EA FC 26 Arrives: Are We So Back?

EA’s juggernaut, EA FC 26, officially leaves early access and arrives for everyone today, and it’s a big year for EA FC as last year was an unmitigated disaster for the series. I’m sure the sales were fine, but you would have a hard time finding many people who had a good time with EA FC 25.

I’m not usually that matter of fact in saying a game was bad and everyone disliked it because even bad games have fans, but that should show you how confident I am in that statement that I’m not thinking twice about writing it. Whether you were into sim or comp, both camps ended the year unhappy.

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So what does this year’s game have for you all? Well, I can say I don’t immediately despise it, so it’s already trending ahead of last year’s game. I am in no way the world’s leading expert on soccer games. I would put it at the bottom of the power rankings for my “expertise” among the major sports.

However, I’ve been around the block with FIFA over the years, and it’s a series I fall in and out of love with more than any other. I never truly love playing it offline, but there have been many years where it’s my most played online game.

EA FC 26 Is Perplexing So Far

With that said, I think online is where FC 26 shows the most promise so far, and I don’t think it has much to do with the two gameplay settings either. I’ll talk about both online and offline to explain, but I want to say that upfront.

Matt10 and crew should likely have some sliders over the weekend (or shortly after), but offline right now is mostly confusing to me, and so I’m not even sure how to put together some of my thoughts.

Don’t read that as saying I think it’s all bad, it’s just hard for me to get a handle on what’s happening game to game so far, plus a new patch dropped as well (full notes here):

In a way, the lack of consistency game to game is a good thing because the match results have been all over (up-and-down affairs, 0-0 draws, holding on for dear life, high shot games), with only a couple of the usual issues popping up throughout (a lack of fouls being most pronounced).

In online games so far, it’s a shootout much of the time in my experiences. I do think jockeying feels off (see: sluggish), and the player with the ball has better movement than most defenders without the ball for whatever reason, so you feel like you’re at a disadvantage at all times. Still, if you’re patient on defense and don’t make the first move, you’ll be okay more times than not.

But my larger concern is about the backlines in general. It’s always a bad sign in EA FC games when cowardice is taking hold online, and essentially a lot of people already don’t want to click on to the CBs online. The positioning of the CBs is such that if you move one out of their spot, then it’s causing the backline to crumble (or at least so people think, and thus they’re mostly just pressuring with a CM/CDM and letting the AI do its own thing with the CBs).

I’m not sure how much of that is a real problem or not so far, but it’s bad for gameplay when players are scared to make mistakes. It leads to a lot of “park the bus” stuff and same-y outcomes, so that’s my major concern right now online.

The other “issues” I’m seeing are more standard things that crop up some years in FC. The clip I’ll show is from an offline game, but kickoffs do some overpowered, which happens sometimes in FC.

It just seems like the easiest time to score is right after a kickoff for whatever reason. This along with corner kicks that favor the offense means people online are deathly afraid right now of giving up set pieces and retaliatory goals after they’ve just scored.

“Do Your Job” Taken To Its Extreme Endpoint

Player roles are a problem as well, and this is where the offline part of things comes up. This might also be part of of what’s happening with AI backlines “crumbling” if you move someone out of position, but I think Matt10’s video diagnoses the problem pretty well:

It’s funny to me that in so many sports games the issue we end up having is people don’t do their jobs or play their roles. They do illogical stuff. In FC, it’s almost the opposite. They are so regimented and adamant about their player roles that they don’t “play ball” or play with any freedom. And, yeah, it’s probably not ideal that much of the time it seems like the AI players are more worried about being screamed at by their coach than trying to play with creativity.

This is why I’m a little more worried about offline play so far than online play. In an online environment, I can right stick switch all over the field on defense and make things work. On offense, I can be clicking R1/RB to have players checking to the ball or forcing players to make runs to make it seem like my offense is free flowing and interesting. I can “force” it to look like the “beautiful game” even if my AI players are fighting me on it.

The AI can’t really do these things on its own. The question I sometimes ask people is how often are your players truly making runs that you don’t call for in some of these recent FC games? I personally find it happens very little, and so it stunts the gameplay because guys are playing a role rather than playing soccer. They won’t just fill the space or make decisive runs on their own, it’s all down to us overriding their player roles with manual inputs.

And, you might think you could use these player roles to bring out the creativity by just playing with the tactics of each position, but the tactics aren’t deep enough — or strong enough is perhaps the better way to phrase it — to override the basic positional principles/roles guys play with out there. (Plus, you can’t really control the other team in that way.)

You can have all the passing styles, traits, and everything else in the world, but if guys aren’t going to make runs for you (unless you tell them) then you’re not really going to have tons of gameplay variety or player variety. It’s stating the obvious that soccer is a very creative sport, but FC tends to suck the creativity out of it — at least when it comes to AI players going off script.

This is partially the reason I’m not even sure what my thoughts are about the gameplay variety I’m seeing in terms of scores and shots offline. My guess is the league/teams I use (bad ones vs. talented ones), or the formations/tactics at play are the things creating this wide range of outcomes in gameplay variety more than the players themselves are right now.

Some of the games I’m playing are a blast, but if it’s just because I’m getting “lucky” and playing against the right sort of formation, then it’s less exciting because then it’s just more down to player roles that end up creating those fun times rather than any sort of truly dynamic gameplay at work.

Bottom Line

But even if I have these concerns, I’m playing the game still, and like I said at the top, that’s a big step up from last year. The feel is in a much better spot, and the creativity I can muster up and pull off is well beyond what was happening last year.

This means, at the very least, I’m going to continue to play this game online for the foreseeable future. That will not excite a large chunk of you, but right now that’s the one part of the gameplay I’m at least somewhat confident in so far.

Offline, while I am having some really fun and quality games so far, I’m more concerned this enjoyment will wear out sooner than later. There have been some real stinkers mixed in as well, and I don’t mean because I get housed or anything like that, I just see issues more clearly some games and question what players are doing on the pitch.

What I will say is, as always, if you have EA Play, use that free trial. I will be shocked if you don’t enjoy your first couple games by default because it does genuinely feel much better from a pure “controlling the players” standpoint. The real test with this one will be how you feel after you play 10-15 career mode games.

Lastly, EA is being transparent about things so far, which is good. It seems like they will be tweaking the game quite a bit, and they do have the ability (at least in theory) to not only change the sliders for competitive vs. authentic, but also seem to be saying they can patch things for each gameplay style as well.

It remains to be seen if that will actually work right (I’ve seen with NBA 2K how this can be a hit or miss situation with that stuff), but I do think EA is trying to avoid another “everyone hates us” situation, which led to massive patches for the game even as late as January and beyond for FC 25.

Until next time y’all. And, as always, thanks for reading.

-Chase