J.League Tactics Soccer is a Japanese-only football management game. So a ton of text, figures and sitting and watching. You pick which team you want to take over and can create your son to join the team as a player alongside you (ah, nepotism). Your terms dictate that you must finish the league in the top 12, and if there’s ever a time where there aren’t enough players for a match (due to injuries, cards, etc), then you also get fired.

Within each month, you plan events. You can add friendly matches, fan experiences, week-long campsite training, praying at a shrine for victory and getting vaccinations. Set matches will already be there. Events will happen every Wednesday and Saturday, starting off with a practice session. If you don’t schedule anything, some random thing will occur instead.

No matter what you do, though, the outcomes are random. These are mainly increase or decreases in player motivation, player strength and your reputation. I set up a fan appreciation day and chose a player to bring in something special to auction off. As nobody wanted to buy it, my reputation decreased.

When it comes to matches, you set up the tactics, formations, players and sit back and watch the match. You can change basic tactics on-the-fly (wing/centre play, fast or slow), but anything else requires pausing and going through the menus. The matches are played out in 3D, and the HUD looks a bit like Perfect Striker (ISS), so I think it’s based on Konami’s football engine, but I couldn’t find anything confirming this.

I played a few matches and it was already very repetitive. I never felt like I had much control over anything, and it felt like the events you set had little impact as the results were random. That said, a lot of that could be the language barrier as there’s probably a ton of details that I’m missing. This football team hired a manager who doesn’t know anything about football tactics (other than pass to the best player, he can run past everyone and score) and doesn’t speak Japanese, so it’s no surprise that they did poorly.

?

Remake or remaster?

Football Manager fills this niche and is in English.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to play J.League Tactics Soccer.