EA Sports FC 25 Review (Xbox Series X|S)

It's EA FC's second season filling a FIFA-shaped hole in our hearts wallets and, after a strong debut that we scored 8/10 last year, we've been feeling pretty optimistic about how this new series could look to cement itself in 2025.

As it turns out, it's a new tactical depth, in the form of FC IQ, that EA FC 25 is choosing to push as the big change to how this new footie franchise does things. On paper it sounds impressive; with new ways to interact on a more granular level with your team's tactics from moment-to-moment, right down to how players shift within their specific roles at any given time.

However, in practice - so far, anyways - it lacks the impact of the big calls and obvious changes in team dynamics you'll make in other sports games. Of course it's a different, and more subtle, sport in many ways. We just wish you could feel these choices and changes more immediately on the field of play. A lot of the time we're changing tactics here and wondering "is this doing anything?" which can be a confusing and unsatisfying situation.

We're not saying FC IQ is bad, we've definitely found ourselves far more interested in putting together tactical options to switch between as a result of it, and we look forward to investigating it further in the coming weeks, but none this stuff is making huge differences to what goes down on the pitch in reality. It's a staggeringly similar game to last year's, really, one that ebbs and flows in an almost identical way to EA FC 24. We applaud the addition of more tactical nuance, though, and who knows, over time we may find ourselves getting more out of it.

Oh, and we gotta talk about how you switch between actual tactics in play a little here, too. Once you've set up your five or so separate team layouts, you can access them on-the-fly during a match - just like how tactics worked last year, except now there's far more options; including suggestions from the computer when you're under pressure and so on - which is pretty neat. The issue, and we've always had this with EA FC and FIFA but it seems worse now, is how unresponsive and sticky these menus can be when you're under pressure. Why can't they be zippier? We feel like we make wrong choices and run out of time to choose an option way too often with this stuff. Make it easier! Please. Thank you. Sorry for shouting.

The other big addition, and it genuinely is the only other change of note this year, is Rush. This King's League-styled Volta replacement has had an unusual amount of attention lavished on it in-game. It's everywhere, threaded through every mode, including Ultimate Team, and it's just not that great.

The first few games are fine, it feels new and a bit wacky - thanks mainly to a colourful commentator and space-age stadia - but it wears thin quickly. Get a team of pals playing, or even ranked perhaps, and these quick matches can be tactical good-times in the short-term, but the servers are full of people who don't seem fussed with teamwork, so games tend to err on the tedious side of things. Waiting in lobbies is also quite painful, with any player disconnection resulting in everyone getting booted back to the start of the lobby process. It doesn't take long to push Rush to one side and get back to the modes you loved every other year you bought this franchise (in one form or another).

And they are all here and, for the most part, exactly the same. There are a few neat tricks added to career mode, you get player stories and specific team starting points to spice up new seasons in different clubs, but this is overwhelmingly the same game as last year. Beyond Rush - which we can't see sticking - and tactical depth that many might ignore, this is still a decent, if somewhat messy and directionless effort. Every mode does what it needs to, you'll easily get a full year out of it and all that, but it's hard to feel enthused.

The monetisation aspects still suck, just as they do in 2K25 and all the rest of these big sports games nowadays, and just like 2K's effort it feels more shameless than ever this year with constant, full-screen adverts for more and more crap to spend your real world money on. It is what it is, as we said in our 2K25 review. We hate it, but it seems as though this endless money-spinning card stuff ain't going anywhere right now, as long as folk are willing to keep pumping their cash into it. (Note: we are not judging, we do it too!)

We can see hardcore players getting way more out of the tactical additions than those looking for a fun kickabout, and beyond this and Rush...well...there's not much more to say. This really is more of the same, slightly tweaked, slightly better-looking, but almost overwhelmingly familiar at this stage. This may be the first year, in fact, that we thought "yeah, maybe a rest is required this season" almost as soon as we were presented with a fresh UT slate.

Inoffensive comfort food rather than anything particularly tasty or memorable, then. Maybe next year we'll get full-on Madden-styled tactical integration with bright lines daubed all over the pitch. Maybe they'll add guns or spinning pitches. They'll need to think of something.

Finally, and in terms of performance, this is easily the most buggy new EA football game we've played in aeons. We've lost count of how many times the store has bugged out - requiring a full reboot of the game - and we've had plenty of stuttering during opening match sequences, as well as lots of freezing during the opening of our precious UT packs - which is never good for the old heart-rate (let me tell you).

The menus also deserve a bit of a kicking here to be fair; absolutely awful, slow, unresponsive and cluttered as they are. It's like last year's layout in every way this time out, except there's far more options and nothing moves as quickly. Oh, and Rush mode is crowbarred into every menu as an option. If you don't like it, you're gonna get real tired of looking at it being foisted upon you at every opportunity.

On a more positive note of sorts to finish, we're sure it'll see more patches in its lifetime than Danger Mouse, so let's hope these stutters and stalls are put to bed in short order.