Review of Football Club on the 3DS

Football is one of the world’s most popular sports, and it attracts billions of viewers every year. This has led to a massive market in soccer-themed games, which often include casino elements. There’s nothing wrong with this; it’s a fun and engaging way to spend time, and many of these games are extremely well-made.

The Visuals
Nintendo Pocket Football Club is the sequel to Japan-only 2006 title Calcio Bit, and it retains its deliberately retro aesthetic, with flat 2D sprites trundling purposefully around a 3D pitch. It’s easy to see why this aesthetic has been adopted by mobile studio Kairosoft, with its line of bite-sized smartphone titles, and it’s a refreshing approach for a football management title.

It’s not a perfect representation of the sport, but it doesn’t need to be. There are plenty of FOOTBALLKUB to be had in this game, and the English localization is surprisingly good, with zippy diagrams and pithy U.S.-to-U.K.-to-Welsh translations adding to its charm.

The Players
While some other soccer management titles use proper clubs and teams, Nintendo Pocket Football Club instead opts for a more rag-tag selection of players, and it’s these that you must train up. You’ll need to work hard to assemble a talented squad, and there are a range of training cards that you can use to improve player attributes, such as scoring goals or becoming more effective in tackling. It’s a system that requires careful consideration, as you’ll want to ensure that the cards are distributed in a logical manner and that players who need nurturing aren’t given too many.

You’ll find that a good team will always start at the bottom of the league, and it can take some time to rise through the ranks, but it’s rewarding to watch as your squad grows from an underachieving rag-tag bunch to a team with serious potential. You can rename your team, and there are also opportunities to purchase new members from the transfer market if you have enough cash available.

The Matches
You can compete against other 3DS owners in a variety of online matches, although they are automated affairs and don’t allow you to change tactics manually. This is where the game’s “Command” menu comes in handy, as it allows you to tweak settings such as how aggressive you wish your team to be.

The Challenges
In the “Challenges” mode, you’ll need to beat rival players to progress to a higher rank. These matches are much quicker than the ones in the main campaign, and can be quite addictive.

The Training Cards
If you play through the main campaign and manage to progress to the top-tier, you’ll be able to unlock new training cards. These can help you develop your players, and are awarded in the middle of matches based on their performance during each game. footballkub ‘re a useful way to boost a player’s stats, and their accompanying commentary is usually full of soccer-related cliches that won’t be out of place in real life commentary, making them amusing and entertaining.