EA Sports FC 25 – Review

It’s that time of the year again when most countries around the world watch the world’s most popular sport (sorry USA, but your cluelessness is concerning). The beer is poured as anthems are fervently chanted and people from all walks of life get sucked into full-capacity sports stadiums as everyone enjoys the world’s biggest sport, association football. And it’s no different for the die-hard sports/gaming fans of the popular virtual version of the beautiful game – EA Sports FC (switching its name from FIFA a couple of years ago after they lost the licence to get football’s largest governing body on its game title).

Each September, its fans gather with a renewed sense of optimism, hoping that the familiar laundry list of buzzwords, with this year’s being FC IQ and Rush, actually translates into innovative and novel gameplay, and not just a fresh coat of paint over a video game franchise that’s been milking the uninspired formula that has been working for them for the last decade (no, we’re not talking about Call of Duty). Unfortunately – it seems like more of the latter for EA Sports FC 25, which continues as a series of surface-level improvements that is far from the virtual sports revolution that fans have been dying for.

Perhaps the biggest change in gameplay would be the introduction of FC IQ. Effectively replacing the old system of custom tactics, team setups and player movements are now determined by their “role” and “focus” assigned to them within that role. For example – a striker can be assigned roles like poacher, or false 9, among others, with verbal descriptions and heat map representations of how this would affect their behaviour during a match, which would leave you tinkering with tactics and formations for much longer, to get the three plus points that you desire, rather than just replicating the same old 4-3-2-1 meta that all the pros were using last year.

Additionally, for those who prefer to be more meticulous and tactical in their approach, players are introduced to some 50-over combinations of roles that can be assigned. This new level of tactical customisation does feel significant in some scenarios, and it’s nice to see the likes of English professional footballer Trent Alexander-Arnold dictate play and stray into the midfield when you set him as a Falseback. One way that FC 25 made sure that players don’t exploit this, to have tall strikers run as your fullbacks to stop all headers, is to lock these advanced roles and behaviours to positions. This means that sure, you could have the Portuguese footballer and record goal scorer Cristiano Ronaldo run your defence but only be given limited roles and responsibilities that prevent you from going too crazy. However, it remains to be seen how much role familiarity and the plus symbols matter. Even after going against the grain, Argentine icon Lionel Messi still managed to bag goals at a record pace as a Target Forward.

FC 25 is also going towards the less arcade-like and more simulation style of game, by making adjustments made towards passing and shooting. Players no longer make pinpoint accurate passes on the swivel with their backs faced against their intended targets, and you’ll see balls stray far wayward, especially if those players aren’t particularly known for their exceptional passing. Shooting also has a nice new realism to it, with new animations added to the lower half of players’ bodies, which can result in off-balance shots. Also, goalkeeper animations aren’t as predictable anymore and players can score in between the keeper’s legs this year, which is considered a huge step for any EA Sports FC fan who has grown sick of green-timing shots at the near and far posts to score every single time.

And making for a more realistic football field, the game has turned up the realism by enabling wind and weather effects in offline modes, bringing back the skidding effects in snow and rain, and seeing the ball abruptly roll to a halt when it hits a water-logged part of the pitch. Turning the wind effects up high will send you on a trip back to the 2010 South African World Cup, where players can see their long lofted passes and shots move and dance in the air like the Adidas Jabulani ball. It’s these wild instances that add the much-needed layer of unpredictability and variety in the game, which itself is an ingredient to what makes football the beautiful game.

However, this same amount of variety can’t be said about defence. No matter how much EA Sports tries to downplay pace in their games, speedsters often breeze past defenders of all calibres, making defending feel extremely infuriating. Seeing Kyle Walker stuck in quicksand with his two left feet when trying to defend a diagonal run in on behind him is a tough sight to behold.

Moreover, these defensive liabilities get compounded with the new FC IQ tactical options or rather lack thereof. In the past one could control how the team behaves overall without the ball, by toggling pressing after losing possession, or pressing after the opponents have a heavy touch, which greatly benefited those who prefer playing a tight brand of Jurgen Klopp-inspired Gegenpressing football. This year you’re limited to playing a low, medium or high-aggression style, which is too brief and only results in the same slow and deep defensive line. The famous phrase “Defence Wins Championships” didn’t seem to apply to FC IQ, even though your eleven players spend arguably half the time chasing and defending the ball. Here’s to another year of waiting for EA Sports to reward good defensive positioning and awareness in FC.

