Please read, as I'm recommending this game to give it better chances (kinda late but still) but I have serious issues with it.
While I recommend this game because it's freaking awesome and totally learnable, the controls suck. Mechanically the game is tight, in theory. It's actually a really solid general execution on an interesting premise. It isn't a mf soccer game, that comment annoys me. It's literally called world FIGHTING soccer, and if the presence of fighting and the kung fu sfx weren't a giveaway then I can't help you, I'm not sure anyone can. Anyway, that's a review of some reviewers, now a review of the game.
So the good: fast paced, exciting, visually great, and everything FEELS like it should lead to consistently epic experiences. The idea is absolutely great.
The bad: everything good about this nearly mechanically tight game is undermined by unintuitive-at-best controls.
This is a three button game - sprint, jump, and strike. I still had to do the tutorial to understand what was happening, because your directional input controls both movement and striking direction, which, on its own sounds fine, but more on that in a bit. Also, B is your strike button by default and that's just goofy. A and X as jump and attack is an established, evergreen, and ergonomic choice, because it puts both buttons in line with your thumb. When you need to rapidly change input it's just not the best to have b as strike. And yes, this is normal form for fighting games, but this game is actually quite a bit faster than most fighting games, so it just doesn't feel good here. If you look at for example Marvel VS Capcom games, which are incredibly fast paced for fighting games, you'll see that the game really simplifies controls by giving you individual attack buttons that work fine on their own, and only require directional input for advanced combos, and even then, because in fighting games you have regular freezeframes to help players control pacing and get their inputs in, it just works better anyway. This game has some of that freezeframing, especially during strikes and back and forth exchanges at close range, but it isn't enough to give all the control and time a player needs. I don't think it would really benefit from more, either. This isn't really a fighting game.
This problem in how you control strike direction is compounded by what I think is an excellent ball handling mechanic that doesn't necessarily work really well here in conjunction with another mechanic I'll get to. The ball handling is actually super cool. It isn't well explained at all, but what's happening is that you must actually be within a certain proximity of the ball to have control over it, and as you sprint, you're kicking it lightly just outside of that range - just like real soccer. This means if you want to pivot direction, there's a rhythm and timing. Again, very cool mechanic, but it isn't remotely explained.
The last mechanic that actually bring this game over the edge from fine and playable to just frustrating enough to undermine its charms is how the game selects the guy you're controlling. It's close to fine, but still utterly lacking. Basically the guys you're not controlling are always trying to return to a position you choose (not unusual for sports games). You can toggle between more aggressive forward positions, and more defensive (default, too), normal positions. You can sort of think of it like this: striker normal position is the midfield line, and when you toggle the aggressive positions, your striker moves between their striker and next position, roughly 30% of the way up the field from mid. The player you're controlling is determined in part by proximity, and in part by where your players SHOULD be depending on the positions you've selected. The result is that you constantly lose control of the ball as one player brings it towards where another player either is or should be, especially when you're vollying back and forth around the field, because you lose control of the player you want to control too soon, and your control switches to that other player, who is on the OTHER side of the ball, and likely is now running the WRONG direction, as it preserves input from the last player. It's possible that the intended meta is a series of skirmishes at each position - kind of like Foosball, but it just doesn't really work because of the aforementioned striking mechanics and ball control mechanics.
I'm sure this review is a little confusing if you haven't played the game. The short story is this - it doesn't quite work, but it's learnable, more or less.
This game is 95% of the way to the foundation of an amazing game, but that last 5% has such a lack of either function or cohesion that the game gets in its own way all the time. You have these moments of brilliance where you feel awesome, but, especially when you're playing a computer that has a simple but brutally fast AI, you just can't control the ball enough to feel like you're really in control of things, and that means those moments are just that - moments, fragmented and frustrating, teasing at satisfaction and greatness.
If you're the developer reading this, you're SO close. I know it's been three years, but you have the makings of greatness here. Please don't be discouraged by my review. Making games that really work is hard, it requires balancing so many moving pieces into a unified vision, and that's a remarkable feat. Especially when your idea is original, and yours is. You've done a ton of great work, and if you don't capitalize on what's already been done, someone else will - and should. I really want to play a version of this game that works better, like, a lot. It's an extremely cool concept, and so close to being well executed. Here's some advice.
Give some more options with controls - if I could either control striking direction with the right stick, or set up each direction on its own button (you have three face buttons you could use for the three strike angles).
Explain the ball control mechanics, and add some telegraphing. The sound of kicking is a useful rhythm, and it's pretty viable, but if you just put like a little color or lighting mechanic that indicated when the player was in control range, that would do a lot. You could try a color change on the ball, like, it's tinted green when it's in range, and maybe your players feet glow or something. Anything that SHOWS the player the rhythm, because this ISN'T a rhythm game. If I hadn't watched Game Grumps play this game like 6 times and tried to figure out what they were describing, I wouldn't have realized this in the time I've played this game.
Player control can be improved AND communicated better by using a combination of things. 1. Right now the camera follows the ball, but if you had it pull towards the player the game WANTS the player to use, you're communicating. Have this happen BEFORE you switch controls - as a player approaches a passing location, the camera wants to pull towards the new character. Adding a button to confirm player swapping is an option, but it comes with some issues, and likely a limit to how much you can refuse to let the game switch players is a good idea. Adding an algorithm that asks a players distance from the ball, direction of travel relative to it and other players distance and direction of travel could be a relatively easy way to improve handover timing, preventing loss of control - essentially you need the game to predict whether releasing control is going to give control quickly to another player. Or, an automatic passing mechanic, or an automatic grabbing mechanic, or something. There's a lot of options, I'm not sure which one would work. If I was any good at pixel art I'd probably do it myself, and if you want to collaborate I'm all for it
