Let me start by saying this: Soccer Story is very interesting. Not plot-wise, but generally. Its existence is fascinating on its own.
You may or may not remember the little hit game called Golf Story. The silly RPG in the world of golf became quite a success: so much so that it basically birthed a whole subgenre of sports games in the RPG genre. Golf Story was a slightly mad infusion that shouldn’t have worked, but it did — spectacularly so, thanks to a mix of great dialogs and charming presentation.
Soccer Story sounds like a logical sequel to it, released right before the World Cup. Only it isn’t: a different game, a different developer. But everything about it makes it seem like “more of the same.” Technically, the publisher did nothing wrong, but it’s all a bit iffy, you know?
Anyways, I am not going to take away precious points for sheer gall. It’s a separate game that tried to fill in the niche. Why not?
Soccer Story tells a story about a soccerless world. The evil corporation that’s basically FIFA outlawed the sport, allowing only officially-ran clubs to participate in the one and only championship. The cheeky way the developers are mocking the universally hated organization in our world is endearing, but the novelty wears off fast. The premise is good enough, it’s the question of what they will do with it. The answer? Not so much.
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Plot, dialogs — all of this is miles worse than Golf Story. It’s okay, on the level of Pokémon games, but there’s nothing to write home again. Now, the gameplay is not bad, but it’s so simple that there’s nothing to discuss, really. It’s based on football/soccer, but of a fantastic variety. You run around the world, finding quests and speaking to various characters. Sometimes you play soccer: it’s simplistic but fun, in a physics-based sandbox sort of way. I enjoyed the Tournaments the best. Everything else, not much.
The game looks good enough — especially on the Switch’s OLED screen. It’s a voxel game with huge 3D pixels in the style of The Touryst.
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Verdict
Have I enjoyed my time with the game? I did. But it did get tedious faster than I would have hoped. The idea is solid, and the execution is adequate. There’s a charm, there are decent visuals. But it’s a game that’s based on a gimmick and not much else. But if you’ve done everything there is to do in Golf Story and want more of that, Soccer Story is not the worse way to spend a few hours. Especially since it’s on Game Pass.