EA Sports
EA Sports FC 25 carries an uncanny amount of hype on its shoulders to release.
It is, after all, the second installment of the new EA Sports FC series and 32nd edition of the football sim formerly known as FIFA—good luck figuring out which one creates more pressure and expectations.
Either way, last year’s historic name change for the annual football powerhouse didn’t lead to a sweeping overhaul of the typical pitfalls that come with the yearly release cycle. Namely, incremental upgrades moved things in interesting ways, albeit through what most expected for the ’24 edition, regardless of name.
What’s interesting now is whether FC 25 can match some of those expectations that hope for more than a standard-fare release, especially when the on-pitch action has progressed so nicely in recent years.
If so, FC 25 has the chance to stand out as the release that lived up to the rebranding.
Gameplay
This year’s fancy-named upgrade to the gameplay side of FC is called FC IQ, which is mercifully abbreviated compared to upgrades in prior years—and quite a bit more impactful on and off the pitch.
Driving more control and strategy than ever into the hands of players is the name of the game. It’s a team-level overhaul of movement across a pitch, with some of it based on real-world data, similar to some of the changes last year.
A big chunk of it, though, comes from the new Player Roles feature, which lets gamers assign a focus for each member of the team within a given role in formations.
It’s hard to stress just how deep this can go. Assigning one player a specific role within a base formation can mean his or her actions switch and shift an entire formation when going from offense to defense. This is the type of deep simulation the most attentive and knowledgeable of players seek—and the game also performs functionally fine if gamers on the more casual side straight-up ignore it.
This new system and layer of control, along with presumed general AI improvements, make the on-pitch action away from the ball itself feel better than ever. Gamers can now better trust that teammates will get to the right spots or prioritize the right things more often, leaving them to focus on actual ball movement and strategy.
Thankfully, there are some barriers in place to possibly keep things from getting out of hand. A Role Familiarity stat that players can see determines just how good a given member of a team will be in a certain role, including not at all.
Of the notable gameplay tweaks beyond the FC IQ, goalkeepers finally get a pass that creates some change. Gamers can now manually move the netminder a few steps to tweak posture, albeit on a cooldown to prevent the shifts from being overpowered.
There is also clearly a shift again toward realism when it comes to passing and shooting accuracy based on the background numbers of individual player ratings.
There’s one big caveat to all of the above—if there’s a negative, it’s that defense feels similar to last year, if not worse. Most of the above positives only apply when players are on the attack.
Defense is a slippery slog at times where player ratings still seem to go out the window. Manually controlled ball-handlers on the attack can still just slip right past defenders and take shots and generally be more aggressive in ways that defenders just can’t.
Some of that is just good old-fashioned video game fun, of course, but it’s a little jarring when the rest of the package strives so hard to be a simulation.
Despite this imbalance that feels like a constraint of the short development time of annual releases, FC 25 is very much a blast to play, and the new strategic depth is one of the better-feeling changes in years.
Graphics and Presentation
Name aside, the annual football powerhouse has always been at the forefront of sports games in terms of graphical fidelity, impressive physics and broadcast-styled presentation.
On this front FC 25 is very much no exception, with some of the upgrades essentially minor tweaks to things like lighting and implementing fresh broadcast angles. Players still look fantastic in most cases; the commentary befits the stage, crowds react in immersive ways, and the realistic motion of hair and jerseys or otherwise impresses.
The simulation-based gameplay always marries nicely with this area better than other sports games. That’s especially the case this year, with it simply being a visual treat to watch some of those sweeping formations develop down the pitch thanks to FC IQ. There’s less robotic team-wide movement in response to a push and more realistic-feeling pitch movement.
Notably, in the “why wasn’t this in the game before because it’s so obvious” column is the new presence of dynamic weather. Rain, gusts of wind, and the like go beyond good-looking features and dive into the simulation side of things well, subtly impacting the ball and on-pitch gameplay (but not in online modes).
The game also does some interesting things with the user interface (UI) to help it remain modern. This goes beyond the general sleekness of menus and tidying up of boxes and even includes a new social media feed in certain modes.
