EA Sports FC 25 Review
Still kicking it
As Mark Twain once wrote, "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated". And so were the concerns from the fringes of the gaming and business industry that thought the EA Sports footballing franchise may lose some momentum after making the shift from the decades-old partnership with FIFA to the new EA FC brand last year. The first entry under the new moniker continued to dominate sales and any impact was indiscernible. Despite the new name though, it was a very familiar game, and while there's not a huge shift in momentum for EA FC 25, there are at least a few noteworthy differences to delve into.
On the field of play, this year's fancy name for some updated mechanics is FC IQ, which carries with it a large revamp to the game's tactical systems. Any seasoned player would agree that the tactics menu has been largely untouched for a very long time, but this year the large revamp finally takes place. Spanning across all modes, the new tactics menu presents an offering of more streamlined decisions with regards to formations and how the team operates as a whole – building on last year's tactics options. But more notable are the positional options for the individual players. In the tactics menu you can now choose from a multitude of roles – from strikers to wingers, everyone can play in differing roles, and the game clearly displays what it means in real world terms. So you could designate a DM as a box-to-box player who, at the expense of stamina, will participate in the action at both ends of the field. Or you can assign an attacking midfielder to become a shadow striker, and the game helpfully highlights the area of the pitch where this player will now operate.
In addition to choosing a role, and the very helpful displays that come along with it, players can also have proficiencies in certain roles, and in some modes, such as career or manager mode, can develop new ones over time. Being proficient at a role provides additional stat bonuses, but not all roles are fitting to all formations and team tactics, so there's always some tradeoffs and it takes time to find the arrangement that works best for your squad and for how you want to play. There are many options here that, in theory, provide a previously unseen level of individuality and flexibility to players.
In practice, on the pitch, the new tactics are not always easy to spot. Like with any new system that tries to directly and dramatically affect the AI and the gameplay, there will be hitches in the first year. The various player role combinations that we've tried over many hours sometimes created some genuinely good-looking manoeuvres, while at other times they resulted in players being rather stilted and mostly just roaming in place. Some wingers wasted their energy running the length of the pitch to defend attacks, dispute their designation to be fully attack-focused. Playing with 3 in the back resulted in them splitting wide and trying to do zone coverage, instead of staying central, allowing straight balls to unmarked attackers down the middle. There is great potential in these new systems, but it may take a patch or two to iron out the AI behaviour, with the issues evident not just via your sense of the game but also when simply observing through the tactical sim menu.
More immediately useful are the quick tactical changes on the D-pad. You can still pre-create and manage multiple formations that can be dynamically applied to the team during the match, but there are also some that get suggested based on the in-match situation, such as going all-out attack with a 3-4-3 or parking the bus in 5-4-1. You can still set the team to play defensively or offensively, though it's difficult to gauge what that entails. Lastly, the quick-substitute menu has been enhanced to let you scroll through multiple suggested options instead of waiting for them to come up. The quick-sub menu is also quite aggressive this year and pops up all the time, as soon as you have a yellow card or a better player on the bench, which results in many first-half subs – even for AI teams.
As for the moment-to-moment play, even with the usual claims from the developers about some new underlying technologies and animations, things feel quite familiar. The same manoeuvres, drops of the shoulder and quick skill moves will get you where you want to be. There are no major glaring issues at launch this year (at least offline), though there is the usual scattering of oddities that will hopefully get smoothed out. Goalies are playing extremely well (perhaps too well) when taking shots and headers directly in front, but tons of easy shots go in from tight angles. They still have the same animations where they pop the initial shot straight up into the air, and get up in time to reclaim it as it falls. Saving penalties feels a bit iffy, as even if you dive the right way you are always seemingly a bit too late. We've also observed the ball passing straight through players' legs so that the next animation can queue up. The refs have a serious habit of handing out straight red cards this year, for both players and AI teams, if they deem some strange physics collision to be too much. On the whole, EA FC 25 starts off on the usual solid ground, and the changes brought via FC IQ have tons of great potential, but it may take some time to see it fully realized.
