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.

EA Sports FC 24 is the football video game phoenix that has risen from the ashes of the FIFA series. It feels very akin to its predecessor and introduces some bold new features, but first, it’s worth remembering how we got here. 

In brief, EA cut ties with FIFA in 2022 after the latter demanded a reported $1 billion (One. Billion. Dollars.) for the continued use of the 'FIFA' moniker in EA’s long-running video game series, with FIFA 23 marking the last in a thirty-year run of FIFA-branded EA titles. 

EA opted to forge ahead with a new, FIFA-free version of its annual soccer simulator in 2023, and the result is EA Sports FC 24 – a rather ugly-sounding name for what the developer is describing as the “most true-to-football experience ever.” But is EA’s first solo project – which I’m now calling FC24 for the benefit of both my typing fingers and your eyeballs – really anything more than a FIFA clone in different clothes? Or has EA here crafted a markedly different offering from the new-but-not-really-new FIFA entries we’ve become accustomed to habitually buying in recent years?

Well, for starters, neither Messi, Ronaldo nor Mbappé adorns the cover. This year’s poster boy is Norwegian soccer cyborg Erling Haaland – and after several hours spent scoring goals, conceding (even more) goals, and applying undue pressure to the grips of my DualSense controller, I’m happy to report that the changes in FC24 don’t stop there.

An even more beautiful game 

FC24 runs on a refreshed Frostbite graphics engine that provides the perfect foundation for EA’s latest buzzword-y feature, HyperMotionV. This is the third iteration of the developer’s motion capture technology, with volumetric data (hence the ‘V’) now on hand to deliver even more motion-based realism than we saw in FIFA 23. EA says it gathered this volumetric data from more than 180 real-life professional football matches, and the in-game improvements are plain to see from the moment you set foot on the grass.

Players now move in a way that more closely resembles their flesh-and-bone counterparts; individual muscles flex, hair strands dance in the wind, and kit fabric ripples when brushed by an overzealous defender. Strikers will fall into shots, bundling the ball over the line when it's been zipped in with too much speed to control properly, and defenders will visibly grimace when lunging in for a last-ditch block (they’ll also be aggressively congratulated by their teammates if that effort prevents an opposition goal). 

HyperMotionV is best demonstrated through players with distinct movement types: for example, as in real life, Riyad Mahrez remains noticeably upright as he dribbles, while Phil Foden slaloms between defenders by dropping his shoulder to the floor. However, some neat AI wizardry applies the benefits of EA’s new technology to every player in the game, so a local, regional derby in the North of England looks just as convincing as El Clásico.

FIFA 23’s HyperMotion 2 technology brought noticeable improvements to peripheral areas of the pitch – the net, the turf, the crowd, and so on – but HyperMotionV represents another genuinely palpable step up in FC24 (it’s worth noting, though, that this feature is exclusive to the PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC versions of the game).

Dripping in finesse 

There are some neat new additions on the action front, too. This year’s headline feature is PlayStyles, an Opta-optimized attribute system that supplements players’ existing skill sets with style-specific boosts - it’s essentially a replacement for the old Traits system. 

There are 32 PlayStyles in total, split across six categories – Shooting, Passing, Defending, Ball Control, Physical, and Goalkeeping – with the very best players also benefiting from PlayStyles+, which are basically enhanced versions of a certain PlayStyle. Players known for curling in shots from a distance might be equipped with the Finesse Shot PlayStyle, for instance, which allows them to perform finesse shots faster and more accurately than those without it. 

The world’s very best long-range ball curlers, like Heung-Min Son and Mohamed Salah, are equipped with the Finesse Shot PlayStyle+, which gives them maximum curve and exceptional shooting accuracy. These boosts really do translate into superior in-game performance, and players in traditionally unglamorous footballing roles, like a holding defensive midfielder, feel much more valuable to the team than ever before (top tip: the Intercept PlayStyle, boasted by the likes of Aurélien Tchouaméni and N'Golo Kanté, is pretty much a cheat code for automatically regaining possession).

FC24 also introduces new passing mechanics. There are now three different Precision Pass styles: the standard Precision Pass, the Precision Lob, and the Swerved Precision Pass. As with FIFA 22’s timed runs mechanic, these button combo-induced passes are tricky to master – and they definitely don’t work every time – but they’re a nice new option for skilled players who enjoy the challenge of beyond-the-manual controls. Controlled Sprint – another new FC24 mechanic that lets you run with the ball much closer to your feet by simply holding R1/RB – will definitely be a more welcome addition for casual players.

FIFA 23 added the ability to exert more control over how the ball travels to its target from a free kick or corner, and thankfully, the same mechanics are present and correct in FC24 - although, somehow, EA has managed to make the free kick interface appear ever more frightening than before). 

