Football Manager 26 - A New Low For The Series (Ep.55)
Joe and Big Sid talk Football Manager from Championship Manager 01/02 to the FM26 disaster. Big Sid has been playing for 25 years. Joe started with FM12 and the San Marino Challenge, spending a year building a lower Italian league team into Champions League contenders. Both have lost relationships and jobs to this game.FM26 launched in early access and immediately got review bombed on Steam. The new Unity engine brought performance problems. Menus take five minutes to open. Big Sid has a 4090 and still had problems. The UI overhaul moved everything around, breaking muscle memory from years of previous versions. Sports Interactive told people to give it 20 hours to adjust, which is absurd when most people quit games in 10 minutes if they don't like the feel.FM25 got cancelled months before release. Miles Jacobson said it wasn't good enough and he wasn't having fun. The community questioned whether FM26 would also get delayed, but Sega's release schedule meant it had to ship. Maybe they should have delayed it anyway.The transfer system improved with a recruitment hub for planning squad building. Women's football is in the game now with 14 playable leagues across 11 nations. The men's game has 100 fully playable leagues and around 800,000 players including coaches and scouts. The match engine got better with more natural player movement, but the trade-off was PowerPoint transitions between menus.We talk favorite saves and legendary players. Big Sid runs journeyman saves, starting unemployed with Sunday league experience. His go-to tactic is the 4-2-3-1 Gegenpress. Joe gives himself one coaching badge and prefers building from nothing. Freddy Adu dominated FM05 saves. Lorenzo Kryzite bossed midfields as a lone defensive midfielder in FM12. Shane Long had one year where he was inexplicably the best player in the game. Joe once reloaded his youth intake 100 times to get his own kid as a regen and turned them into a national team player.Big Sid says let them cook. FM26 needs time and iterations to fix the performance and UI problems. Or just play FM24, which got delisted from Steam. You can download it if you already own it but can't buy it anymore.Tell us what your first save is in a new FM or which wonderkid you remember best.https://criticalmovespodcast.com
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Sudden Strike 5 is Coming. Is The Series Any Good? (Ep.54)
Welcome back to Critical Moves! In this episode, hosts Jack and Adam welcome newest team member Sid to break down the Sudden Strike series - the World War II real-time tactics franchise that's been quietly serving a dedicated fanbase for over two decades. With Sudden Strike 5 recently announced at Gamescom and promising ambitious features like 300+ units, co-op PvE gameplay, and massive 25-hour campaigns, we dive deep into why this arcade-style strategy game occupies such a unique space in the genre. Sid walks us through his experience with the series from the original game through Sudden Strike 4, explaining the core gameplay loop that focuses on tactical resource management, fuel and ammo conservation, and scripted reinforcements rather than traditional RTS base-building. We explore why Sudden Strike has struggled to gain mainstream recognition despite four previous entries, discussing how it sits awkwardly between hardcore military simulations like Men of War and more accessible titles like Company of Heroes, making it too arcade for wargaming purists but potentially too tactical for casual RTS fans.https://criticalmovespodcast.com
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New Year, New Game (Ep.53)
To celebrate the new year of Critical Moves Podcast, Al, Tim and Adam sat down to recommend a new game for the others to try. These were games that the others had never played before but that each hoped their co-hosts would enjoy. Games recommended were: Tim: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1207650/Suzerain (for Al) https://store.steampowered.com/app/1434950/HighFleet (for Adam)Al: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2088550/Dying_Breed (for Adam) https://store.steampowered.com/app/3556750/Warhammer_40000_Dawn_of_War__Definitive_Edition (for Tim)Adam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/457140/Oxygen_Not_Included (for Al) https://store.steampowered.com/app/25900/Kings_Bounty_The_Legend (for Tim)We will come back in a few months and let you know what we thought of them.
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Heroes of Might and Magic: OE or Endless Legend 2. Which Is Better? (Ep.52)
Jack and Adam compare two modern revivals of strategy design: Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era and Endless Legend 2. We cover how HOMM OE modernises the classic loop, the daily and weekly map rhythm, city growth, unit upgrade forks, and where it stumbles with a cluttered spell UI and questions about handcrafted maps. We dig into Endless Legend 2’s Civ-style shell with heroes anchoring armies, event chains that create real attachment, and the tides mechanic that reshapes the map, plus the tutorial build crashing on our end and why it still kept us playing. The thread through both is a character-led 4X style that looks like Civ but plays closer to HOMM and Age of Wonders, with smaller tactical scopes and more authored micro-stories. https://criticalmovespodcast.com
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Steam NextFest Special (Ep.51)
Adam, Jack, and Tim dig into the October 2025 Steam Next Fest lineup. They highlight the most promising strategy titles, the ones to skip, and talk about how Steam’s visibility system shapes the fortunes of indie developers. The discussion covers what works, what doesn’t, and why the algorithm can make or break smaller strategy games.https://criticalmovespodcast.com
À propos de Critical Moves Podcast - Strategy Videogames
Critical Moves is a strategy games podcast that takes RTS, 4X, and tactics seriously. Most gaming podcasts treat strategy games as an afterthought. We don’t. Every week we cover real-time strategy, turn-based tactics, 4X empire builders, indie experiments, and overlooked classics with long-form analysis and no wasted time.This isn’t quick reviews or recycled talking points. It’s sharp criticism and honest discussion about strategy game design. If a game is shallow or broken, we’ll say so. If it does something clever, we’ll explain why it works. We talk to developers without the marketing filter, getting into the mechanics and design choices that actually shape the games.If you want a RTS podcast, a 4X podcast, or a place for smarter conversations about tactics and strategy gaming, this is it. Critical Moves is made for players who think about systems, mechanics, and design—not just surface impressions.New episodes every Friday.https://criticalmovespodcast.com
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