In the scattering of the available modes, there is one notable change – the removal of the Volta mode. First introduced in FIFA 20, this mode offered a street football experience that focused on trick moves, cool arenas, lots of visual customization, and focus on casual play and minigames. The mode was hosted in a separate menu system and always felt a bit disconnected from the main game, and despite attempts to integrate it more, it seems fans just didn't get onboard – the long matchmaking times we experienced over the past few years seem to confirm that suspicion. So instead, EA FC 25 introduces Rush, a 5v5 mode (really 4v4 as goalkeepers are AI) that keeps the casual feel of Volta but adopts a slightly more traditional style of play.
To keep it top of mind, it's not a separate menu like Volta was, and instead is integrated into the existing core modes. In Rush, the custom pitch is small and the games are played in a special sponsored Nike stadium. There are custom rules, such as special kickoffs, blue cards for fouls that make players sit on the sideline for a minute, offsides in the attacking third only, and unique penalty kick mechanics. It feels like a bunch of ideas from the special Kickoff modes put together. And because it's integrated in offline and online modes, the developers hope interest in the mode will stick around. In FUT, the mode is used to award some extra coins and points that help progress the Season Pass reward track. When online, Rush plays as you would expected in an individual-centric mode, with players hogging the ball and losing it, leading to breakaways – so perhaps not much has changed from Volta after all. We've also observed some issues such as AI players getting stuck off the field or in the net, which is unfortunate for a brand new mode. In Career mode, Rush appears as something you can optionally play during Youth Tournaments. It certainly doesn't fill the void that Volta leaves behind in terms of pure content and match/minigame variety, but with better relevance across the rest of the game there's some potential here.
The core modes also see a few changes beyond the addition of Rush, though they feel mostly like patches that should have been added long ago. In Manager Career, players can finally turn off various dated and annoying systems such as manual training, sharpness, and scouting – letting you guide a team without constantly pausing to do some repetitive menial tasks. These new options are a nice step forward, but are not exactly extensive, even compared to the flexibility of EA's NHL series. You do at least get to enjoy the new tactical options here as well, with manager mode being the best place to feel really connected to your players and their roles. The simulation gameplay slider preset lets you slow down the pace and further enhance the experience with minute details that are often lost in the breakneck speed of online modes. The expansion of Youth player age ranges a good idea, but the generated faces of those under-18s can be quite unnerving. There is a revamped UI as well, though it's a bit simplistic. There are now tasks that are offered directly in the feed to click through, instead of going through the email inbox. A large chunk of the main screen is taken up by a lame version of a social media feed, with lots of strange posts and glitched sentences. Even conversations with players – not a new system – feature a number of broken lines this year.
A similar UI revamp follows into the Player career mode, where you can control an existing professional, create your own, or become an Icon and try to play through the modern era. For custom players, you can choose from one of a few background stories – but there's no narrative, it's just an extra screen that pre-assigns some stats to you. The triple-personality system from last few years is back, as you spend earnings on frivolous things like personal trainers and trampolines, to boost your standing with the team. The contact system is still a bit strange, with clubs setting weird goals for what you need to accomplish in order to get a contract with them in the future; such as why Barcelona wants you to perform a certain amount of pass-and-go's passes during the season as a key metric. It seems the simplest and most natural approach would be to tie contract offers to your overall rating, but it's not taken into account.
The in-match objectives that help your rating remain uneven, sometimes asking you to perform a few tackles, and at other times requesting that you score multiple goals in less than 30 minutes. One positive improvement though is that your match rating is finally fairer – putting together some great passes, even if they don't result in goals, now gives a large boost to the rating and better shows your contribution to the match. And scoring/assisting finally gives a large rating improvement as well, whereas in the past it was rather low. Playing as an individual remains a unique thrill, as you make plays and passes with teammates and hope the coach has put the right strategies in place. Still, playing through only the Highlights mode remains a bit glitchy after its introduction last year, sometimes offering few or no controllable situations, or ending them too early.
