Don't get suckered in by this game's sleek graphics and sweet promises. Mortals like you and I can't comprehend it. This game isn't complex, don't misunderstand me. It just doesn't matter what you do, or what players you do it with, you can't win consistenly in this game. The problem is that the match AI is so mind-bogglingly advanced and sophisticated, a simpleton like me just can't figure it out. At first I fiddled with player stats and tactical arrangements, tweaking this and that, calculating the best man for the best position, but that was not to be. The AI knew better.

I placed one of the best defenders in the world in the center back position, his prefered position, but the AI knew something I didn't. The AI pushed his forward all the way from midfield. My defenders, even the best of them, will sometimes just stand there and watch the opposing forward run past them for a dozen yards before even reacting. Tired? Nope, peak fitness, in fact. I tried pegging a defender on the enemy forward. The AI just sneered at my unsophisticated, rustic ways. The forward ran past my man by seven or eight full steps again before he even reacted. Nevermind the fact that my man was standing in front of the enemy forward when the forward started his run. My man stood still and the AI laughed all the way to the net. It was just too damn smart for me.

A few games later the enemy foward struck the crossbar and the ball rolled right in front of my keeper. My keeper had a player rating of 91 in his goalkeeping position, making him one of the top three keepers in the world, and yet he dives to the ground right next to the ball. Just three inches shy of it, better luck next time; afterall, you're only costing me 6,000,000 dollars a year! No, wait a minute, there won't be any luck in this game. My top defender ran up to the ball from 10 yards away, preventing the keeper from getting it, stopped a second to ponder his next move, and then cleared it -- right into his own net. Granted, this was the Italian league, so someone probably paid him to do that, but I can't help but feel the hopelessness of doing anything in this game. The AI is just too damn smart for me.

When the next season started, I decided to try a different approach. The AI was trying to tell me all along not to focus so much on defense and possession play. Attack is the best defense, they say. For the next season, I put all my resources into my forwards and pinned all my hopes on them. Oh, what wonders they worked! The best passer in the world, a man whose base passing stat was 95, would pass balls with such incredible precision -- right to the enemy players' feet. It was miraculous how effecient and consistent he was at passing the ball to my enemies. Another wonderful trick he pulled, several times, much to my delight, was when he'd pass the ball to a friendly player standing just two feet behind him, the ball would then bounce off of the unsuspecting guy, and then it would roll to the one place you might have guessed -- to the enemy players' feet!

You may think these are flukes or anomalies. Think again. The AI is already reading your mind, right now, anticipating what players you're going to field and it's bribing them before you even buy the game. It's forcing them to pass balls at enemy feet and to stand slackjawed as forwards sprint past them for 20 yards. It's true, you just can't beat this game. You aren't smart enough. Well, maybe you are. But I'm not smart enough, so I'm throwing in the towel and letting Sherlock Holmes figure this crap out.

This game in very enjoyable, it is the Steam version of another game that FX Interactive published in Spain couple months ago: FX Futbol. It is a football manager with a very nice interface and many options to tweak your team and tactics. I end up suffering the 'just one more turn' syndrome every time I play.

Downside is it does not have official licenses nor real names, but with the built-in editor you can change almost everything, or save time and download the mods made by the community that put the real teams, shields, kits, and so.

You can find the mod here[www.fxfutbolmania.com] (it's in Spanish so follow the link titled: "Descarga FXF Revolution 2.0 – Nombres y escudos"). It's not updated for FX Eleven but it works fine (I did a screenshot if you want to check), just change "FX Futbol 2.0" with "FX Eleven" in the installation path.

This is the new version from scratch of PcFutbol, a myth in Spain about football games.

This new version can offer a lot of fun according your level of interest, if you want to have a basic manager game, this is a good option because you can set to Automatic a lot of things like training sessions , renew the players contracts, the healthy care.... but if you want full control, be aware you will have a lot of work each week.

It is only a manager, you can not play with the players in the match but you can watch them and give orders even draw tactics in real time over the field, that will depend on the daily work of your players ans training sessions.

For the moment the game don´t use licenses, for that reason you will not see real names like Casillas, C. Ronaldo... but you can edit the names and use it as a mod, in fact there is a mod already with all REAL names and shield of the teams available for download in the next link:

http://www.fxfutbolmania.com/2014/01/fxf-revolution-2-0-nombres-y-escudos/
Click on "Descarga FXF Revolution 2.0 – Nombres y escudos" to download
You will have to add the folder mod in the folder C:\Users\PcName\Documents\FX Interactive\FX Eleven (create the mod folder)


You can see more info in the web page http://www.pcfutbolmania.com

In the moment I wouldn't buy this game again,
The overall managment is good and reduced to the basics like stadium, sponsors, some trainers and so on.

The training is quite fast, just drop the people on what you want them to get trained in.

