Cyanide and NACON have released the brand new title in their hardcore cycling sims Pro Cycling Manager 2020. If you prefer more desk work and less cycling outside as featured in Tour de France 2020, then this game is right up your alley. This year’s Pro Cycling Manager boasts some fantastic additions to the formula that not only adds value to the game but also makes it more challenging in certain ways but also easier in certain ways. This is our review of Pro Cycling Manager 2020 in which we put on our suit and manage our very own team of cyclists to victory.
As soon as you start the Career mode of Pro Cycling Manager 2020, you will be greeted with the brand new dashboard. This is prominent only if you have played Pro Cycling Manager 2019 as well. If you are a new player, you just started your Pro Cycling Manager on the best version as of yet so you do not have to worry about anything. This brand new dashboard has all the basic information of your team and the season that you need to know at a glance. Different important screens and tabs are now right in front of you for easy navigation. A quick tutorial also ensures that you are on top of your game right from the beginning. After a few tips here and there, you will be introduced to your very first Pro Cycling Manager Race Planning Assistant.
This is yet a major addition to the game because your Race Planning Assistant literally saves you from a lot of work such as completing squads for the race or if you are feeling even lazier, you can allow your assistant to handle the complete race schedule while you focus on other important management tasks at hand. One good thing here is that Cyanide has added the ability to activate or deactivate this assistant completely so if you miss the old, classic hectic days of Pro Cycling Manager 2019 where you have to do every single thing yourself, you can do so with the AI turned off.
The biggest addition to the Pro Cycling Manager 2020 is the new Morale system which plays a crucial role in your team’s success. As the manager of the team, it is your goal to ensure that your team’s morale stays high. High morale will ensure that your riders deliver their best during races. You will get plenty of options in the game that will help increase or decrease the morale of your team. To ensure that the morale of your team is good and towards high, you will need to accept their requests. However, you cannot always accept their requests so, in these conditions, you will need to decline them. This will certainly decrease their morale but you must try to raise is back up by any other options currently available to you.
The morale is directly linked to the motivation levels of the riders as well. So if you want your riders to be motivated, you must make sure that their morale stays high. For example, when the morale of my riders was high, it kept them more motivated throughout the race and it ultimately gave them better acceleration and more preparation for the final section of the race. It also ensures their consistency and chances that they will remain with you for more seasons. If you thought that Pro Cycling Manager 2019 was tough, the introduction of Morale in 2020 adds a brand new challenge for you to tackle. It also ensures their consistency and chances that they will remain with you for more seasons.
Apart from these major additions, you will notice that the weather prediction system is now less accurate. Now, I am not complaining here because this is exactly what the developer intended. It makes it feel more like a real-life event rather than a scripted video game event. How many times has the radio told you it will be clear skies but it ends up being a wet evening? Now, this can happen in Pro Cycling Manager 2020 as well so you cannot always rely on the weather forecast system for highly accurate news. You just might get surprised sometime. Enemy AI is also tweaked and will be more offensive towards you now especially near the final stages of the races. They will push more and harder forcing you to have some sort of a strategy to counter their every move. You will also notice that the race routes are now more accurate and filled with objects according to the real-life variant. You will be also glad to know that the calendar now includes all 21 stages of Tour de France as well.
Coming back to the main Career mode, I would like to now discuss how the main dashboard is much more convenient for you to manage rather than the previous ones. While you are on the main dashboard, you can see your Messages, Morale, Planner, Upcoming Events, and more. This is your main hub from where you can access your team’s management screen as well as any other information about your team such as its Finances and Sponsorships. Your sponsors play an important role because they provide you with gear that you use in races and you can also upgrade this gear in your equipment section. R&D plays an important role so you will need to ensure that your team is using the best possible gear.
Obviously, this will not be possible right at the start of the game however you must start researching as soon as possible once you get a good grip on how the game works. Better gear will ensure that your riders feel comfortable during races, better gear is also more aerodynamic and is certainly going to last longer as well because of its higher durability. Now when you start using better gear, your team will start performing well and they will eventually start positioning well during races. This will result in higher morale and this higher motivation levels. You can see how well Cyanide has implemented the new morale system as every tiny bit of the whole team management leads to ensuring higher team morale at the end.
You still have all of the normal management tabs here including your planner and the calendar. You can her to the staff tab to manage your trainers, doctors, and scouts. The trainers ensure that your riders are trained well while the doctors ensure that all injuries are treated right away. Your scouts will also look for better players from around the world. Sometimes your riders will also suggest you include some players into your team. This will be a choice that will determine their morale so it all boils down on your preferences. Similar to previous titles, you have sponsor goals here as well. To survive in the game, you must ensure that your sponsors remain happy by completing their objectives during your season. Your riders will also set their own objectives so make sure that you help them achieve their goals because it will keep their morale high and they will remain motivated.
Pro Cycling Manager 2020 is not all managing screens and boring paperwork. If you want some action, you can simply choose to enter a 3D race before a race is about to start and you will be taken to the game where you will need to ride the complete stage. This is a brilliant change of pace from all the management screens as you can be actually outside riding your bike through some of the best locations. Once you’re happy with your cycling, you can head back to your office and resume from where you left off. For ensuring that your riders remain in their top form, you can also send them abroad some training camps. Depending on what sort of training you want them to have, select a destination, and book a camp for a select number of your riders. If you find all of this too hectic, bring in your assistant who will handle the squads for races while you manage the technical, back end stuff. For me, I was happy with the AI turned off because I prefer running the team in my own way.
Final Verdict:
I’ve always considered the Pro Cycling Manager a tougher edition of the much more manageable Tour de France but it seems like Cyanide is working towards making Pro Cycling Manager a lot more accessible and easier for new players to jump in the action. The new UI overhaul and the new dashboard, which is much more convenient to manage and displays all vital information for your team’s management on a single screen, shows that Cyanide is indeed making the game more and more accessible. Pro Cycling 2020 is definitely much easier to understand thanks to a simpler UI however it still packs all the complexities of carefully managing your team with additional challenges so it is still a solid management game despite the much simpler dashboard. If you prefer the more hardcore approach towards cycling, Pro Cycling Manager 2020 is going to make you very happy and I highly recommend it.
Final Score: 8.0/10
