When I reviewed EA Sports FC 26 last year, I was all praise for it. The gameplay felt responsive and refined, the split between Authentic and Competitive gameplay made sense, and for the first time in years it looked as though EA had actually listened to its players. That review aged badly, and quickly. A few weeks after launch, the title updates started arriving, and by the time they stopped, competitive gameplay was a mess. AI defending in particular was reworked again and again over the year, and the version of the game most people ended up playing had little in common with the one I reviewed.
EA patches its football game every year, so that alone is not news. What made last year different was how it felt to the people who had bought the game on the strength of that launch build. A vocal section of the community kept asking for AI defending to be changed, EA obliged, and everyone else was left with a game they no longer recognised. Whatever the merits of the argument, the company should not have caved in, and to most fans it felt like a betrayal.
That is the context for this year’s promises. EA says defending and tackling have been refined once more, with the balance pushed towards manual defending. It has finally shipped The Grounds, the social football world that has been the subject of leaks and rumours for years. And, most notably for anyone buying the game, it has raised the price of every edition. Whether the product justifies that increase is the question this review will try to answer.
(Disclaimer: This review is based on the [PS5] version of the game. EA Sports FC 27 is also available on PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Windows PC, Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2. The Grounds, including Clubs, is only available on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC and Switch 2.)
Table of Contents
Gameplay: a mixed bag
On paper, the gameplay changes in FC 27 are the ones competitive players asked for. AI-controlled defenders no longer make automatic tackles when a dribbler gets close to them; they hold their position and leave the tackle to whichever player you are controlling. Jockey speed has gone up, standing tackles reach further, and through balls now follow your stick input instead of bending towards the nearest open lane. Corners have been rebuilt too, so you position your attackers yourself in the seconds before the ball comes in.
In practice, the game is balanced in the sense that both players in a match are wrestling with the same problems. Passing is the biggest of them. It is inconsistent to the point of being unpredictable, with the same input producing a crisp pass one moment and a limp one the next. For a game that has stripped away so much of its assistance, that is a serious flaw.
Manual defending, on the other hand, has been greatly improved. When you read the dribbler, switch to the right player and time the tackle, it works, and it feels earned in a way it has not for years. The catch is that agile players can still get past you with rapid, possession-first touches, the sort of movement the community has come to call fidget spinning. Get the tackle wrong against one of those players, and you are chasing shadows.
Heading has been fixed. Last year it was almost impossible to score with your head, from corners or anywhere else. This year clean contact is harder to make but pays off when you get it, which is exactly the trade EA said it was making, and it holds up in real matches.
The trouble is at the other end of the pitch. Player switching is unreliable right now, and the knock-on effect is that you concede a lot of corners. Goalkeeper movement has been heavily toned down, so you can no longer come off your line and collect deliveries the way you could in previous years, and the same change means you will concede more free kick goals than you are used to.
Add it all up, and the gameplay is a mixed bag: some real positives, plenty of frustration, and nothing that adds up to a clear step forward. Would I call it an improvement on last year? No. Is it more balanced, because whoever you are playing is suffering the same frustrations? Yes.
The Grounds
The Grounds is the headline addition and the mode that has been rumoured for years. It is a shared social world for up to 100 players, built around a central Terrace and three districts, each modelled on a different football culture: Montclair for French cage football, Zeiza for Argentina’s potrero pitches and Parkside for working-class football in the UK. Clubs now lives inside it, with a Clubhouse that changes to reflect your club’s identity, and Leagues, Playoffs and the new Club Tournaments are all launched from there./
Around the edges are small-sided matches (1v1, 2v2, 3v3 and a street version of Rush) and a set of Kickabouts that mix football with other sports: Bucket Ball, which is football aimed at a basketball hoop, plus Balloon Ball, Bocce Ball, Team Keepaway, The Big Race and a few more. Mentors including Alex Hunter, Kylian Mbappé, Chloe Kelly and Paulo Dybala hand out challenges. There are cosmetic shops, an emote wheel, Amps that temporarily boost your Archetype, and a season pass with a Premium tier.
If that sounds like The City from NBA 2K, that is because it plainly is. The difference is that 2K’s version became an instant hit with its players, while The Grounds feels gimmicky and, for all the deep-dive articles EA published about it, almost like an afterthought. I lost interest in it almost immediately, and I suspect most competitive players will do the same.
