I have spent a lot of years playing football games and they can be broadly split into two categories: football management sims and games where you play on the team. But there’s a whole lot more to the world of football than what happens on the pitch, on the sidelines, or even on the training ground. A huge amount of work is being done in the background to make sure every match day runs smoothly, from setting up fan zones to getting security in place, with all the logistics those entail. Copa City is a game about getting cities ready to host football matches between some of the biggest teams in the world.
To start you will need to play through the tutorial to get a basic understanding of how Copa City works. You are guided by a team of advisers who specialise in different things from marketing, finances, and security. You learn about Match Readiness tiers, which are met by completing quests and meeting fan satisfaction, where passing a tier gives you more money, unlocks new modules and items to use, and cards that can be equipped for bonuses. It is a pretty clear explanation of the game and equips you with some knowledge, but not all of it – specifically handling stadium preparations outside of assigning stands to different fan groups.
There are three fan groups for every club whose needs need to be met depending on the scenario. The core fans are your everyday fans who will go to the match, explore the city, and want different food options. The family fans want facilities that will entertain and provide fun for the younger generation. Then you have the Ultras, and the only thing you need to focus with that group is security arrangements, because if the security is not there the events could descend into chaos.
To meet the needs of these different fan groups you can open up fan zones across the city, which vary in size and can be impacted by the local infrastructure. Within fan zones you can put down entertainment items, caterers, and security points, with more premium versions unlocking as you make progress. These advanced options can count towards multiple needs and generate income, but can also cost you per day to run. The fan zones are spread across different districts across cities, but you first need to unlock them in sequence, having them be linked to previously unlocked zones and be on the cable car transport system.
I chose to unlock multiple fan zones, leaving some empty just so I could get access to more districts and there is good reason for that. You see, fans of rival clubs tend to want their own districts to be in, instead of all being squashed into the same places. As fans from different clubs descend on the host city you will need to manage where they go, and having districts open allows you to move one group of fans out to another, though this comes with a cost of resources. Once enough fans are in one district and conditions have been met with fan zones up and running, that district gets taken over as a hub for that club. Again, important because when the teams arrive you need to assign them a hotel and it is probably best to assign them a place where their fans are. This alone shows some of the depth that Copa City has, thinking about the impact of where fans will be and what happens if they are not managed properly. This extends to the stadiums where you have to assign different fan groups to different stands, and making sure there are things like security in place so the Ultras don’t get into the family sections.
While Copa City gets you the fundamentals quite well, it starts to throw a lot of problems at you without really explaining what you need to do, or even not letting you. I needed to get a pitch side medic, for example, but I hadn’t reached match readiness 4 in order to access one, and I couldn’t do that as I had already spent the resources getting fan satisfaction up to 100% and meeting the objectives of other quests. I failed the campaign mission all because the medic hadn’t unlocked for me to place. Of course, resources are going to be limited, but failing an entire campaign feels harsh after spending a good few hours meeting the needs of the fans.
You cannot be successful with every quest Copa City throws your way, or at least that’s how it felt because you either don’t have enough money or enough staffing resources to match. This was another example of the game not explaining something, as yu need stewards to run things at the stadium and that needs you to create steward recruitment modules in the stadium. What isn’t explained is that, unlike the volunteer recruitment modules in the fanzones, steward recruitment does not automatically start. I was lost for a while trying to work out why I wasn’t recruiting stewards but had tons of volunteers.
Copa City also has performance issues on PS5. The navigation is not intuitive and there were quite a few times where I’d need switch from normal navigation to precision navigation mode to be able to select items on the screen, especially in the stadium screen. Having to constantly switch between the two modes because neither is as good as it could be is not great, though would obviously be less of an issue on PC. There is also quite a bit of stuttering at times and the text size for items could be a bit bigger as well. I can’t fault the game for its visuals and art direction, though. The different screens look slick and the representations of the cities are really good with a lot of effort put into the individual atmospheres and assets.