We’ve put the upcoming EA Sports FC 25 through its paces, with first impressions of Rush mode, FC IQ, and the tactics revamp.
If the trailers and deep dives coming out of EA, about this year’s new football game, have tried to emphasise anything, it is that EA Sports FC 25 will be quite different to its predecessor.
There are lots of new features being added and amongst the most noticeable additions is a new 5v5 game mode called Rush, a smarter AI with ‘FC IQ’, and a tactical revamp.
Our first impressions of EA Sports FC 25 are positive, as the new features are exciting and the tactics revamp, alongside the FC IQ upgrades, seems to open the door to new way of playing the game.
Rush is a lot of fun, as is successfully replaces street football mode Volta, with a simplified but intense football experience. The pitch is a lot smaller, it’s 5v5, but you’re still playing a stadium that houses thousands of fans.
The gameplay is all about one-on-ones and finding your way through the other team with clever passing combinations and dribbles. It’s intense, but it’s also exciting and rewarding, because you can expect a lot more goals than in a traditional 90-minute match.
Rush mode is similar to the Kings League, created by former Barcelona defender Gerard Pique. It also has a smaller pitch and fewer players per team, but Rush also has a blue card, which is given to offending players after serious fouls.
The player will then be side-lined for a set amount of time, before being able to come back on, but if the other team scores in the meantime the blue card timer decreases.
The creativity stops there unfortunately, and we can’t help but think that Rush would benefit from more wacky rules to make gameplay more unpredictable. The Kings League has additional cards that players can get, with one card counting goals as double and another giving your team an instant penalty shot, but it’s still a little underwhelming.
Another big change in EA Sports FC 25 is its tactics revamp, which is made very clear as soon as you log in, as Zinedine Zidane greets you in his office and stresses just how incredibly important tactics are, while the video cuts to him winning his three Champions League trophies as a coach.
What you learn soon after is that EA has removed some of the team and player-specific tactical instructions from EA Sports FC 24 and simplified the process. You can no longer tell a winger to stay up the pitch when you lose the ball, or select the width of the team shape.
Instead you now give each player a role in the team, just like in Football Manager, like false nine if you want them to drop deep to collect the ball, or falseback (the game’s interpretation of an inverted fullback) if you want to add a player in midfield when you have the ball. You can also give each player a focus based on their role, if you want them to be more attacking or defensive.
While you’re tinkering with your tactics you can also see what your formation will look like with and without the ball, which is very helpful in finding the right balance.
The changes are propped up by the new FC IQ feature working in the background – the new AI added to the game to make players’ actions more realistic. As EA explains it:
‘FC IQ Team Tactics introduces systems used by football’s top tacticians and upgrades the football IQ of every player on the pitch. As a result, your whole team will think and behave more like real-world pros.’
It worked well, in our limited time playing the game so far, and we found ourselves in some welcome, new positional situations on the pitch. EA Sports FC can become a bit dull once you figure out what strategy works best and everyone plays the same way, so anything that can add creativity is great.
Additionally, the tactical revamp gives you the ability to experiment with tactics and find what suits you best, it also mimics real football and its hyper focus on positional play nowadays, which fans have been asking for for years.
Another addition is a new messaging system while you’re playing a game, that will give tactical feedback and suggest substitutions, called Smart Tactics. Again, in our limited time playing EA Sports FC 25, this is a nice feature but it didn’t initially come across as all that helpful.
The AI kept suggesting I substitute my centreback off for a non-centreback player (no, we don’t want to put Jorginho on for William Saliba). And the feedback we got while playing was mostly stating the obvious.
Lastly, there’s also a cool new feature called the POV camera during replays of goals, which lets you see what the goal looked like, when it happened, from the player’s point of view. We’re not sure what triggers it, but it happened twice when we scored a long shot goal and we want more of it.
It’s still difficult to gauge if EA Sports FC 25 really will be a big improvement on its predecessor but first impressions are promising, especially when it comes to how the FC IQ works alongside the tactics revamp.
EA Sports FC 25 launches on September 27 for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4 and 5, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
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