This is great for players like me, who sign five amazing new attackers every season and leave the defence threadbare.īut set pieces still feel like a lottery, and I've always found messing with things like corner routines causes more misses than goals, so I leave them to default. New options have appeared for offside traps, aggressive transition play and defensive width on crosses. Tactically, new defensive systems have made blocks and shape even smarter, especially when playing with my preferred five-defender wing-back shape. It still feels like football though, and your players react to every change you make from the sidelines, for better or worse. I get the same stupid red card as my midfielder hacks down an attacker with two feet from behind once or twice a season. The match engine is a mature beast, and whilst changes come year on year, the limited amount of animations in the 3D engine sees very little variation game-to-game. Something that makes the game harder, and sometimes even more rage-inducing. The biggest overhaul to the match engine this year is that the AI manager is smarter, and will change its tactics throughout the game. The rage induced by this will never go away. But this also happens often in real football-take Leicester winning the Premier League for example. When no matter what you do, the RNG gives you better stats performance-wise, but makes you lose the game. There's a term in the community: 'you've been FM'd'. Mute until you qualify, unmute for one game, back to mute. A morsel of audio excitement comes with the new UEFA licenced Champions League anthem. It's way off what a matchday sounds like-the crowd droning so inaccurate it's unbearable. The sound is also something that has not moved forward in my opinion. FM fans don't play FM for the graphics, but FIFA 23 it is not. I started with 2D on FM05, and the 3D engine has bumbled along since its introduction, looking like an iPhone game. It's really overwhelming, and the experience feels almost identical to Football Manager 2022.

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