Nahuelzn

At this point I'm not playing FM23 until @GIMN releases the skin. It's just awesome (and atributeless, which I love). Game changing material here man! Incredible work.

After playing now a fairly decent amount of games... I can't see the improved AI Managers. I played in full highlights, extensive or key. Yes, sometimes they try an specific flank or press up a little higher, but nothing that much different from FM22. I would say that is even less reactive seems it seems to use only 2 or 3 tactics and that's all. But maybe it's me and would like to know what everyone thinks.

Since I don't think SI will ever introduce difficulty levels or something like that, there's only much you can do to make the game more difficult: 1) Play with a skin that hide your players attributes. You'll see the difficult of this when the transfer market is open: every player you buy has a bigger question mark and you can really end up having a bad season following a bad transfer window. Specially in lower leagues where you don't have that many scouts and most of the players you'll bring won't be fully scouted (if you limit trials, another difficulty layer). 2) Use the in-game editor to help other teams in your league. I know this isn't ideal, but a way to "fix" the bad AI squad building* is to just do it yourself. I always make the big teams in the league I'm playing stronger by getting them players with higher CA in positions they lack. Also, I tend to send youth good players from them on loan to other clubs in the league to strenght other squads and also give them playing time. If you want to go one step further, you can increase morale and tactical familiarity for those teams. 3) Don't play in England. Start a lower league save in a different country, the smaller and unknown that country is, the better. You won't have access to a big player pool to strenght your squad originally, so you'll just struggle more. Eventually, the game will become easier and you'll dominate your league. But that's just because you can overwhelm the AI in almost every instance. It's just the way it is. I do believe that SI should aim to a difficult game, where squad building is a challenge, but I do know that people gets frustrated when their lose, so I think I'm in the minority on this side. * When you think on squads independently, then yes, AI squad building is "poor". But when you take into factor that the AI has to build thousands of squads every transfer market, where players are moving constantly from one side to another, and provide a balanced squad for each one of them, I think it deserves some respect from SI devs. It's not easy to do that and there're improvements edition after edition.

My first impression of the ME is really good. The touches are improved, the "chaos" of football is really there and you can feel it. I even seen some interesting dribbling animations when players have the ball. I got to be honest, the fact that the ball now spins and bounce like a real ball is supposed to do is really great. Can't say anything about playing styles as I only played a few games, but so far what I'm instructing my team to do, the team is doing it. Be it playing from the back or a more direct approach. I'm sure that with some fine-tuning, this could be one of the greates ME of the game.

You can always artificially pump other teams in your league/continental cup by using the in-game editor. It's like cheating but in reverse (?). If I feel that the league is stagnating, I usually move some great players to the better teams, and loan some youth prospect from those teams to lower clubs so they gain experience. Ideally the game should do it by itself, but to be honest, I don't actually mind having that kind of control over the AI teams, and I even like it as you can "tweak" the FM universe a little to your save narrative. (And just remember to always boost a little the reputation of a player if you're editing his CA to accurately reflect it's importance and his market value)

This to me seems related to the fact that defenders can't really intercept through balls. Passes behind the back line are massively powerful and center backs can't handle them, either low passes or through the air. I know this is something the game didn't have on previous versions, but I hope it gets balanced in FM23.