Image: Electronic Arts
A fun new Rush mode isn’t enough to keep this franchise from feeling stagnant.
A year has passed since Electronic Arts launched EA Sports FC 24, the first installment of an all-new football game franchise that feels like FIFA, looks like FIFA, plays like FIFA, but for legal reasons is very much not FIFA. This year, EA Sports FC 25 looks to follow up the series debut with a brand-new game mode and other slight gameplay upgrades, keeping fans of this franchise busy until next year's inevitable sequel arrives.
Despite the surprisingly high fun factor of its new game mode however, EA Sports FC 25’s janky commentary and lack of innovation makes it a disappointing sophomore entry in what should be EA’s new flagship franchise.
Fare thee well, Volta
Remember EA Sports FC 24’s street football-like Volta mode? That’s gone now, replaced by an all-new Rush mode. This is a more intimate take on regular football modes with 5v5 gameplay, allowing for more fast-paced gameplay on a smaller pitch. Rush is plugged into all of the game’s main modes - Kick Off, Career, Ultimate Team, and Clubs. It serves a slightly different purpose in each mode, but its main appeal stays the same: high-speed, frenetic bursts of football. The Marvel Snap of football modes, if you will.
If you’re looking for the best reason to pick this game up over previous installments, Rush might be it. In a series full of incremental upgrades and gimmick-y changes, Rush feels like a step in the right direction - a familiar-feeling spin-off of the main mode everyone came here for, with an addictively simple twist: it’s smaller and faster. For one thing, having fewer players on a pitch with less space to move around in means that you don’t have to worry about wearing them out so much. You can sprint almost constantly, allowing for intense matches where players can move in and out of different positions of the field quickly and at will.
Rush also gets used a little differently in each of the main modes. In Career, you’ll find that academy players function a little differently now. They can now be used in youth tournaments, which are played in Rush, allowing you to take these young players through their paces before they get promoted, while also building their skills up. This gives both Rush and the academy a unique identity in Career, allowing the mode a bit more gameplay variety overall. Rush has a lot going for itself already - with seven-minute matches, flexible player roles and no red cards, giving you a looser take on the main football mode used in Career, Ultimate Team and so on.
My only real complaint here is that while Rush feels like an overall positive addition to EA Sports FC 25, it doesn’t feel particularly innovative on its own. This is really a stripped-down, playground version of the football gameplay everyone’s used to, with only slightly different rules. There’s still a lot of room for EA to play around with here, whether it’s by adjusting the ruleset, giving players access to more unique fields or making other such tweaks. It’s likely that all of these changes will only come next year, however annoying as that might be for players who already dislike making the upgrade year-after-year.
What else has changed?
In terms of gameplay, EA Sports FC 25 doesn’t feel that much different from previous entries - FIFA included. That’s a good thing if you enjoy the immersive but accessible football gameplay EA has made its bones on, but it’s also starting to feel like this formula has reached its peak. This year’s big gameplay update comes in the form of FC IQ, a buzzword EA uses to describe an overhaul of the series’ existing tactical mechanics.
Across all modes, players will find new ways to decide how their players behave during an in-game match. This means that you can swap through their roles and change their priorities - such as whether they’re always aggressively attacking, or keeping their head on a swivel with a more balanced playstyle. Players who typically hop in for a few casual matches might be lost in all this minutiae, but the game thankfully describes each role concisely, so they know exactly what they’re doing to their players before a match begins.
Again, I doubt that casual players will get much out of this, but hardcore football fans will conversely find a lot to love about it. In tactics-focused modes like Career, you can develop how proficient players are in their roles and expand on them, allowing you to build your teams up and see a satisfying level of progression from start to finish. That being said, these tactics can translate into gameplay in strange ways. Those who indulge in these tactical systems are looking to drag specific and unique plays out of their teams, but they might find these players making unintended choices on the pitch instead. Why is your shadow striker failing to pull an attack through an obvious gap in the other team’s defence? Maybe it’s because you fiddled with that player’s roles a little too much, and the game’s player AI is struggling to catch up.
I played EA Sports FC 25 on the PlayStation 5, and noticed few graphical issues during my time with the game - besides a few strange glitches where players contorted their limbs into pretzels or the first-person camera got uncomfortably close to other teammates on the pitch. Players have an uncanny valley sense of robotic soullessness to them, bringing absolutely zero believability to their cheers when a goal is scored, or aghast bemoaning when a point scored against them. Match commentary can get grating as well, with the game’s pre-recorded commentators doing their best to match up with your in-game actions, ironically missing the mark as they criticise players for missing theirs. No, I’m not salty at all.
The biggest problem with EA Sports FC 25 remains the same as previous instalments: its greedy and predatory microtransactions, stuffed into Ultimate Teams. Outdated lootbox-like FUT packs allow players to collect their favourite players and assemble the team of their dreams year-after-year - with the caveat that their progress is also reset every year, upon upgrading to the next instalment of the franchise. The amount of money a player spends seems disproportionate to what they get and how long they keep it, and that’s been obvious for some time now - so I won’t wax on about it here.
Electronic Arts earned $1.62 billion from Ultimate Team modes in its 2021 financial year a while back, so it’s obvious why this is still a thing. That doesn't make it any more acceptable.
Verdict
EA Sports FC 25 offers two improvements over previous instalments - Rush and FC IQ - but they continue to feel all too modest for a franchise that moves mountains of money year after year. It’s starting to feel like fans of the franchise are really better off skipping an entry or two to better enjoy their Ultimate Teams and in-game progress, before a sequel arrives to really make the erasure all of that work worthwhile. For casual players who haven’t made the jump to the EA Sports FC series yet however, this is an easy recommendation. Rush is a fun and snappy take on the 11v11 matches players are used to, and FC IQ allows you to tinker with your favourite players so long as you’re willing to deal with inordinate menus.
Even these two new features feel a little undercooked this year, but there’s some good news to be found in the pattern this franchise has established for itself: at least the next one will be slightly better.
EA Sports FC 25 is now available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and PC. We received a copy of the game for this review.
