Pocket League Story: Create your own football team and take them to worldwide stardom!
Kairosoft have put another little gem out onto the Android Market with this football game. As with their other story productions this is an addictive management game, but this time it seems like they’ve upped the complexity for their hardcore followers. Check out the rest of our review to hear more about PLS.
Gameplay: You play the role of a football manager who has control of everything related to the team. So you hire and fire footballers, train your staff, erect facilities and renovate the stadium for your fans. But remember that this is a Kairosoft style game, so this is essentially all statistics driven and you need to balance out the collection of four different tokens/units. After you’ve accumulated sufficient tokens/units then you can spend them on your team or grounds which will further your progress towards winning that big trophy. In between all the stats there’s an actual football game where you can watch and feel the skill of your players!
The core of this game seems really similar to real life – so the footballers are the heart of the game. You need to attract and bring in the right talent which you can then cultivate in order to beat your opponents. As your fame rating increases and you top your leagues then you’ll get promoted to the higher championships.
There is one slightly odd aspect to be aware of though – the fans support tokens/credits are actually like research points. Although they’ve named one of the main action categories as fan activities – it’s not actually just about attracting fans. Instead you should consider it to be more like unlocking more features. So when you do marketing programs which spend these fan support points, then you’re enticing more footballers or researching new training techniques etc.
Cool stylisation: Much like Game Dev Story (GDS) and Grand Prix Story (GPS), the little pixelated people are very cute and the overall 2-D graphics and animations are quite satisfying. Music and sound are excellent as always and in fact I think I could have the music on all day and I wouldn’t be annoyed by it!
Football Mania: It’s a football game so you have to follow that football action! Although you don’t have exact control of any of your players during a match, you can control an aspect of their playing style, and their formations. Oddly enough, it’s really satisfying seeing your players score a goal against the opponents. Oh and as usual there’s the classic aura which you can activate when the players are in the mood to be on fire!
Verdict: 4/5 Another great game from Kairosoft which had me hooked for ages! If you liked GDS or GPS, then do give this a try. Be warned if you’re only gonna try the lite version though, because that only lets you get a feel of some aspects of the game are (i.e. it lets you understand that there’s hiring and firing, training, and you get to watch an actual football match etc.). Personally I thought the lite version was just a bit off putting instead. You would probably need to play the game once to understand all the aspects correctly and to be able to put together an awesome team.
Some negatives: Although there’s a slight imbalance to the game in certain matches, I did get satisfaction seeing my team (Arsenal) destroy any opponents by 6-0. Game imbalances aside, the real drawback in this game are that its quite complex – even for the average player. In other words you have to either enjoy watching football or playing with stats. The biggest negative is that it’s another one of those games with no move to SD card functionality… which means I’ll eventually have to delete this 6MB game to make room for other games.
Pocket League Story Tips from Android Games Review:
- The first time you play this game you should play for a few years and explore all the aspects. If you have any tokens/units then you should spend them.
- Generally for the first time you play, you want to get a balance of all units/tokens, as well as a balance in skill in your players. There are more specialist strategies depending on where you are in the game, but they only become apparent after playing the game once.
- Any unnecessary accumulation of the tokens/units indicates that you’re being inefficient , so try and keep the figures down if possible.
- Potential in the players is key – so try and hire superstars or specialist players because their attributes can be trained extremely high.
- Although you may be hiring in a player who is worse than your current team, it’s sometimes necessary because your existing players may not have as great a potential.
- A balance of speed and defence is required. If your players have strong defence, but are slow then they can’t catch opponents who are too fast. Conversely, even if they’re swift, then they would be floored everytime they run into an opponent.
Pocket League Story (PLS) QR Code
(Click on the image or scan the barcode with your Android phone to goto the Android Market)
Developers: Kairosoft / Kairopark
