EA Sports FC 25 Review: Tactical Foul
Restart went hands-on with this year's entry in EA's football franchise to discover what's changed... and what hasn't.
Posted a month ago
Platform reviewed on: PlayStation 5
Pros
- Women’s football is fully integrated into career mode
- Rush is a great new game mode
- A new lick of paint makes for a better-looking UI
- Still scratches that football itch
Cons
- Hard to tell what’s changed
- Career mode seems mostly untouched
- Ultimate Team microtransactions
- Pace still dominates
ESRB Age Rating: Everyone
ESRB Interactive Elements: Users Interact, In-Game Purchases (Includes Random Items)
Review code provided by the publisher.
There’s nothing like that feeling of comfort you get when you play a game that just feels right. Like a warm hug when a new bit of content drops for your favorite game. It adds something new, but it’s still the game you love.
That feeling is still in EA Sports FC 25, however, reality quickly sets in. There's just something missing; is it a vibe, the flow, or has EA FC moved from me and people who have a similar attachment to the franchise?
Growing pains
Growing up as a teenager in the U.K., EA FC (previously FIFA) was a part of the playground culture. If kids weren’t playing football (soccer) at lunch, they were talking about football. What I’m getting at here is that football is part of everyday life in the U.K., especially in school.
I played football for both my school and the local town club until I started high school. This was when my friends and I became “The Inbetweeners.” While that reference may not work outside the U.K., it did sum up where we were on the social standing – sort of “oh yeah, I know them” type of kids. But we were nerds. We played PC games, World of Warcraft, Diablo, and the like. And for me, I had this little something else that I loved more than anything. That something was football, and it manifested in me anticipating and playing each yearly release of EA FC.
EA FC 25 starts with a short video starring French icon Zinedine Zidane preparing you for what’s to come. Unlike previous games in the series, 25 doesn’t throw you right into a warm-up game. Instead, we go to the main menu to select what we want to do first. In previous entries, that first game gave you a feel for EA FC, the changes to gameplay, the tweaks to the formula. Most importantly, it gave you a taste of what the top sides could do, and gave you something to look forward to.
Now, faced with a menu of words like Ultimate Team, Manager Career, Kick Off, FC News, and Tournaments, you're left feeling abandoned. The game’s Season Pass is also proudly presented in the middle of the screen, but we get no push into any particular game mode.
Going into Kick Off, a standard match against two sides gives us our first taste of gameplay in EA FC 25. We get all the pomp and circumstance of the occasion, the pre-match build up, before we hear that whistle blow and the commentary welcome us to our first game.
From here, it’s video game football. Whether you like to pass it around defense to slowly build up your attack, or ping it wide to create space, EA FC 25 gives you the freedom to play how you want, at least in theory.
One notable thing this year is the inclusion of in possession and out of possession tactics. This allows you to set your side up differently on attack and defense. It’s a welcome change, and actually shows EA FC’s willingness to be on pace with how football as a sport is developing. It’s a shame the rest of the game feels stale.
The Rush pitch is much smaller than a normal soccer pitch.
©EA
A rush of blood
Rush is the new mode added to EA FC 25, offering players a chance at smaller 5v5 matches on a much shorter timescale, the standard being six minutes. The game starts with a ball being thrown into the middle of the pitch with the four outfield players left to rush onto the ball.
Rush is the biggest new feature in EA FC 25, being plastered about front and center. And rightly so – it’s a fantastic new mode that you can play in almost every area of EA FC: Clubs, Ultimate Team, Manager Career, and Kick Off.
In career mode, Rush takes the form of a Youth Tournament. Here, you pit five of your best talents against the AI as a way to improve the development of your best players. It works well, and it adds something fresh to career mode, changing up the gameplay from the usual 90-minute matches.
Rush also serves as a cornerstone of Ultimate Team and offers a new way to play – allowing you to focus on the smaller selection of players that you can use in this mode. (In Ultimate Team, you can play Rush with friends or with solo players online, and this can be done as a friendly or ranked competitive match.)
In EA FC’s early access period, it had a “Pace Rush” mode that let you play with any player, providing they were under the top limit on a given stat. It also seems likely that the more open “pick what you want” mode will stick around, with just a max overall rating dictating who you pick. It will be interesting to see how EA plays around with Rush in Ultimate Team and how the developer intends to keep it feeling fresh.
Outside of providing you a chance to use players you don’t normally use, Rush also has the knock-on effect of making players that fit that week's criteria much more valuable on the in-game market. In theory, this means players who normally go for much lower sums will see a large spike in price during that period.