Ultimate Team
The big new idea in Ultimate Team is the FUT Gallery. Almost every player item that passes through your club, whether it came from a pack, the transfer market, an objective or an SBC, can be recorded in Gallery Sets built around nations, leagues, clubs and campaigns. Items you have already sold or fed into an SBC still count. Completed sets are graded, with higher-rated and special items scoring more, and those grades feed into a Gallery Level that pays out cosmetics, Gallery Tokens and, at higher milestones, the new Holographic items. The Gallery Hub also replaces the old main menu with a 3D space where your favourite cards appear as objects around you. Alongside it, EA has streamlined most player and upgrade SBCs into a points system, added branching Pathways to Evolutions, and introduced single-player Live Events against themed AI squads.
The Gallery is a novel idea, and some fans will like it. But it brings us straight back to the problem that has followed this mode since the FIFA days. Whoever spends real money early on in the game cycle has an unfair advantage, and Ultimate Team has become pay-to-win to such an extent that someone who has already paid full price for the game and simply wants to play it will find themselves behind the curve within the first week. The Ultimate Edition alone bundles 6,000 FC Points over three months and an extra Evolution slot, and that is before the store opens.
There is plenty to do if you are content to play casually. Live Events are frequent, Rush is good fun with friends, and Squad Battles gives you a relaxed way to earn rewards. Playing competitively is another matter. Without spending on FC Points, keeping up in Division Rivals and FUT Champions means grinding for something like 25 to 30 hours every week, and at that point it stops being a game and becomes a second job.
Player and Manager Career Modes
Manager Career has had its biggest overhaul in years. The Transfer Market has been rebuilt from scratch, with valuations informed by TransferRoom’s Expected Transfer Value data, deals that progress through stages over several days (including hijacks and last-minute renegotiations), and a proper set of clauses: instalments, performance bonuses, buy-backs, sell-ons, loan-backs and first refusal. Player ratings are now dynamic and rise or fall with form, morale and match fitness. AI clubs recruit according to their own philosophies and are reluctant to sell to rivals. You can build your own Manager Live Challenges through a web portal and share them with a code, Liga MX has been added, and a Practice Arena lets you test tactics against your reserves before a big match. Authentic Gameplay 2.0 brings heavier player movement, smarter CPU opponents, weather that affects footing, more fouls and 35 new sliders.
Player Career gets Rivalries, where fans pit you against an AI player in a similar role and set objectives such as who records more assists over the next five matches, with the story playing out on social media between games.
Admittedly, much like most FC players, I do not spend much time in these modes in every annual cyle (mostly because FUT ends up being quite demanding and time-consuming if you watch to catch up to competition), but these modes have now reached a point where they offer an extremely immersive experience for anyone who wants nothing to do with Ultimate Team and would rather have a relaxed but authentic football simulation.
Graphics
There is not much to write about here. FC 27 looks almost identical to last year’s game, and even hardcore fans would struggle to tell the two apart on the pitch. That is not to say it looks bad. It looks good, but it lacks the atmosphere that different stadiums should bring with them, and a match at one ground feels much like a match at any other.
New face scans for some players do make them look more authentic, but you only really notice in replays; from the standard broadcast camera, the players are too far away for it to register.
Verdict
It is sad to see a series that once defined how sports games should be made, and has dominated football simulation for the past two decades, in a state where it feels mostly pay-to-win. Almost every decision EA makes now looks as though it was taken to improve the company’s numbers rather than to do right by the people playing the game. The price rise makes that hard to ignore. The Standard Edition now costs ₹5,999 in India, up from ₹4,999 last year, and the Ultimate Edition is ₹8,999, up from ₹7,499. That is before the game starts encouraging you to spend more at every turn, on packs, the season pass, Evolutions and the rest. Charging more for that is downright disrespectful.
If you can stay away from Ultimate Team, the rest of the game is still enjoyable and makes a decent case for itself. Career Mode is the best it has been in years, and the core gameplay, for all its frustrations, at least frustrates everyone equally. It is just not the improvement the asking price implies.
Editor’s rating: 7.0 / 10
Pros:
- Manual defending finally rewards skill
- Heading is usable again
- Manager Career’s rebuilt Transfer Market is excellent
Cons:
- Inconsistent passing and unreliable player switching
- Ultimate Team is more pay-to-win than ever
- The Grounds feels like an afterthought
- Higher price for a game that looks and plays much like last year’s
More
- Developer: EA Canada, EA Romania
- Publisher: Electronic Arts
- Platform: PS5
