This year’s entry in EA Sports’ FC series has left me feeling indifferent. While the developers have finally introduced a smorgasbord of features I’ve been hoping to see in the game’s Manager Career mode, there’s little to be truly excited about gameplay-wise and across the other modes on offer. That said, why fix what ain’t broke?
This year’s big new addition is Rush – a fast-paced 5v5 mode reminiscent of the mode of the same name from VOLTA Football. Rather than taking it to the streets, Rush takes you onto a smaller pitch and pits four outfield players and a goalkeeper against one another. Goals remain the same size and most football rules still apply, however the pitch is divided into marked thirds and formations are thrown to the curb.
Rush is fairly frantic. There are no halves to catch a breather, and the introduction of the blue card as opposed to red cards, alongside the smaller pitch, makes for a nice change to FC 25’s other modes. Players who receive a blue card are sent off the field for a minute (think of it as a sin bin ruling). This puts your team at a significant disadvantage thanks to the condensed pitch, allowing the opposition to outright swarm you in these situations. Resisting the urge to trip up players and get unnecessary bookings plays a big role in winning or losing Rush matches.
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The mode has made its way to many of the other main game modes in FC 25, too. Bizarrely, there’s no way to play Rush outside of Kick Off, Ultimate Team, Clubs and Manager Career with your youth academy, though. While this sounds like a lot of options on offer, I’m surprised there isn’t a separate mode that allows you to pop a bunch of teams into a tournament and duke it out with one another.
Those hoping to see VOLTA Football again will be disappointed to hear it’s been completely axed from this year’s entry. It appears Rush was the catalyst for this decision, though I’m confused as to why EA didn’t keep the casual street footy mode – even if it meant it was neglected and received no new features (and let’s be real, this has been the case for years anyway).
On a positive note, Manager Career has seen a noticeable overhaul this year. Chief among the new additions is the introduction of women’s leagues. While there are only five leagues on offer this year – the National Women’s Soccer League in the United States, Spain’s Liga F, France’s Premiere Ligue, the Barclay’s Women’s Super League in England and Germany’s Frauen-Bundesliga – it’s still a huge step in the right direction. An added bonus is that you’re able to accept offers from both men’s and women’s teams throughout your managerial career, which was a potential oversight I was worried about heading into FC 25.
The women’s game is significantly different from the men’s, both on the field and off it, offering up a different challenge to managing a men’s side. Budgets are highly restricted and expectations are different, however I’ve loved the fact the game challenges you to alleviate these constraints by focusing on the newly revamped youth academy system.
Rather than assessing a youth player’s value after generating the first scout report like prior entries, FC 25 instead encourages you to look at the player’s potential. You aren’t able to see a player’s value until you’ve generated more reports on them, meaning your youth scouts need to be a fairly good judge of a player if you want to be bringing the best into your academy. There are a handful of other factors to consider too, like their wage, value and position, however the focus on potential is a change I’ve really taken to. It’s taken me out of my comfort zone and challenged me to be more analytical of the players I’m looking for, their potential and how they could fit in my side. It’s made me consider players with high potential as opposed to those with a high initial value.
The reason potential is such a focal point this year is because it takes center stage in another new addition to Manager Career, youth academy tournaments. As mentioned before, Rush mode makes its way into Manager Career through these tournaments that come about every few months in the season. The glitz and the glamour seen in Ultimate Team and Clubs’ Rush modes are thrown aside for a more academy-like feel. There’s no swanky commentary here, and you’re not playing in front of any fans – youth tournaments are just played on the training ground.
This is where a player’s potential shines. Rather than playing with a bunch of 40-50 rated youngsters, you can use them as if they’ve fulfilled their entire potential. My team had a handful of youngsters who had a possible potential of 85-90, so the majority of them played like that.
It’s very cool to see this as an option (you can opt out and have them play as their current ratings if you wish), as it allows you to get a feel for how the players may end up in the future. It also serves as a nice change from the tried-and-true gameplay that can, at times, feel a little stale in Manager Career.
There’s been an upheaval of Manager Career’s menu design, too. It now resembles something more like Ultimate Team, and I can’t say I’m a fan. It feels clunky to navigate through the many menus and submenus, and there’s been multiple occasions already where my game’s gotten stuck and I’ve had to back out to the main menu and jump back in to resume progress.
A major sore point in this redesign is the task list, which sits in the home screen. While it may seem like a good idea at first, collating all the various tasks befitting a manager (like player transfers, game preparation and managing team tactics) in one area leads to an overwhelming amount of stuff to read through. This is made worse thanks to the task list only showing three tasks at a time. Leave it to generate for a couple of days in a season and you’ll start to miss important information, as new tasks don’t get sorted to the top of the list. Because of this, I continually missed transfer offers and scout reports. I prefer having a dedicated inbox that I’d be immediately taken to when important information filters through as opposed to having to continually find that information myself.
