engine is when rating a Football Manager title.  FM24 simply has to be judged highly, on the basis that the match engine got a lot of attention this time round.

The introduction of Positional Play elements has continued to grip me well into June 2024.  There are still combinations of roles and shapes I am yet to try, mainly because Positional Play influences so much of the pitch.  From CB to AM, and the lines in between, there are a lot of rotations you can now create.

Historically, I have felt that new roles added into FM have felt in isolation.  Roles introduced then just felt like alternatives that you used in place of others (Pressing Forward instead of an Advanced Forward for example).  Yet, in FM24, the introduction of the Inverted Full Back, or major reworkings to Half-Backs and Liberos, now have major knock-on effects elsewhere in your tactic.  There is no need to have fancy starting shapes, a simple back four can morph into some exotic shapes, as explained in this cracker of a Byline piece from my podcast co-host.

I must also mention the animations.  I could have forgiven Sports Interactive for delivering zero progress here whatsoever, seeing as FM25 brings about the new Unity match engine. Yet, here we are.  A whole host of new player animations were added this year, and they’ve had a bigger impact on my match day experience than I originally expected.

It is therefore hard to give the FM match engine anything less than a 9/10 this time round.  It’s more than a solid base for the match engine team to roll out into the Unity engine, where I am hopeful that fluidity and animations can once again combine to give another solid score in FM25.

Set Pieces

Prior to FM24, a common pain point for a lot of FMers was that set pieces were previously set by position, not a general priority of the best for the job.  This meant that in previous editions, a change in tactic could wreak havoc with your set piece routines. But that is no longer the case.  In FM24 you can make tactical or team changes without having to change your set pieces.  Our routines will always use the best players from the match day squad.

The new routines also have an effectiveness behind them too.  Like tactics they link to the training modules you place into your weekly cycle.  I like how thought has been taken in linking some of the good bits about FM together, in order to make a more seamless game.

I think on first glance, or through pre-release screenshots, some players could have been expecting a reskin of the set piece creator (and I still saw some comments in the early days that this was true)...but what Sports Interactive did here was overhaul set pieces in the best possible way.  However, there are still set piece routines that cannot be done.  It’s perhaps not as fluid as it possibly can be, but like the ME we have is a solid base to build from.

Overall I like this feature.  It was much needed and it’s vastly better than what we had previously in FM23: 7/10.

Save Compatibility

I did not use this feature.  But I know some people who did, and I never once heard any problems with their integration or adaptation to the process of loading an FM23 save into FM24.  My guess is that this feature was heavily tested for years before its addition, which you have to once again praise the painless rollout.

Like a Tripadvisor review, you’re more likely to report a bad experience than a positive one.  Perhaps this feature is less memorable than other headline features as a result.  But the real strength is that this feature is here to stay, and I think it encourages players to embark on longer saves well into the cycle of the current edition, knowing that they could conceivably carry it on into the next edition.  I felt so passionate about this last point, that I decided to write a Byline article on longer challenges.

I’m giving it a 7/10, but part of that is because I think at some point it will be taken for granted.  This post will perhaps be a nice reminder of how revolutionary it once was.

Quality of Life

The UI is still clunky.  Whilst some shortcuts have been made through Agents & Intermediaries, the game can sometimes feel laborious in places. This is hopefully to be corrected in FM25, but an overhaul is needed after many years of onion layer-type features being added to the game.

However, lovely additions like ‘Real World’ and ‘Your World’ game modes alongside the usual ‘Original’ mode add a nice juxtaposition to the way you play.  Real World sees the FM player take the realism route: players join at their real-life transfer date meaning that they could arrive after the first fixtures of the season and need to catch up on fitness and bed into the team culture.  Your World will wipe clean those future transfers and give you the budget back to take on a new alternate timeline with your new club.  Kudos to the developers here for not forcing either of the game modes down us, we simply choose the one that suits us best.  What did you go for in FM24?

Overall, the Quality of Life is a ‘misc’ within the article.  I’m scoring it 6/10, on the basis that FM25 can ride in like a White Knight and ‘cull the clicks’ and get us to 9/10!

Licenses

The recent announcement of the Premier League license coming to FM25 has blown the J League(s) acquisition in FM24 out of the water.  Yet, getting Japan into the game (and selling it in the country of SEGA) was a big deal for a lot of people.  I did not undertake a Japanese save, but it is something that I will definitely experience within the multi-year lifespan of the contract.

But if I was being critical, it took a long while to get Japan ‘right’.  Some players were not present right away, and it felt work-in-progress for a little while after launch.  However, I’m sure these issues will not exist in a league that’s already researched like the Premier League.

Despite the integration hiccups with Japan, FM24’s repertoire of licenses is probably the biggest I can remember in any era of Football Manager (and I’ve not even detailed anything about the Netflix licence either).

Miles and co. at SI HQ have already bettered themselves for FM25, and they show no sign of stopping.  KUTGW guys.

8/10.

Final thoughts

On final reflection, I feel FM24 hit the levels to be classed as ‘the most complete edition of the series’.  Whilst I do not think I have had my most memorable, or ‘complete’ save, there is something that keeps bringing me back to the game itself.  Seasons are quick to get through and I have often had to stop myself in order to pause and blog…that’s a sure sign that the game is gripping me.

If we aggregate my crude category scores, the title gets a solid 8/10.  This leaves obvious room for the new FM25 title to come in and reign supreme, and I look forward to seeing what comes next.  After all, progress never stops.

What do you think about FM24?

Thanks for reading,

Tony / FM Grasshopper