Online modes see more structural changes rather than brand new features. In FUT, the addition of Rush and FC IQ expands the gameplay and tactical scope, but of course leaves room for plenty of uncooperative matchmaking teammates in the former, and exploits in the latter. But that is the fate of any online competition. One cool aspect of the new tactics is that they are actually shareable with unique ID codes, so you can let friends load up your settings in their own game, in any mode. The player Evolution system introduced last year returns and is still decently enjoyable, to get some of your weaker player cards boosted up, though new this year is a hard limit on some attributes, likely to prevent unintentionally strong cards. Another big change is the addition of SBC storage, which now lets you save duplicate cards instead of being forced to sell or discard them, which should in theory make for less busywork and awkward store manipulation to get those squads built for the challenges.
The other changes include alterations to weekly competition structures. In Squad Battles, a single player mode within FUT that pits you against AI squads, the number of matches that count toward weekly rewards has been halved to 14, which means less grind, but also each match is that much more important, which perhaps leaves less room for innovative and fun teams to try out, and less to do for solo-minded players. They can dip their toes into direct competition with Rush, which interestingly counts as an online game as far as rewards go. The more traditional direct online competition through Rivals also sees a change, now upping the win requirement to 15 games from 7, and with no relegation system, it may leave some players quite stressed every week and even long-term. These are fairly drastic structural changes, and we'll see how they play out over the course of the year.
The Clubs mode where you control your individual pro and play with and against others returns with some visual revamps, such as the Clubhouse menu where you can see the team avatars hang out. It can be customized with new visuals, of course. Playing matches earns your club a higher facility budget, which can be spent on various stat and passive boosts for the team on and off the pitch. Relegation is also back, helping make every game more important. Clubs also has a tie-in to Rush, with its own ranking systems and reward tracks.
While gameplay hiccups are expected at launch every year, a bit more unexpected is the lack of polish. On the field, player animations and likenesses are still good, but are not as cutting edge as they used to be, especially with lesser known players. Stadiums look nice, and it's all still fully licensed and authentic (apart from some Serie A teams). The replays really doubled down on the POV camera angle, which frankly doesn't look very good nor immersive. In offline modes, the same scenes play out in the same manager's office, albeit less often, and there are still silly-looking and unnecessarily dramatic player walkouts after you loan or sell them. The menu text font has been updated along with the new UI, and in some cases it's an annoyance, such as making player rating number small and thin. The music selection underwhelms this year, and the two commentary teams are getting really tiresome and need a revamp. But on the bright side, the full match intro cutscenes are back after last year's unceremonious removal.
On the whole, the game struggles a bit with menus, and even worse, total menu lock-ups that require quitting the game. While this was an issue that happened in a certain screen in career mode last year, now it seems to happen across the board, and even when trying to open a FUT pack – an area you'd expect to be tried and tested with utmost priority. There are also screens where the background is entirely blacked out or glitched out, and some offline career mode screens also cause soft lockups.
EA Sports FC 25 avoids the sophomore slump, so to speak, because despite the new name it's still the yearly football title that millions of fans expect and indeed crave. The series continues to build on its current-gen foundation that's a few years old now, and some of the changes in tactics through FC IQ add another great layer – though unfortunately not fully realized just yet. Rush isn't a replacement for Volta in terms of sheer content, but its widespread integration should help it remain relevant. The game on the pitch is still solid, though not without the usual early jitters that need balancing. Changes to online mode progress may not sit well with all players, however. It's also a game that seemingly needed a bit more time to polish things – a trend that has been slowly but worryingly emerging over the past few entries. EA FC 25 is very much the game fans expect, without anything ground-breaking and with just enough solid improvements to carry on the forward momentum.