It’s roughly 50/50 whether a throw-in will be called correctly, and the computer AI has a fantastic habit of throwing the ball into the stands, then running to collect it and dribble to goal themselves. They vary wildly from incompetent to Gordon Banks-like, saving everything you throw at them. They refuse to rush out, as mentioned, and they love to throw balls at heads rather than feet, causing a pinball situation that probably won’t play to your favour. They take a leaf out of Man City’s book and play out everything from the back, even if your defenders are man-marked. Sometimes you feel you have control of them, but most of the time you don’t.
There are lots of these weird quirks that make it football, but not quite. Long balls and through balls become such an obvious cheese strategy, so you’ll probably want to house-rule them in some way for local matches. Through balls and long balls are the same, particularly as goalkeepers don’t bother to come off their line and the player-switch button is awful, taking ages to change focus and always opting for the nearest player, rather than the defender that the attacker is approaching. Goal kicks become your special weapon, howitzering it up to Rebort Lawendiwsko so he can have a clear shot on goal.
Forwards sit in this gap, so the automatic, optimal strategy is long balls. Sounds fine – at least there’s no VAR stop-starting the game – but it means that defenders sit hilariously deep as default, squatting in the six-yard box, and there’s a massive gap between midfield and defence. Instead, Super Arcade Soccer 2021 is more of a sim, and it has added the ‘Arcade’ tag as an excuse for not getting all of the sim stuff right. With a FIFA Street or Super Mario Strikers approach to football, we might have pulled off something that was worth a replay. Down that path it might have been more fun. Super Arcade Soccer 2021, for a start, isn’t very arcade-y. Meanwhile, the tournaments are modelled on Wimbledon rather than existing football tournaments, as Super Arcade Soccer 2021 has opted for the easy-to-design tournament brackets.
Unusually, you can automate matches in the league mode if you’re feeling the attrition of a full season, but we found that even the Barcelonas of the world only win 50% of the time when skipped, so it’s not an easy path to achievements. There’s no customisation to the league and cup outside of the duration of matches: you are playing in an established league like La Liga (named Spain League, ofc).
If there’s anything a budget ‘baller should be able to do, it’s update their anagramised teams before launch. Teams are in their 2019-2020 state, so they’re a little stale: David Silva is still running out for Man City, Watford are in the Premier League, and Danny Rose is a mainstay in the England defence.
It’s not a huge haul (Scottish players will probably snort at the lack of Scottish Premier League), but our expectations were already lowered for a £5.79 game. There are five leagues’ worth of clubs on offer – Spanish, Italian, German, French and English – and twenty or so international teams.