Another big change to Manager Career, which can be seen across other modes as well, is the renewed focus on tactics. It’s been a talking point in the lead up to the release of FC 25 and there’s a good reason as to why. You’re now given full control on how your team operates – whether that’s their attacking position when you’re on the ball or off it, how high a defensive line you want to hold or the specific roles of each of your players. You’re given the keys to the castle, really, and can play around to figure out what works for you.
You can leave this to the generated presets if you like, or you can get really deep into the nitty gritty. The beauty is that either way the game caters for both. As someone who absolutely adores this kind of deep tactical nuance, I’ve loved being able to dissect everything my team does when in and out of possession, as well as being able to fine tune my 4-3-3 to suit my expectations when my team’s out on the pitch. Another neat feature I’ve been getting to grips with is the way you can align a player’s role with what they’re familiar with, which will in turn grant performance bonuses on the field.
I’ve also been particularly surprised by the variety of options on offer to you to fully customise your Manager Career – whether that’s the inclusion of transfer embargoes, determining the seriousness of the board and their leniency on you achieving their objectives, being able to apply for international roles or specifically choosing the positions you’d like your youth scouts to keep an eye out for. It’s great to see these little things make their way into the mode, as while they’re minor they do add a lot to the experience.
One particular pain point is the way budgets are handled for the men’s and women’s teams, though. It’s something I’m unsure EA can do much about, but a financial takeover of 10 million pounds, for example, would net you very little when managing a men’s team, however it’s a very different story for a women’s team. Most transfer fees range anywhere between 40 to 300 thousand points for the latter, meaning you could amass the best team in the five leagues available with very little effort. Now you don’t have to use a financial takeover of course, but I’m very curious to see how things change as time progresses. Generally, teams continue to get higher budgets as Manager Career goes on into its later seasons, so I’m interested to see how that’ll affect the women’s leagues. I haven’t been able to dig deeper into this but I assume nothing’s really been done to address it. Fantasy football, eh?
Player Career doesn’t see too much change this year, however there are a couple of notable new additions to inject some much needed energy into the mode. The first of these is being able to play as an icon rather than a regular player. While the selection is fairly limited at just seven icons right now, it’s a neat idea to be able to bring a player like David Beckham or Thierry Henry into the modern era. If you want to kick off as a created pro, you can choose your own origin story, which helps create a bit more of a narrative around your player. While neither of these are groundbreaking by any means, they are nice additions to a mode that tends to fall behind the other major modes in FC.
After all is said and done on the tactics side and it’s time to actually play the game, FC 25 sticks to the ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ mantra. It’s all about smaller, incremental changes as opposed to the wide-sweeping alterations we usually see every three to four years from the series. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though – the gameplay is as good as it’s ever been, however it’s not hugely different from last year. Even so, I’ve particularly enjoyed the swathe of new animations that have been added in, with these shining most prominently while you’re in the final third. Players tend to look a bit more realistic and natural when taking a shot at goal, and general passing play looks fantastic. Sliding in those picture-perfect through balls are a sight to behold, and the game continues to do a great job immersing you in the atmosphere of the game with mostly accurate crowd responses to situations on-field. Unsurprisingly, the game feels relatively slow this early in the release schedule but I expect that to change over time as has been the case in all of the previous entries.
The return of the full pre-match introduction package is very much welcome, and I appreciate that you can select whether it always plays or you opt-in during the quicker pre-match intro. Other little changes, like being given more than one suggestion for a quick substitution at a time and the substitute allowance/window counter being tucked neatly inside the team management screen, are also welcome additions. A reworked instant replay system is also a nice touch, allowing you to capture moments in-game through photo mode and its variety of filters and effects on offer. And while I thought it may be a little silly ahead of release, the player POV cam has been a breath of fresh air for capturing events in-game.
I was surprised to see little has changed in Ultimate Team and Clubs modes this year (aside from the addition of Rush in both and the introduction of the clubhouse in the latter), and wonder if keeping VOLTA may have made this feel a bit more like a solid all-round package. The game just seems to be lacking a deeper mode that doesn’t take itself so seriously.
With that said, Ultimate Team does continue the renewed push on tactics by changing up the way manager cards work. These cards now incorporate manager tactical presets, which echo their real world tactic preferences and can directly influence how your squad plays. Just like Manager Career, player roles and role familiarity also play a big part in Ultimate Team – to get the best out of your squad, you’ll need to dig into your tactics to ensure players are playing in roles they’re familiar with in order to get the most out of them. Other than that, there’s a new FUT stadium to build up with items and a variety of new broadcast elements to keep things feeling relatively fresh throughout the season, alongside cosmetic card evolutions that change the way a player’s card looks visually without influencing their stats.
While it doesn’t reach for the stars, FC 25 is still a great footy sim for fans and newcomers alike. Rush is an enjoyable addition and tactics take centre stage for those that want to dig deep into the systems of the game, while sweeping changes across Manager Career has made it a joy to play. Gameplay changes are slight tweaks more than anything else, however there’s no doubting it’s still the best footy game out there right now.