On a brighter note, FC 25 nails its presentation. During matches – new scoreboards, broadcast-style overlays, and team-specific graphics packages indicate the attention to detail the development team has paid to making this game look as close to the real thing. Seeing a bird’s eye view of Old Trafford and the Sir Alex Ferguson Stand gleam under the spotlights during UEFA Champions League nights – is enough to make any Manchester United fan emotional. It’s comforting to know that they’ve taken notes from its competitors Pro Evolution Soccer and made players with facial scans look closer to how they look in real life. Additionally, opting for quantity over quality, the new ‘Cranium’ system which aims to make generic players look more natural alongside the game’s all-stars, is a welcome step in the right direction as even unscanned players look a little more like their real-life counterparts rather than just generic player faces. The biggest caveat is that newer players like Spanish phenom Yamine Lamal look more like a wax figure from Madame Tussauds, accurate but inexplicably lifeless.

Speaking of new features – the biggest addition in years is probably FC 25’s Rush. The new, futsal-inspired 5v5 mode combines the best of various sports in a fast-paced, chaotic format. A big fan of foosball and dodgeball? The ball is launched into the centre from the sidelines just like Rocket League, seeing players engage in an all-out drag sprint for the ball. Love the idea of temporary penalties in ice hockey? Red cards have been replaced with blue cards, where players spend 1 minute in a sin-bin reflecting on their mistakes after a horrid tackle. The biggest significance is FC 25’s effort to integrate Rush into its bigger, flagship game modes. First, if you don’t have enough players to fill a full squad of 11 in a Clubs match, play Rush with your mates instead. Second, Rush has been included in Ultimate Team as well, making FC 25’s most popular game mode even more social beyond the co-op seasons in past years’ iterations. Last, Rush has also been included in Career Mode through the introduction of youth tournaments, adding some variety and playability to the youth system experience in Career Mode. I guess it’s worth mentioning that you won’t see 6 foot 5 tall 15-year-olds with full-grown beards frolicking your training grounds anymore – EA Sports has thankfully added realistic growth spurts to your club’s youngsters.

Going more in-depth into Career Mode, EA Sports has listened, and FC 25 has given Career Mode the attention it deserves. The biggest improvements this year would be the unparalleled level of customisation in how you want your Career Mode experience to pan out. There’s more flexibility across the board (forgive the pun), allowing you to set how strict you’d want your directors to be and even disabling the option for them to sack you altogether. There’s also the ability to customise training plans down to each individual player, deciding how hard they train and which roles suit them best, adding a greater, much-needed layer of detail when managing youth talent and squad depth.

Small additions such as the integration of a social media feed featuring the omnipresent, almost-psychic football journalist Fabrizio Romano coming up with “Here We Go” every time you make a new transfer, the addition of several major women’s leagues, as well as the option to start a player career save as one of FC’s many icons, and spend hard-earned wages to improve any player’s reputation and personality type. These all add towards the role-playing element that FC 25 is trying to push towards, but the lack of depth and apparent actual significance within the game makes these additions feel rather gimmicky and half-baked rather than fully satisfying. Ultimately, the novelty of having R9 himself terrorise League 1 defences as the latest signing in Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenny’s Wrexham, wears thin after a few matches.

Still, the most frustrating aspect here is a lack of consideration towards how all these new features and integrations might ruin the game’s interface and user experience of FC 25. Granted, there are now a myriad of tactical options, but all the additional menus feel like they were designed for a touchscreen interface rather than a controller. To reduce visual clutter, pages seem to display far less information than before, making it feel like an endless chain of opening folders on Google Drive before finally getting to what you want. Don’t be surprised at spending two hours just trying to get through your first Career Mode summer transfer window, before your players even touch the grass. What was meant to be an intuitive navigation system has now seemingly buckled under the weight of all the new content added, making it feel like a one-step forward, two-step back scenario.

The biggest downside of them all would be that FC 25’s most popular game mode and cash cow, Ultimate Team, has remained largely unchanged. Since every player gets ridiculous amounts of boosts, weather and wind conditions are toggled off to maintain the competitive fairness of FC 25’s most try-hard mode, which means a lot of FC IQ and realism features get negated because Ultimate Team gameplay transcends into the same, unrealistic, fast-paced sprint meta that every series fan has grown so accustomed to. FC 25 didn’t even bother making cosmetic changes to Ultimate Team, aside from the introduction of the Season Pass, which is essentially a new way of packaging Seasons in past editions. It’s as if EA  simply took FC 24 and changed it to FC 25. One can only expect that EA creates and dishes out insanely juiced player cards, which would help make Ultimate Team the quintessential pay-to-win experience once again.