EA Sports FC 25 – The past few years have been a turbulent time for football with the phenomenon of “changing stars” when many famous names such as Eden Hazard, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Lionel Messi gradually left the spotlight, leaving the big stages in Europe to the younger generation such as Kylian Mbappe, Erling Haaland or Jude Bellingham.

On the other hand, the e-sports industry, especially the game brands simulating this “king sport”, also witnessed many historical turning points such as the FIFA game officially changing its name to EA SPORTS FC in 2023, and PES (Pro Evolution Soccer) – with the familiar name “Japanese football”, once associated with the childhood of many generations of Vietnamese gamers, has now also changed to eFootball and changed its development strategy, focusing more on optimizing multiple platforms instead of improving gameplay.

However, while eFootball is losing its form, facing criticism from loyal fans for a series of minor errors that have not been fixed and copyright restrictions, EA SPORTS FC, despite its “change of name”, still maintains very stable sales.

It can be said that this “favorite” sports game of the giant EA has almost “alone” and monopolized the entire soccer game market share without any worthy competitors.

More interestingly, the author also thinks of many similarities between Apple’s new iPhone announcement event and the preparation phase for the launch of EA SPORTS FC 25, which is that both of these products have a short development cycle, only wrapped up in one year, making creating breakthrough designs extremely challenging!

This is further demonstrated when the previous version EA SPORTS FC 24 lacked any valuable upgrades and instead had boring, repetitive formulas, even in some aspects giving the feeling of… “regression”.

Not to mention, the frequency of promoting EA SPORTS FC 25 this year on the media is at a record low, raising further suspicions about whether EA is “resting on its laurels” and increasingly lacking serious investment in this game title?

Let’s put on your shoes and step out onto the pitch with MarkGame to find out what kind of experience EA SPORTS FC 25 will bring, is it really a breakthrough or is it another disappointing step backwards?

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FC IQ raises the tactical level

Speaking of the new generation iPhone, there is another interesting coincidence between Apple’s product and EA SPORTS FC 25. This year, both of them emphasize the focus: upgrading based on exploiting the power of artificial intelligence (AI). If Apple calls their creation by the “very catchy” name Apple Intelligence, then the game from EA also introduces a new technology called… FC IQ.

At first glance, you might think that EA SPORTS FC integrating a new generation of “intelligence” will help the game series escape the “curse” of AI controlling… stupid players, which has “haunted” players for more than a decade. But unfortunately, life is not… like a dream, FC IQ at its core only improves tactical elements, helping players to be more flexible and comfortable in their gaming experience.

For example, in the past, I rarely paused a football match to open the menu window, adjust the tactical diagram or change the playing style. Partly because I was lazy to do it, and partly because it easily disrupted the rhythm of the match, making other players feel bored or annoyed!

But from now on, thanks to FC IQ, the game automatically “reads” the match situation continuously to give real-time suggestions called “Smart Tactics”, including from general tasks such as changing the diagram, adjusting the playing style, to more sophisticated tactics such as Tiki-Taka, “concrete” the defense (Park the bus), creating an offside trap, high-level “pressing” or even suggesting replacements for ineffective playing positions, based on hidden indicators such as player rating, ball control level, helping players optimize their strategy in the match.

At first, the author thought that “Smart Tactics” would not bring much value, but the more he played, the more he realized how useful it was, especially in specific situations such as when the opponent had just scored a goal and needed to raise the squad, or in tense extra minutes when he needed to quickly reinforce the defense. At this time, just a simple operation – press the down key on the D-pad, and voila, a series of suggestions will appear in a small corner of the screen, helping you choose quickly and easily!

FC IQ also brings a “revolution” in team management. It is not simply clicking on the Team Management window to change personnel like before, now players also have a new Tab called “Tactics”, not only arranging the team formation (Formation) but also adjusting the role (Player Role) of each player on the field.

For example, a striker (ST) like Harry Kane can be assigned the role of Poacher, focusing on scoring goals or False-9 to disrupt the opponent’s defense. In addition, this player can also be assigned to focus completely on the attacking front or even participate in additional defensive support when necessary.

Thanks to FC IQ, the game automatically “reads” the match situation continuously to give real-time suggestions called “Smart Tactics”.

New exciting experiences !

The most “worth the money” change of EA SPORTS FC 25 is the completely new “Rush Mode”, which brings many interesting and fun experiences, replacing Volta, which is often considered the “stepchild” mode in the two most recent versions.

Rush’s competition format is almost like “street football” in Vietnam with a miniature grass field, each team consists of an AI-controlled goalkeeper and four players, offside is only counted from the last third of the opponent’s field, a green card temporarily disqualifies the player from the match instead of a red card, two yellow cards count as one green card.

Rush also mixes in a bit of the “street” (Arcade) material from the previous Volta, as players can easily dribble past opponents, perform “flying” and somersaulting to celebrate goals in the style of Santo, but there will be no energy bars to “kick” special moves or bounce the ball off and into the hinges surrounding the field.

This mode is also integrated into Ultimate Team, players will be able to choose a card in their squad, team up (matching) with three other players and after each match will receive reward points called Rush Point, which can be used to buy cards or exchange for other gifts,

It is worth mentioning that EA SPORTS FC 25 brings a completely new Season Pass system, allowing players to accumulate bonus points from all competition modes, whether Club or Career Mode, not just limited to Ultimate Team like previous versions, creating a more diverse and rich experience.

This also shows the serious attention and investment from the developer, encouraging players to explore many game modes instead of just focusing on “farming” cards in Ultimate Team.

And indeed, it has been a long time since the writer felt excited to enter a new FIFA ( EA SPORTS FC ) game season, when Manager Career – the mode that the writer has always loved the most this year, has had an impressive “transformation”!

