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Title Premier Manager 3
Publisher Gremlin, 1994
Developers Realms of Fantasy
Game Type Sport
Players 1-2
HD Installable Yes
Compatibility All Amigas
Submission John Burns (john@jgb.abelgratis.co.uk) Profiled Reviewer

Review
The third and last in the series it is without doubt also the best. A
football management sim this game has taken all the good points from the
previous installments, improved on those, and added new features.
Graphically too the changes from PM2 are both welcome and larger than from
PM1 to PM2. Whilst on the subject of graphics it should be pointed out
that being a management game it is essentially a statistical numbers based
game, so nice graphics are not too important to gameplay.

The major gameplay improvement over the previous games is the inclusion of
an assistant manager post on your staff. Once hired he can be given
various tasks to perform (dependant on his grade) which relieve you of the
tedium of doing everything yourself. Checking sponsorship and training
players are amongst those tasks which to be honest one doesn't really want
to get too involved with all the time. Once set he'll quietly get on with
his tasks (which can be overridden by you) leaving you to concentrate on
getting your team set up for the next match. However, there are some tasks
which he can perform which I prefer to keep to myself as when he performs
them it seems to cost you more it should (He can be somewhat over-zealous
in his application).

Setting up the team is another of this versions improvements - now
allowing you to set up the team on a man by man basis and dictate who goes
where when the ball is in each of the 12 areas into which the "set up"
pitch is divided. At first this can be a bit of a pain as the setting up
does take some time to get right and as you get better players etc. it
does require tweeking. However, if you pay attention to this part at the
start then it ultimately does pay dividends later. In the lower divisions
you can get away with the same old formation week in week out but once you
reach the higher divisions to get anywhere you really need to change
formation to suit the opposition's mode of play.

Though an English football league game you do have the opportunity to play
(once you qualify that is!) in the various European cup competitions. Also
at the start of each season you can arrange up to 4 friendly matches with
top teams from most of the European leagues (4 from each league e.g
Scotland = Rangers, Celtic, Hearts and Aberdeen).

This game is a statistic loving gamer's delight with enough numbers to
keep them more than pleased whilst at the same time not becoming a burden
as such stats do in other games of this ilk. Money, and the earning of it,
is of course the thing that keeps the directors happy and yourself in a
job. A sensible use of the transfer market can earn you enough profit from
players sold each year to finance any required ground improvements, squad
strengthening, etc. and still keep the taxman and the bank balance happy.

Overall, a good solid footie management sim with just about every element
one could wish for. Not a perfect game (but then none ever are). It's
failings aren't so much in what is there being bad but more in what
one would also wish to be added. There are quite a few similar
management games around and I would lay this same critisism at each of
their doors. For instance many prefer the actual option of being able to
play the game also - something which this game doesn't offer - but if
that's what you're after then shouldn't you be playing something like SWOS
or one of the Kick Offs instead?