This goes for the pitch, too, with some notable new scoreboards, swooping broadcast-like camera angles and droves of new stats and dates provided by new graphics. The in-game overlay for on-the-fly strategy adjustments is neat and informative, too.
Presentation also diversifies in interesting ways based on the mode. The new arcade-like Rush mode, for example, gets its own stadium and commentary team, alongside a futuristic, fitting artistic flair.
Career, FUT and More
Career gets some much-needed love finally. Much of it boils down to more creative control over the experience—gamers can better adjust board goals, training plans and overall match tactics. Those latter two points nicely intertwine with the mentioned overhaul of team-based movement and player roles within that.
This point simply can’t go overlooked for those who prefer Career mode and take a keen interest in developing long-term talent. More control over the how and why of training high-upside players is nothing short of excellent.
For what it is worth, gamers can also take control of one of the in-game legends and control their career in modern times, too. In manager’s career mode, gamers can now oversee a women’s football club too.
After launch, the game also promises the release of Live Start Points, which reflect real-life happenings as starting points for gamers.
Also found within career mode and elsewhere is a new five-on-five Rush mode. It’s essentially Volta football’s replacement and is a fun, quick burst of gameplay. Kudos goes to those involved for iterating on Volta again in an interesting way and bringing it to multiple modes—in career mode, it’s featured alongside youth tournaments and the like.
The way this new Rush mode takes from other games deserves a salute, too. The kick-offs take one of the most enjoyable parts of Rocket League and bring it to the pitch. Red flags don’t exist, swapped out for essentially timeout flags. And penalties are duels that feel like hockey shootouts in the best possible way.
Football Ultimate Team also features the new five-on-five Rush mode, which fits the theme of quick-hitting, bite-sized gameplay bursts.
Refreshingly, the aforementioned player roles weigh heavily in the strategic ideas of team compositions here. So do manager and player items that provide different buffs, throwing an RPG-lite feel into the proceedings. The endless collect-a-thon still won’t be for everyone, but there are undoubtedly some interesting things going on behind the polarizing mode.
In Clubs, a new Clubhouse feature feels like a public hub found in other online games, to the point players can see each other’s avatars in the environment. This club feature is customizable and upgradeable through facilities and can lead to gameplay like Club Rush, with the arcade-like mode yet again also feeling like it perfectly fits there.
As always, there’s a big microtransactions conversation to be had with the series. And it goes well beyond the FUT experience this year, seeing as cosmetics can now be purchased with FC Points in the Clubs section of the game. That Clubhouse environment with friends and others is clearly there to show off said cosmetics similar to other live-service games littered with optional micro (or not so micro) purchases.
While that doesn’t sound like a big deal (and it isn’t, at least for now), gamers are validated to feel concerned that the series could quickly go the way of the NBA 2K series, which is infamous for the heavy shadow microtransactions cast over the entire game’s experience.
FC 25 does lean away from these concerns in positive ways though. A unified season pass that progresses across modes is a nice nod to respecting a gamer’s time and investment. That doesn’t mean it won’t be a grind with a capital “G,” but being able to progress it in career mode and even in offline situations is hopefully a massive trendsetter for the rest of the industry.
Performance is fine when the usual viral-on-social-media bugs don’t pop up, be it wonky animations, audio that doesn’t match the action or some other one-off hiccup found in most sports games at launch. FC 25 is the standard-bearer for a robust suite of options, too.
Conclusion
The FC series feels like it has some major wrinkles to iron out on the defensive side of gameplay, so it’s unfortunate that the reality is that might not properly arrive until FC 26.
Still, the list of non-microtransaction concerns mostly ends there.
It’s almost hard to articulate what a fantastic addition to the series FC IQ is. It’s a little akin to a fighting game now in that there remains endless pick-up-and-play potential for casual audiences, but FC IQ is the staggering depth the most hardcore players will love.
Smooth tweaks to career mode and the ability to progress a season pass however a gamer prefers are highlights, too.
While FC 25 is very much a standard, almost minimal annual sports game release in some respects, it feels like a few major chunks of important foundation for the next decade or so just got laid in a fantastic way.