Old modes, new tricks 

The playable modes in FC24 are nigh-on identical to those in FIFA 23, and, as we’ve come to expect from EA, some of these modes have clearly had more attention paid to them than others.

The biggest shake-up comes to Ultimate Team, which now combines male and female players for the very first time. The ratings awarded to the latter are relative to the competition in which they play, but on the pitch, their attributes are worth the same as their male counterparts (so Barcelona star Alexia Putellas has a similar Ultimate Team card to Kevin De Bruyne, for instance). 

Unsurprisingly, some have criticized EA for gender-blending in what is indisputably its most popular mode, but the logic behind the move is clear: the inclusion of women in Ultimate Team will have a meaningful impact on the prominence of the game’s best female players. Besides, why wouldn’t you want a 90-rated Sam Kerr leading your forward line? I’ve been playing FC24 for about a week now, and I’m already familiar with the names, faces, and attributes of three times as many female players as I was before I picked up the game. The naysayers will naysay, but EA is using its considerable cultural power for good here.

The aforementioned PlayStyles system adds a new dimension to Ultimate Team, too. As part of a new Evolutions feature, you can improve a qualifying player’s stats, overall rating, PlayStyles, and card design by completing objectives. In other words, you don’t need to wait for EA’s typically ridiculous seasonal cards to drop before transforming, say, Richarlison into a striker who can actually score goals. Evolutions are split between those suggested by EA and those you create yourself. Though, of course, the developer has also introduced a pay-to-win element here: you can speed up a player’s ‘Evolution’ for the princely sum of 50,000 coins (or 1,000 FC Points).

Career mode has also received some welcome updates, but they’re not nearly as significant as those in Ultimate Team. The bottom line: there’s now a focus on tactics over training. Once you pick a team, you’re encouraged to select a tactical vision – the options are standard, wing play, tiki-taka, gegenpressing, park the bus, counterattack, or kick and rush. You then need to hire coaches to implement your chosen tactical vision, and these coaches grow in rating (as players do) when you win matches by using those tactics successfully. To be honest, it’s all pretty surface-level stuff – this is FC24, not Football Manager – but since your tactical vision can be changed at any time, it’s fun to experiment with team sheets and try different tactics against different teams.

Mercifully, EA has finally done away with those annoying daily training sessions in Career mode, but that doesn't mean there’s now no control over how your team prepares for a match. As before, you can put individual players on specific training plans to suit their play styles, but now your assistant coach will advise (tell) you when to do this for certain players. Oh, and if you really do want to play coach, career mode has a new (albeit crushingly boring) tactical view option that lets you watch matches from the dugout.

Seasons, Tournaments, Online Friendlies, and Volta remain largely unchanged from FIFA 23, but Pro Clubs has been rebranded to Clubs, and EA has finally added generation-specific cross-play to the latter mode, too. The Clubs progression format has also changed; now, each calendar month represents a season, with seasons split into a League phase, a Promotion phase, and a Play-off phase. I haven’t had a chance to jump into a Clubs match with friends yet, but it’s good to see EA finally showing this fan-favorite mode some real love.

Paint-by-numbers 

If I’ve got one real criticism of FC24, it’s the game’s aesthetic. Or rather, how everything looks off the pitch. The entire menu system has been redesigned compared to previous FIFA entries, and although, after some practice, it’s quicker to navigate than before, the whole thing feels strangely soulless and sanitary, like something assembled by a corporate committee. 

This isn’t helped by the odd color palette EA has opted for – the Ultimate Team interface, in particular, looks like something designed by Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin. The FIFA games looked much more inviting (dare I say, fun?) by comparison, and although this is certainly not a big enough criticism to warrant not buying the game, FIFA’s absence from FC24 is palpable in this respect.

But despite losing its star license, EA has again set the benchmark for what current-gen football simulators should look and, more importantly, play like with FC24. This is a game that’s both fun for newcomers and optionally challenging for skilled players, and FIFA loyalists will be grateful for the impressive number of meaningful updates made to the series’ most popular modes. The name is terrible, but FC24 is a strong start for EA’s new footballing franchise. 

Accessibility features 

FC24 features the usual suite of EA accessibility options, all of which can be found in the dedicated Accessibility Settings tab. These options include color-blindness filters, the ability to increase the size of the player indicator, subtitles and stick remapping. 

How we reviewed EA Sports FC 24 

I played EA Sports FC 24 for around 20 hours on PS5, spending significant time in every mode but Clubs. I started a Career mode save as the manager of Chelsea FC, built (and played several matches with) a mixed-gender Ultimate Team squad, and tested various PlayStyles in Kick Off. 

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