First of all, we have to mention the changes right at the start of the new season. If in the previous version, coaches easily lost their jobs due to the strict and sometimes unimaginable requirements from the management board, now when choosing a goal for the team, the game has added the option “Lenient”, helping you breathe a sigh of relief because you are no longer pressured by the “bosses” after each match. Even if you want to be more secure, you can choose “No Sacking” to keep your coaching position forever without having to worry about being fired.

Both Player and Manager Career modes also feature female players for the first time. Players can now arrange their squads, choose to compete in separate men’s and women’s leagues for each club, and can also organize their own practice matches in a Rush Mode-like format (5v5) to test out new recruits from the Youth Academy.

Not only that, the matches in Career are also enriched with changes in weather such as rain or snow, from light to heavy, directly affecting the field, the ability to move and finish of the players, bringing realistic and interesting experiences!

The pace of play has also been tweaked with slower passing and shooting speeds, and first touches are more likely to bounce off the contact point, reducing the situation where the ball always sticks to the player’s feet like “glue”.

The scene of the two teams’ players greeting each other also returns after being mysteriously removed in EA SPORTS FC 24 , along with many interesting additions.

Like the time the writer witnessed a scene where, near the end of the match, the striker kicked the ball just over the crossbar, immediately all the players and coaching staff stood up and held their heads in regret, or even more interesting was the image of tactical masters like Pep Guardiola and Mikel Arteta… arguing fiercely outside the pit lane, just like watching the tense Super Sunday matches live on TV!

EA SPORTS FC 25 also introduces a completely new Highlight Replay system, not just simply to rewind situations that have just happened on the field like “check VAR”, but players can also activate the photo mode feature, change the focus, aperture, add color filters like professional photo editing applications.

Ultimate Team (FUT) also has some notable additions such as increasing the number of Squad Building Challenges storage up to 100 cards (including duplicate cards), giving players more options to perform challenges, or the Evolution card evolution function can now be used for players who have reached the limit, allowing to enhance other stats (Attributes) instead of the maxed stats.

The most “worth the money” change of EA SPORTS FC 25 is the completely new “Rush Mode”, bringing many interesting and fun experiences.

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Many aspects are not yet “ripe” enough

The “refinishing” of Career Mode with many valuable additions is the right move of the EA development team, but on the other hand, there are still many aspects of these two modes that have not been done properly, causing a lot of trouble for players.

Specifically, the interface and user experience (UI/UX) including many menu bars of Manager Career like every year has been replaced by a series of Tab windows, with a lot of different information but not arranged intuitively but extremely confusing!

Simple operations such as viewing the team’s match schedule for the week, searching for a player’s name on the market or viewing transfer information of teams, or even just wanting to save the game (Save) now have to go through many complicated steps, sometimes without even knowing where they are… hidden.

On the other hand, the graphics aspect of EA SPORTS FC 25 also does not bring many outstanding changes. For example, if we take two photos of the same moment in a match between the two versions of EA SPORTS FC 24 and EA SPORTS FC 25 , then put them side by side, we will almost certainly not be able to see any difference!

Many of the controversial elements from previous versions still remain, such as the fact that the Pace index of the players is still “meta”, making the gameplay unbalanced compared to real life, dribbling techniques are still abused when players easily “spam” them continuously to exploit the gaps in the AI-controlled defense. In addition, defenders still often do not actively move to receive the ball from a distance, and goalkeepers still have clumsy handling, fumbling with their hands and feet after failing to catch a ball from a long distance.

Many controversial elements from previous versions continue to linger.

It is also worth mentioning that Trivela’s “outside cheek” shots are still easy to perform when holding down the L2 trigger button, turning on assisted mode and then pressing the shot button. There is nothing more “stingy” than seeing the opponent “curve” the ball into the goal from far away outside the penalty area, and you are completely powerless to stop it.

Choosing Icon players in Player Career mode sounds appealing at first, but in reality, you will quickly get bored because legends like “Ro Beo” already have outstanding stats from the start, almost no need to develop any more skills, the feeling of controlling them to compete with AI is no different from a professional player entering the field to play with… kids!

AI is not yet “smart” enough

As the author mentioned, FC IQ brings many positive aspects, but unfortunately it still cannot solve the “chronic disease” called “AI controlling players”, a problem that not only caused “headaches” in the previous version but almost every year becomes a significant “minus point” of the game.

I don’t know how many times I got annoyed because my team’s AI-controlled defenders kept moving around the penalty area, creating huge gaps for the opponent to easily exploit and score.

In addition, the reflexes of world-class defenders like Virgil van Dijk or William Saliba are still slow when the opposing team switches from defense to counterattack quickly, completely lacking in pressure when the opponent runs into position, making every defensive effort extremely difficult and frustrating…

Not to mention, if you play against AI-controlled opponents on Legendary or Ultimate difficulty, you will still witness the “solo” dribbling from the two wings into the penalty area like “no man’s land” by unknown strikers, the lightning-fast passing moves that are even faster than the “Tiki-Taka” style in its golden age, performed in the game by mid-level teams, and of course, the feeling of frustration when you are almost “starved for the ball” throughout the match when facing superstar squads like Manchester City or Real Madrid.

Perhaps, it is not an exaggeration to say that EA SPORTS FC 25 is still the same as previous years, partly focusing on online and co-op modes (player vs player), while the single player (offline) mode with the computer is still stuck in place, without any significant progress in the playing experience.

EA SPORTS FC 25 is still the same as previous years, somewhat only focusing on online and co-op modes (player vs player), while the single player (offline) mode with the computer is still stuck in place.