Decades ago, almost every publisher going took a stab at establishing a football franchise, licensing individual clubs and players to lend brand recognition. By the time the Xbox 360/PS3 generation rolled around, EA and Konami had the genre under tight control with FIFA and PES, eventually becoming untouchable to competition. This still rings true today (although more so in EA’s favour), but there are still developers out there looking to plug gaps in the market while capitalising on the sport’s global popularity, either through platformers like Kick, card-based games such as Nutmeg or management sims including SEGA’s Football Manager.
Copa City sees the football management genre branch out into new territory, as you aren’t managing teams here but rather football fans. It’s your job to plan numerous ‘fan zones’ within several countries, which serve to provide food, entertainment, and security ahead of a big game. This is achieved through a typical top-down building element, placing pavements and electrical generators on a grid before adding food trucks, toilets, security facilities, and entertainment zones that include stages, jumbo TV screens, seating areas, photo booths, and more. If you have families in the area, they’ll need entertaining, and if the city is swarmed with ‘ultra’ fans then you’ll need to beef up security.
As all the clubs here are licensed (Borussia Dortmund, FC Bayern München, Arsenal FC, CR Flamengo, Beşiktaş JK and Olympique Marseille) it seems that the developers purposely avoided mentioning hooliganism so as not to tarnish teams. Clashes do still occur, but no actual violence is depicted; it’s all rather sanitised in that regard.
You’re given 14 days to get ‘match day ready’ which involves establishing routes of ‘fan zones’ across the city while completing both main missions and sub-missions, which can vary from simply placing three new kebab trucks to bringing in thousands of fans by plane by paying for an advertising program. There are five milestones to potentially reach before a match, with bonuses to gain along the way in the form of randomised cards that bestow perks.
Like football itself, Copa City is a game of two halves, as there’s also a football stadium management aspect. This feels rather unrefined when compared to ‘fan zone’ planning, to the point where the UI on consoles is incredibly unintuitive. Upon reaching the first milestone you can begin purchasing stands before setting ticket prices. They also need to be allocated to families, ultras and regular fans for both clubs. A bunch of stadium items can be purchased, including safety barriers, drink stands, and turnstiles. Placement however is arbitrary (i.e, turnstiles can be placed anywhere), and I never felt that investing in any of these things improved the fan experience – they’re just another thing to purchase and place.
In fact, a lot of elements within Copa City aren’t well explained. The tutorial lasts around an hour and will have you scratching your head several times over while you try to get to grips with the cumbersome control scheme. Bugs are present here too, some of which render part of the UI unusable unless you activate the optional cursor system to highlight options. Once the tutorial is complete, four full campaign missions unlock, each set in a different city and with dozens of objectives that must be completed in short spaces of time. Upon introducing something new, it’ll be down to you to figure out what’s needed. Compounding things further, it’ll often get ahead of itself, requiring you to place items that haven’t been unlocked yet – all while the quest timer ticks down. Main mission failures can result in a ‘Game Over’ so it pays to save regularly. Thankfully it’s possible to pause the action to focus on specific tasks.
To say I struggled with Copa City would be an understatement. At launch, it was badly in need of a patch, as it was inevitable a bug would appear that prevented progress. In my case, match day simply never happened – the calendar went into negative days instead. Once a patch released (which prevented me from reviewing this sooner) I was able to get into the swing of meeting fans’ demands – a tricky task in itself – but was constantly faced with ‘Game Over’ screens due to failed mission objectives, all of which had almost no guidance. While trying to figure things out, I was also left wondering if I had too many or too few ‘fan zones’ in certain areas, and why I was never able to bring security up to a reasonable enough standard.
Even things such as moving fans to different areas are a mystery. I purchased ‘fan zones’ in two districts, added similar facilities, and assigned rival fans to each to keep them apart. Two minutes later, I was faced with a ‘Game Over’ screen due to the match being cancelled over security concerns. Failing a mission due to low ticket sales can be frustrating too, as there’s no definitive way to drive sales aside from lowering the price – which can result in huge debts, ergo another ‘Game Over.’ This is very much an experience fond of letting players make the same mistakes repeatedly, even failing to inform the reason behind failures.
The kindest thing I can say about Copa City is that it’s surprisingly complex and demanding. I expected something rather casual, celebrating fan culture – junk food, silly hats, and the excitement leading up to a big game – but in reality, there is a lot of micromanaging, hopping around clunky menus, pausing to plan ahead, and the need to constantly expand, adding more ‘fan zones’ and improving existing ones with newly unlocked items. And then, in its current state, something will likely occur to prevent progress – leaving you to wonder if it’s a bug or some kind of building restriction. It was bold of the developers to create something this multifaceted, especially for the console market, but something streamlined and with less feature bloat would have been far more palatable.
Triple Espresso’s Copa City is out now on PS5, Xbox Series and PC.