It does, however, also mean that we get “player scarcity” for players that perfectly fit that week’s requirements. I saw this first hand during early access, when Newcastle United midfielder Joelinton was impossible to buy due to how well he fit with one of that week's criteria. This caused people to refuse to sell him for his capped price, or players would snipe any listing of Joelinton at said capped price. It’s a minor thing, but it does expose a flaw in EA’s dynamic pricing system.
©EA
Reaction Time Modifier
Every year there’s a new EA FC title, and every year there’s some sort of “issue” the community finds that makes you question how it made it through testing. This year, we have the lag players have noticed both in menus and in gameplay.
A setting that is on by default called “Reaction Time Modifier” appears to be the root of the problem. The feature is supposed to act as a buffer between your brain and your input; the idea is that the game holds off on the switching of a player to allow for the game to do it for you. Thus, avoids switching off from that player.
This all seems fairly straightforward, except it has the unintended effect of making menus feel sluggish – almost like the delay modifier is affecting all inputs and not just the one it is intended to help. This will probably be patched, but it’s worth a mention so you know what to expect.
As for the rest of the gameplay, it’s the same talking points as every season; the game feels slow. I understand that capturing the genuine movement and speed of players is hard, and a stamina system doesn’t do justice to a real athlete. But once again, attacking has this habit of feeling slow. As you get to grips with the game, it starts to make sense, and your squad improves and gets faster. You do notice it, but it still feels a bit like wading through mud.
There’s nothing more frustrating than having Dan Burn go stride-for-stride with Anthony Elanga in a foot race. It just doesn’t sit well with me, and it makes playing the game a frustrating experience. EA FC is so obsessed with pace, but the game’s solution to the problem is to give defenders more pace. All this ends up doing is making the issue worse. Every year we hear about improvements to player AI, Football IQ, and all these other promises, but pace is once again the main talking point.
To get a little Football Manager on the situation, EA FC is not good at playing the strengths of one player against the weaknesses of another. If your defenders don’t have pace, then play a deeper block, sit back, and soak up pressure. Force pacey players out wide to wipe in a cross to your towering 6 ft 5 in center back to clear. The issue is that EA FC is not that game; it wants to be all action, all the time, which means there is no place for no pace. What good is an 88 rated striker if they have 60 pace?
EA needs to promote playing with different play styles more, and not rely on a squad full of 100-meter sprinters. The community, however, also has its part to play in making the change it wants to see. Right now the game is in a race to 99 pace on all players, and if you don’t have enough of it, then what’s the point?
©EA
The Beautiful Game
If we take EA FC 25 as a standalone game and forget what came before, then it’s fantastic. It’s still the best way to capture the beautiful game in video game form. Letting you play out a fantasy of playing for your favorite club, or rising from the lower leagues of English football before making it to the Premier League. You can build your dream team from players from all over the world, past and present, to create your very own ultimate team.
Played with friends, the Clubs mode is still one of the most fun features ever added to EA FC. Charging up the Divisions with a group of friends is great, and learning how the others play and then playing to those strengths can see you win countless games on the bounce.
Many moons ago, I used to play with my nephew, Leo, and his friends. A group of kids who definitely thought I was in my late 50s and not my late 20s, but I’m over that. Playing in these groups helps you build connections. I knew my nephew would always go for glory if you gave him the chance, so I pushed for a rebound rather than looking for a pass.
Clubs is still kicking, and like much of the game, it’s been given a fresh coat of paint. Sadly, apart from a fancy new Club House that acts as a pre-game lobby, and the addition of Rush mode, it all just feels very similar to what we had before. For those that play actively, that might honestly be the best news. More of the same, with a fresh look.
©EA
We’ve been down this road before
Football is a beautiful cycle; The season starts, builds, ends, you cry, and then you wish it would come back. Then, when it does come back, you start to get hyped, all these ideas flowing through your brain. You get sucked back into the hype around your favorite club, then EA drops that EA FC trailer, and you are transported back to your school days on the playground. All these thoughts rush to the front of your mind about what you can do with this new game, and how you can change the fortunes of your club and win it all.
Then the game drops and the reality sinks in that you’ve been here before, but the warmth has gone. You start to feel like you’ve fallen for the trick, you pull back the curtain, and it’s all laid bare in front of you.
I understand that EA FC is a yearly game series, and that is going to come with limitations. That said, people are paying full price for these changes, and we just don’t get enough here. Ultimate Team has a few quality of life changes, and the new Rush mode is good fun, but again, the fun comes from you – the game is just a sandbox for your imagination. If that’s what you want EA FC to be, then it will give you that every year. However, if you expect EA FC 25 to provide something new, to guide you toward an alternative path, it will disappoint you and leave you wanting more.
EA Sports FC 25
Release Date: September 27, 2024
