Discovering Football Manager 2017 Touch

It surely exists, I've been playing it in these last few days, but rarely someone mentions it.

What am I talking about?

I'm referring to Football Manager Touch 2017 (from now FMT 2017), or as reviewers often labels it "the streamlined version of FM 2017".

This is not a review cause while I'm writing, the game is still in beta stage, but I think it could be useful to post my early impressions.

From this year they're two separate games, but if you pre-ordered the full version you received the lighter one as well, at the same price.

Defining FMT 2017 as streamlined might make you think there's something key lacking in it, but is that true?

Let's procede with order, of course some features are missing: press conferences for example, team talks and in game talks are not present and your staff is limited, you can't hire coaches, just one assistant manager.

On the other hand the new social media feed is in the game, if you like that kind of things.

How the lack of these features impact your gaming experience?

That's a huge question , I think the answer is strictly related to your own preferences, the kind of player you are.

My opinion is that all the media features tend to become tedious after some months, I know they play an important role in real football today, but you could agree with me that as they're implemented in the game they're far from being realistic and/or truly interesting.

I'm not blaming Sports Interactive for that, I simply believe the AI of the game struggles , with the current technology, to reproduce those specific human behaviours in a proper way.

It's often a repetitive routine and I usually leave it to my assistant manager, team talks apart.

Team report

Therefore, even if I consider the main game to be quite consistent this year, more people should consider to give FMT 17 a chance this time.

Now you're probably waiting for me to start talking about the average player with less time available as the perfect FM Touch user, but I'm going in another direction here, not that the previous statement is not true, surely it is, but there's more.

The game runs quicker and I noticed that all the time saved skipping the media affair was available for a more in-depth use of other features, like post match analysis (yes boys, it's in the game), so to be able to finely tune your tactic.

By the way, if you weren't aware of it, there's no tactic familiarity in FMT, your team still needs time to gel but your players can make full use of your tactical instructions when the game starts, it could be the right place to make experiments.

It's a back to roots approach, it really reminds me of an old classic like Championship Manager 01-02, with more powerful tools and data available, but sincerely focused on the tactical side of the game and team building, it seems perfect if you love tactical tinkering.

No, I wouldn't say that, both games share the same match engine, the tranfer system works in the same way and most importantly during a game that you're badly losing you can't hope to turn things around using an inspired half time motivational talk, you need to make full use of your own tactical wisdom, no other weapons at your disposal, in a certain sense the game could become even more subtle.

It's not easier, it's different.

Train your players

The game comes with three skins, the dark one (my favourite, really easy on the eyes), the white skin and another one called vintage, moreover the layout is improved since last year, less childish and sometimes even better and more polished than some screens available in the full game, see the team and players statistics to understand what I mean.

On a negative note you can't use the editor, a key feature for people who like to edit leagues.

Tutoring is another feature that is not available, or better, it's automated, you can't decide the tutor and the tutee and the outcome could be really random at times.

If you want you still can have full control of team/individual training and PPM's learning though.

You might have heard about the existence of a "Brexit simulator" inside the main game, well Brexit is simulated in FM Touch 17 as well, if you're going to manage in England, somehow you'll be affected by this huge political event.

The developers of FMT 2017 should fix an issue, bring back the old name, FM Classic was nice, it perfectly describes what the game is about, a classic gaming experience with no frills, the new name looks too tablets oriented and could make the wrong impression.

The mobile version isn't out yet and will allow cross-saves but 3-leagues only and a limited database loaded, on the contrary the PC/Mac/Linux version lets you have up to 50.000 players and staff included in the game, a key difference.

This version of the game deserves your attention, I'm going to udate this article after the game official release if something had to change, meanwhile feel free to share your thoughts and ask if you want to know more about the game.

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