What I don't like is the match calculation. I have very often red cards, don't shoot a lot of goals and in the 2D match the players are not doing what you told them.
There are things where you think why the hell it wasn't a goal, why didn't he made a pass to the free guy over there and things like that. Maybe it is just standing for a bad attribute that the passing and running is sometimes strange. But when a striker, how bad he is, got the ball and only the goaly in front of him, just 20 m tu run, why the hell is he turning around and passing to a guy where two defenders are around. There are a lot of situation where you think, if that would be Fifa 13 you would have scored even when you got the first time a controller in your hand, but you can just look how three striker don't manage to get the ball in the empty goal.

In general there are not enough goals. Not only in my matches, in the complete league. 2:0; 2:1, 1:0 is normal. Three goals for one team, not very common. Last time the complete league drawed 6x 0:0; 2x 1:0 and one time 2:0.
The last of the Bundesliga (Braunschweig) is here first after 5 games. Bayern won 2 out of 5 games and drawed one....

Strange. The game calculation need to be changed in a way that you got the feeling that you can change something with what you are doing and that the rest is realistic.

I like the game overall very much. It's easy to understand, with all the basic features a footbal manager should have, really enjoyable. You can see how your tactial lineup is working on the field, which is also very accurate.

But then you watch a lifematch and see the behavoir of the teams. Ok i could life with the behavior from goalkepper, defenders and midfield, but especially the strikers behave ridiculous and like idiots, which ruins the game experience in my opinion. They don't shoot in promising positions.
Examples: The striker gets a good pass, he is alone around 10m away from the goal.
Instead of shooting, he turns around and make a 30 meter pass back... wtf
Then the striker gets the ball, around 25m away from the opposite goal, the way is free only the goalkeeper is in the way.
Instead of running straight to the goal and try to shoot, he stumble around until the defenders are there, and if he manage then to dribble around 2 defenders and stands in the penalty area where he could shoot, he go for dribbeling the goalkeeper also, where he finally loses the ball. So my team only shoot 4 goals in 10 matches, and only 1 of them was a striker goal after a corner, the other 3 of them were scored by free strokes. And i always had 2 strikers with good shooting ability on the field, but who cares if they don't shoot.

So please work on that dear devs, or at least make another possibility for the interaction menü while watching the game like: Shoot directly on goal NOW!!!

I have been looking a long time for a different kind of football game and i have to recognize that this one surprised me somehow.

It´s pretty intuitive, player-friendly, easy to play and certainly inmersive :D

- Pros :
-- You have a lot of options to customize your club and handle everything without much difficulty
-- Sometimes in the game there are some funny situations that makes you enjoy watching the matches.
-- You won´t find surprises or hard-to-reach options, everything is almost at your sight.
-- You always have something to do with your club, thing which is certainly appreciated because it keeps you always "active".

- Cons :
-- It´s good to play it for a while but not for long periods of time.
-- Some parts of the navigation between menus are a bit odd... maybe some more information about your team players would be appreciated.
-- To compare 2 players in terms of purchasing another player from another team, you have to do it manually instead of having a compare chart to see the differences.

In my oppinion, if you want something different than the classic football games, this one might be your choice.

There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the game. It does bring in some interesting aspects to managing, much like the old FIFA managers where you can manage the stadium and sponsors in addition to the team. It just isn't as exciting as say, FM. I'm not sure if that's because it's over-simplified, or if it just hasn't got the realism FM has. Probably a mix of both. Got bored after the first 5 games of the season, which weren't necessarily easy, just that you always had a way of intervening in a match you wouldn't normally have in a manager game, so you never felt any of the tactics or training was really necessary. User-friendly, yes. Easy ro grasp, yes. Fun to master, probably not.

well ... game crashed after i finished my 1st season playing with a team in england. Game crashed twice in middle season too.
Now i cant even load the autosave on the preseason between 1 and 2 season it freezes.
Wonder if its unstable because i used the mod for real name players.
Will try a new game later without the mod and see if its unstable too.

Despite game is very unstable its simple and fun to play, hope developers are still patching it, so much potential if it works properly.
If developers are like some other companies that just give up patching and starting making a new continuation game to rip of money they just lost a costumer.

So i will give a "no" to recomend this game till it gets stable, then its for sure a "yes"

(edited 03/jun/2014)
new negative side i just figured .... if you use "halftime -> fulltime" buttons to play matchs ... it goes almost goalless most the time .... if you use highlight method the match have much more goals

Oh so close to being a good game. It has the rigth idea and even manages to almost look like a decent football management game. I am NOT comparing it to FM, but I will compare it to FIFA Manager and this is not far off.

Major issues:
- Your tactics do not matter one bit, or so it seems. I played a very solid formation and tactic with reasonable plans in place and my team finished second to last despite having a high mid table prediction. I did this twice and had the same result.
- Adding players unbalances your team to extreme effect. They never seem to settle in.
- The UI is okay but lacks an awful lot of intuitiveness. It is difficult to find a players age and position often on screens when you really wish to see them. You will find yourself going to other screens just to find what you wish to know on your current screen.

I believe that if these things were different I could give it a thumb up.

At first this was unstable game, but it have been patched. Nice work developers! The game is for you if you don't have the time to micromanage all the details like you have to do with Football Manager and you apprichiate smooth manager experience. Create your dream-team and win the series. I give thumbs up.