Football Manager 2022 Review (Da_Yeti_)
As an avid FM player for the past seven editions, I am sad to say that this is by far the worst FM I've ever played. It feels like this is a buggy early beta build, not a fully released product. The match engine is the most unrealistic so far, with the only viable tactics in most situations being some form of pressing, short passing system even in lower leagues where this type of tactic shouldn't be possible. No matter what happens, even the worst teams in the league have completion percentages of 85% or higher, which if you know anything about football you'd recognize as being a bit absurd (maybe that would be normal for the best teams, but when the worst team in the sixth tier of English football is passing with 90% accuracy, you know something is wrong). Sometimes defenders decide to just wander off and are nowhere near the play. You can't play with anything other than a high defensive line, as crosses are way too effective this year. The transfer system is a bit of a mess, with players complaining about asking prices even when the interface says they should be happy with the asking price. I've had players throw a tantrum about their price being too high when a dozen teams were willing to meet it and the agent said it should be fine. Expected playing time vs accurate playing time is glitched, and sometimes the player who has started each of the dozen league games you've played so far will complain because the game thinks they're only being used as a squad player. Then there's features like "dynamic youth rating" which were misrepresented by SI (youth rating doesn't actually change except for very rare circumstances), who then give snappy responses when called out on it. SI's reaction as a whole to any criticism of the game or reports of bugs usually boil down to "not a bug, you just don't like our game being realistic", even when it's clearly an unrealistic bug, which is disappointing coming from a developer who is usually very good about interacting with the game's community. If SI would have re-released FM2018 with updated squads and called it FM2022 I would recommend it in a heartbeat, but I just can't recommend this game as is. If you really want to simulate last season, buy FM21 and download one of the third-party roster updates, but skip FM22 and hope that they do a better job with FM23.