Surprisingly deep and addictive – Active Soccer 2 DX Review

This game is really well designed and an excellent arcade soccer experience over all. The gameplay is really fun and it’s addictive to formulate new rosters and tactics. Graphics are meh and the animations are bare bones but this game is more about tactics and twitch reflexes anyway. The career mode is especially well done. The transfer market is really fun to play around with and player ratings change at the end of a season depending on success and usage. You can actually develop players from reserves into starters if you have the patience, or push a decent player to a breakthrough season by positioning them in the right system. You also control team finances so you can comb the lower leagues for standout players and get them for a steal or you can go all in on a Romalto or Mezzi (the game uses slightly altered versions of real player names since its unlicensed, this goes for team names too). Not only do you develop but the whole league changes around you. I beat Juventus with Lyon for the champions league title and the next season I was amazed to see several of their players had developed making them a much tougher opponent this time around. And if you want to, you can take a job managing a new team yourself. The depth here is really rewarding. The learning curve is quite steep. You need to get really good at defending and keeping the ball moving. Eventually the angles for where to pass and make a run become more second nature. My main gripes are with the AI. Your AI teammates are pretty useless on defense. The game uses an auto switch feature that snaps you in control of the nearest player to the ball but it’s not perfect. Sometimes it gets confused or refuses to snap to the player in front of the ball. In general though, if you don’t control the player, they won’t play actual defense and instead just kind of run along the attacker Then there’s the actual play of your opposition. The game suggests that the opponent is using a specific tactic but most of the time the opposing offense just blasts a few perfect long balls until they hit a striker in the midfield and that striker runs straight down the middle at the goal. So you just have to switch to a defender in front of the striker and intercept them, or chase them down from behind with a faster player. Rarely do they run a 1-2 or set up any sort of attacking possession. They just beeline for the goal. That gets a little boring. If you play a really strong defensive tactic then they get a little more creative but not much. It does take away from an otherwise great game since your opposition lacks specific character. But overall this game is killer. The rosters are a few years old and figuring out the players and teams can be tough as all teams are identified by their city and jersey color (again because of no licensing) but if you want a fun soccer game that’s not going to hit you up for money like fifa or PES than I highly recommend it.
Review by julienseredowych on Active Soccer 2 DX.