I’ve been playing the FC series (you’ll always be FIFA to me </3) since FIFA 07, and aside from a brief sojourn with PES, I’ve unfailingly played EA’s flagship football game every year since then. I know all too well the feeling of loading up the latest iteration only to find that, despite EA’s claims that this year is going to be different, the game is effectively identical to last year’s; same old match engine, same old mechanics, same old game modes. If you’re coming into FC 25 with that same mindset, I don’t blame you. This year, however, the developer that cried wolf has finally delivered the massive gameplay changes it’s been promising.
The tactics system in FC 25, dubbed FC IQ, has been completely overhauled, making it in some ways more reminiscent of Football Manager than previous FC titles. Instead of giving your players instructions, they now have player roles that define how they move on the pitch. Where a poacher will hang on the shoulder of opposing defenders looking to make runs in behind, a false nine will drop deep, looking to support in the build-up and play in your other forwards. In your tactics screen, you’ll be able to view your team’s shape both with and without the ball, letting you craft how you want your build-up play to look down to the position.
Each player also has familiarity with certain roles, marked by one or two green plus signs, depending on their ability. Erling Haaland, known for making blistering runs in behind is a world-class poacher, marked with two pluses, but is less suited to being a false nine. Building a team isn’t just about finding the player with the highest stats and sticking them in your team, you now need to find players that actually fit into your tactic and can perform the roles you ask of them, just as is the case in the real game.
A genuine leap forward for the series.
I have no doubt that these changes will be hugely unpopular with some players. With player instructions gone, certain strategies are much less viable or simply don’t work at all anymore. While having your favourite style of play effectively removed from the game is going to rub a lot of people the wrong way, the sheer tactical flexibility that the new system offers has far more positives than it does negatives, and represents a genuine leap forward for the series.
Perhaps the area where this will have the most impact is in Career Mode, which has had the largest overhaul in over a decade. Team building has always been at the core of Career Mode, and the introduction of FC IQ makes it more important than ever. Do you build a tactic around the players you already have, or do you create a completely new tactic with a view to recruiting players to fill the gaps? If you don’t have the budget to splash out on a new signing, players can now also be retrained to play a new role over time, increasing their familiarity with the role the more often they play in it. Whether you’re trying to emulate Pep’s inverted fullback nonsense or play some proper Big Sam hoof-it-up-to-the-big-man ball, the choice is yours.
The youth academy system has received its own changes and has been massively improved. You can choose what player roles you want your youth players to focus on, letting you mould them to fit your tactics from a young age. Gone are the tedious drills to develop their stats bit by bit. They have been replaced by Rush, FC’s new five-a-side mode, with youth tournaments every few months to test your players in. Not only is this a genuinely fun way to develop your players, but it lets you get a feel for how they play long before they join the senior side, and is especially important in the newly-added women’s leagues where transfer budgets are low and the player pool is small.
Customisation options have now been added when you set up your save, letting you make things easier or much, much harder by tinkering with transfer settings and how aggressively other teams will negotiate, for example. These changes extend onto the pitch, too, with the new Simulation settings. Simulation mode makes the game far more realistic. Wind blows long balls off course, while a wet or snowy pitch bogs the ball down, forcing you to change up your approach. The teams you face will also slightly alter their tactics each time you face them, making every match different and often genuinely challenging. Where last year I would go into autopilot after a couple of matches, in FC 25 I’m locked in for every match.
One new aspect of the game that I’m excited to try out later on in the year is Live Start Points. Each league in the game is now tracked in real life, and you’ll be able to take over a team at any point in the season. Say Everton are still rock bottom of the Prem come Christmas. You can take them over at the turn of the year and try to take them to safety, giving players the chance to create their own challenges and stories. In tandem with this is the new Snapshots feature, which will give you certain scenarios across the season to play out yourself, so when Todd Boehly inevitably sacks Enzo Maresca in real life, you can take over Chelsea’s season from that point onwards.
While I’m a Career Mode enthusiast, I won’t pretend that Ultimate Team isn’t the mode that most people are here for and for me, it’s another year, another disappointment. Very little has been added to the mode this year. Rush is in, placing you on a team with four other players in a Clubs-esque match. There are also a few cosmetic changes to stadiums, and the ability to customise your player cards, but that’s about it. Aside from that, it remains the overtly predatory game mode built to syphon money from you. While I’m not so naive as to think EA is going to get rid of one of FC’s most lucrative features, that doesn’t make it any less exploitative. At least they’ve reduced the number of FUT Champs games from 40 down to 15 – small victories, eh?
This year, It appears that Ultimate Team and Clubs have taken a back seat
Clubs, too, has barely been touched this year. Like Ultimate Team, the addition of Rush seems to be the main new feature, and there’s even a ranked mode in Clubs which is a nice touch. Aside from that, however, the changes are purely cosmetic, with new UI, extra customisation options, and a new lobby system where you can see and interact with other players. With Career Mode being such a focus this year, it appears that Ultimate Team and Clubs have taken a back seat, which some players will surely find disappointing.
Every now and then, a year comes along like this one where EA pushes the boat out when it comes to FC, making substantial and sweeping changes to a game that had, by most peoples’ metrics, grown fairly stale. 2024 is that year, with FC IQ reinventing the entire way the game is played. My only worry is that now that year has arrived, we might have to prepare for another decade of instalments that become progressively less iterative with each passing year. But there’s no point getting caught up in the inevitable grinding apathy that’s coming our way if and when that does happen. Instead, I’m going to be enjoying FC 25 and rejoicing in the fact that, this year, at long last, we finally have a good FC game again.