Football is everywhere these days. With the World Cup in Qatar approaching its grand finale, almost all teams have been eliminated from the four-year tournament that sadly saw Europe bowed out before progressing to the quarter-finals against Morocco. But that also means that because of this soccer fever, the beautiful game is ubiquitous in video games as well, and by that I don’t just mean the FIFA series.
the little study panic barn has decided to make the most of the moment to release its RPG with pixel art aesthetics, Soccer Story, a game set in a fictional world where soccer has been banned and is now controlled by big corporations. The goal is to use the powers of a magic soccer ball to form a team and travel the country and win trophies to prevail against the corporate super team and ultimately free soccer from this oppression. And for those wondering if Soccer Story is a sequel to Sidebar Games’ Golf Story, it’s not even close. It just so happened that they have a similar look and a similar name.
You might be wondering how exactly such a concept can be translated into an RPG. Well, the idea is to explore the world and complete different challenges to earn tokens that will allow you to improve your team’s soccer skills: speed, resistance, strength to penetrate the opponent to steal the ball, precision , shot power and passing ability . This progression premise works wonders, and since you have more things to look out for than just your protagonist. There are decisions to be made about how you spend chips on your team or you end up with a player of Messi’s caliber and the rest is a handful of second rate amateurs supporting him which we know is a combination, which can only end in disaster. In this example, you might decide to improve your forward’s shooting ability and spend strength tokens on defense to protect the goal. Of course, the decision is entirely yours.
The plot, as expected, is weird and wacky. It’s hard to really take seriously, but for the most part it’s what it’s meant to be, which means the title has to excel in gameplay. While I find the fast and steady progression has its strengths, the exploration, and particularly the soccer mechanics, aren’t that amazing.
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For starters, exploring and shaping the world is very repetitive. While it’s true that you have a lot of freedom to explore and master the missions, most of them revolve around hit lists, ie scoring goals on hidden goals, destroying red marked targets, dribble from one point to another, collect lots of items, etc. After about an hour the charm wears off and it feels like Soccer Story has nothing more to add to the strategy game.
Not that the soccer game’s weird mechanics help much either. Anything running, passing the ball and going in to steal it works perfectly, but shooting is what fails, especially in the open world. You have to use your soccer skills to complete the tasks which are mainly about shooting on goal or on goal and as the perspective of the game doesn’t change it becomes more and more frustrating to shoot accurately. This becomes a real problem with timed activities. There was a part that made me quite sad because I had to protect some swimming kids from the sharks that approached them and kicked them with the ball. The problem was how complicated it is to aim with the side perspective and the large number of sharks at once, a formula that was quite angry.
The football matches themselves also have a strange dynamic that goes from too difficult to too easy. Once you do a few gear upgrades, you become pretty much invincible, often winning 8-0. Add to that the lack of directions on where to go, which are often unnecessarily specific to unlock the next key story dialogue sequence, and as if If that weren’t enough, there are the glitches that further complicate the picture. . From unexpected game crashes and uncompleted challenges to players getting stuck in the middle of games, among other things, it can be very annoying.
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It’s a shame because there are elements in Soccer Story that are interesting and entertaining. The concept is unique; There’s potential in the way soccer has been incorporated into the exploration, the universe design is vibrant and full of activity, and the progression creates some connection with your team. The problem is that there are just too many things preventing these parts of the game from shining and it’s sad because there is no better time than the present for a game like this to come out and take over the world.
