Something’s not right. I’ve brought an utterly improbable Champions League title to Aston Villa, built an enviable Ultimate Team, and developed a formation that at least refrains from outright humiliation in online matches… And yet my heart is not overflowing with the joy of joga bonito. That’s how Guardiola must feel, taking the field to celebrate his annual Prem title with the latest batch of ruthlessly proficient, lab-grown prodigies and quashing the feeling that this one isn’t as special as the first.
This means that EA Sports FC25 is a bit like FC24. Which was very similar to FIFA 21-23, which had a lot in common with the FIFAs that our historic ancestors played by the fireplace in their primitive tribal dwellings. There are noticeable additions – particularly the modern tactical controls and the 5v5 Onslaught mode – and I’m glad they’re here. But while they contribute to an ongoing compelling lineup of foot-to-ball games, they can’t quite shake the nagging feeling that this shouldn’t be an annual full-price release anymore.
Here’s something cheery, though: PC performance is much better this year than it started. FC 25 seems to have spent more time paying attention to its PC port, and the framerate in particular benefits from it. In the last game I had a terrible time with frame rates and strange mid-match slowdowns, but with the exact same specs I enjoyed countless Ollie Watkins goals and replays of tackles from PvP matches that should have been a matter for the police, not the referees, all while constant, locked 60 frames per second.
Of course, this is not a reason to buy the game, but the first time you start FC 25 you are introduced to an element that may be: Zinedine Zidane invites you to his office to tell you that tactics are crucial.
For a while, I hoped that Zizu’s expensive-looking stage might be a hint of Football Manager-level depth, and that I could organize the Raumdauters and Segundo Volantes to my liking. Inevitably, FC25’s approach to tactical depth isn’t as luxurious and obsessively deep as Sports Interactive, but it does give you some modern elements to play with.
In the mid-game, you now have the ability to change your playstyle with a few clicks of the D-pad, going from a possession-based Tiki-Take style to a counter-attacking style, and so on. These options function separately from the standard attack strategies in the Defense Standard, so if you take the time to change tactics and then actually get a decent result, the victory will be all the sweeter because you’ll feel like that large brain of yours that planned It.
Of course, in online matches where everyone picks eleven of the fastest players in the world and beats goal after inattentive and artless goal, such tactical nuances are largely lost. But it’s not FC 25’s fault that mcfc_haaland420 isn’t interested in using the systems he added.
Off the pitch, in Ultimate Team and Manager Career modes, newly discovered tactical games also include determining player roles. There’s certainly a smug smile to be had when you arrive at a role combination that suits both your formation and the individuals in your squad, and the way it works on the pitch is both logical and, at times, quite impressive.
Last year in FC24, the “PlayStyles” AI mechanic gave players certain tendencies: Grealish loves to cut inside, Rodri holds the ball, Haaland finishes like a surface-to-air missile, etc. FC 25 formalizes this, giving you more influence over how and where trends related to artificial intelligence are triggered. It’s still nowhere near the complexity of Football Manager and its terrifying heat maps, but it’s nice to give you something else to tinker with after opening the nine billion packs required to complete a decent gold squad in Ultimate Team.
And look, this is neither here nor there, but you can now paste in custom tactics code and, with one click, apply someone else’s well-thought-out tactical setup to your team. This is useful and will support you win more matches. But that kind of undermines the whole thing, doesn’t it? The online multiplayer in this series is as ruthless as Instagram posts sponsored by a reality show contestant, which means that the community will catch on to the “meta tactic” pretty quickly and everyone will inevitably just take advantage of it. Once again, it’s not the FC25’s fault. His yourmcfc_haaland420.
Let’s touch on the issue of Rush mode, because FC25 is clearly proud of it. Rush’s delightfully quick and plain 5v5 matches appear in all long-term game modes, as a career training exercise and as another way to earn trillions of currencies and constantly filling Ultimate Team bars. Oddly enough, this is the opposite of tactical football, where the game tries to get you to play elsewhere – just four of you throwing powerful passes at each other, darting between the lines and trying to engineer one perfect passing sequence that will destroy the defense.
Here’s what’s nippy about it: in a five-player game, the differences between players are much more noticeable. In Career Mode, you learn about the prospects for adolescent players in the Rush tournament, test drive them and consider how and where they might fit into your first team. In Ultimate Team, it’s a great opportunity to feel how supple and silky Jamal Musiala is and how much weight and dynamics Haaland puts into his runs.
I’m glad contracts have been removed from Ultimate Team, which in recent installments has been too menu-heavy for my taste and seemed to skimp on pennies with resource management. Player evolutions are now a bit more complicated and include customizable visuals for your favorite players’ cards, which… is fine. This will make some players cheerful. Much more useful, however, is the ability to store up to 100 non-tradeable player cards so they can be used later for squad-building challenges. This is really cleaning. Quickly review and refine endless UT menus. The experience remains largely unchanged, save for the effects of modern tactics and scenes in Rush mode.
My favorite thing about FC25 isn’t the tactics, or the Rush matches, or even the fact that for the first time in as long as I can remember on my PC, the game runs at a solid 60 frames per second. It’s a fact that the game has been played slower.
You’re watching an AI vs. AI match in NBA 2K and you’re saying to yourself: it looks like basketball. Then you watch 22 aliens running at 40 miles per hour in a up-to-date FIFA/FC game and you’re reminded that this enjoyable but absurd style of constant counter-attacking bears little resemblance to what happens on a soccer pitch.
This effect is reduced in FC25. Not so radical that anyone would sharpen their pitchforks or sell the tape by closing the key in retaliation, but enough that something other than tempo could be used to build an attack. You can even apply the game’s suggested tactical or personnel changes (not always useful, but suggested changes are a good way to bypass a few menus) to achieve your goal. You can also build the game patiently, waiting for your helper to perform the appropriate action. Previously, there were always such possibilities, but they were much worse ways to reach the target than shooting with a constantly held right trigger. Now it just feels like there’s an extra quarter of a second to look around and spot an opportunity to do something clever.
In this respect it is a bit like Serie A, FC25. And while I’m privately furious that the move away from the FIFA license seems to have deprived EA of proper rights for some of Serie A’s top teams (honestly, you should have seen the “We have AC Milan at home” parody instead of licensed teams), I’m cheerful to say that I had more pure, truthful fun with the FC25 than with any of its recent predecessors. Partly because I feel like the PC port got the amount of love it needed this year, and partly because I feel a little more empowered to play a different style of football this year. I know in my heart that this inch by inch improvement doesn’t justify spending £50 every year on a ‘modern’ game. But here I am, playing this game and enjoying it like an ancient, comfy, favorite sweater that just had its elbows fixed.
