EA Sports FC 25 review: have we reached peak football sim?

EA’s approach to its annual football simulator is not unlike Apple’s approach to iPhones. Time and again, the developer has gotten away with making minor upgrades to a flagship product that it knows will fly off the shelves, regardless of the extent to which those upgrades improve the product itself. Sure, EA Sports FC 24 marked a radical departure for the series in naming terms, but it was essentially FIFA 23 with slightly better graphics and a new logo. That’s not necessarily a criticism, just the truth.

The same is, to an extent, true of EA Sports FC 25, however this year, it feels like we’ve reached a point where the overall experience is so good that it’s hard to chastise EA for making small improvements to an already excellent foundation. To continue the Apple analogy, the iPhone 16 Pro Max isn’t an earth-shattering upgrade over the iPhone 15 Pro Max, but it’s still the best iPhone ever made. In the same way, EA Sports FC 25 is, without question, the best football game ever made. The tweaks have added up.

While reviewing EA’s newest FC entry, I found myself asking, “What more could I want from a football game?”. Yes, many elements are bafflingly similar to FC 24 – not even the color scheme has changed; the main menu had me questioning whether I’d booted up the correct title – but the customarily small tweaks made to graphics and gameplay add up to a near-perfect footballing experience.

 Get your Pep on

Let’s get the “what’s new?” question out of the way early doors. The major additions to this year’s FC title are two-fold: FC IQ and Rush. The former is the umbrella term for what EA is describing as the "most significant change to tactics in over a decade", while the latter is a new 5v5 mode that can be played in Ultimate Team, Career, Clubs, and Kick-Off.

FC IQ is for the football purists. In a nutshell, you’re now given the freedom to break away from traditional formations and implement match strategies that more closely align with those of real-world managers. You’ve seen Ancelotti's Real Madrid fluidly shift between 4-3-3 and 4-5-1 formations on TV, and now you can recreate such transitions – and come up with new ones – for your virtual team in FC 25.

Much of this strategizing is done in pre-match menus, which newcomers or tactics-averse players might find jarring, but FC IQ also introduces an in-game tactical suggestions tool that feels a lot more accessible. A press of the down button in-play will now bring up a list of recommended tactical changes (Tiki Taka, Park The Bus, etc.) that the FC 25 overlords deem to be the best course of action for the current match situation. Selecting one of these tactics will temporarily expand the mini-map for an at-a-glance look at how that tactic has influenced player positions, and the commentators will respond to these changes, too  (“rather than hurt the opposition further, they’re now just trying to keep the ball and frustrate them”), which makes them feel real and consequential.

The other big feature of FC IQ is an all-new Player Roles system. As with formations, you’re now able to grant individual players the freedom to operate outside of their traditional positions in hybrid roles. Inverted fullbacks, deep-lying midfielders, and attacking wingbacks are now very much part of the FC experience – even in Ultimate Team – and while many players will no doubt ignore this new mechanic entirely, it’s nice to be given yet another string to your tactical bow.

A quick word on Rush, which is this year’s completely-unnecessary-but-totally-harmless (and occasionally fun) new mode. It’s essentially a 5-a-side off-shoot for Ultimate Team, Career, Clubs, and Kick-Off, with smaller pitches and a basketball-style energy. I imagine it’s what the game of football would become if American sports executives were in charge of FIFA (check out the luminescent Nike-sponsored stadium), and while I don’t expect many players will return to it again and again, it’s certainly a fun diversion for a few hours. Let’s call it a happy medium between normal matches and Volta.

The (really) beautiful game 

My mother used to regularly mistake old FIFA gameplay for real-world football matches (“Who’s playing?” she would say), but I’d forgive her for making the same mistake with FC 25. Truly, these are the best sports game graphics ever, and although I can’t put my finger on what, exactly, is different this year, FC 25 looks noticeably prettier than FC 24.

I think it’s the players’ faces. Sweat and hair look more life-like than ever before, and players now visibly grimace, curse, and just generally have more personality. Sure, that’s been the case every year, but FC 25 takes things to another level. Marquee players, in particular, look stunningly real; go and play a few matches with Haaland, Bellingham, and Mbappe, and you’ll see what I mean.

Gameplay, too, feels fast and responsive, and you won’t get any of that ‘new FIFA sluggishness’ that seemed to plague so many previous entries in the series. Seriously, I’m not sure where EA goes next when it comes to gameplay and graphics.

Refreshing the classics 

In my EA Sports FC 25 preview, I talked a lot about how FC 25 could be the dream game for Career mode lovers, and although I was already pretty happy with the way Career mode played in FC 24, EA has made yet more welcome tweaks to my favorite aspect of the series.

Before you even dive into a new Career save, you’re now given more options to customize the way you like to play. For instance, if, like me, you’re not fussed about conducting regular team training, you can now toggle an option to have the game automatically deal with training sessions for you (if you’re really lazy, you can even set player Energy and Sharpness levels to remain at 100% for the entirety of the season). You can give yourself a transfer embargo, too, and determine both the level of wind and weather effects and their respective influence on ball mechanics (trust me: set both to ‘high’).

Once you’re past the set-up screen, you’ll notice that the Career interface has been massively streamlined. The main screen now comprises a Task List and an interactive social media feed where you can see how fans react to club announcements, as well as those made by popular transfer accounts like The Athletic and, of course, Fabrizio Romano. This new widget adds another level of authenticity to proceedings, and the Task List, while perhaps simplifying things a little too much, does at least mean that you don’t have to keep dipping into your inbox to remove notifications. As before, information relating to your squad, transfers, and calendar can be found on different tabs.

Other Career upgrades include playable youth tournaments – where you can develop young players in 5v5 Rush matches – and Live Start Points, which let you dive into real-world club situations as they happen throughout the season. There’s no option to sim or part-play these youth tournament matches, but I suppose that’s the point: it forces you to actually familiarize yourself with nondescript youngsters. It’s a great feeling, too, when you end up bringing one of these youngsters onto the pitch in a proper first-team match. Live Start Points are a great idea, but I haven’t had a chance to try these out yet as the season has only just begun.

Ultimate Team, for its sins, finally felt like less of a pay-to-win experience in FC 24 – or at least, it was easier to compete with points-buying players through SBCs alone – and that trend continues in FC 25. The new Duplicate SBC Storage mechanic, which lets you store untradeable duplicates for use at a later date, is a game-changer for SBC fans (you no longer need to needlessly quick sell potential assets), and the mind-boggling number of card types means that highly-rated gold players are relatively easy to buy, even at the start of the game.

 Accessibility

EA Sports FC 25 offers a comprehensive suite of accessibility options, including settings for color blindness, subtitles, button remapping, and increasing the size of the player indicator. These can all be found in a dedicated Accessibility Settings tab. The game has six difficulty levels – Beginner, Amateur, Semi-Pro, Professional, World Class, Legendary, and Ultimate – and features support for 21 languages. 

 Should I play EA Sports FC 25?

 Play it if…

 Don’t play it if…

 How I tested EA Sports FC 25

I played EA Sports FC 25 for 10 days ahead of its official release. During that time, I had access to all modes and features and was able to compete against real-world players as part of EA’s Early Access promotion. I played on PS5, using a standard DualSense controller, on a Samsung QN95A Neo QLED 4K TV, with audio coming via a five-speaker Bose Lifestyle 550 Home Entertainment System. I’ve played every FIFA / EA Sports FC game since FIFA 13, and also reviewed FIFA 22, FIFA 23, and EA Sports FC 24 for TechRadar Gaming.

First reviewed September 2024.