Three years after dropping the “FIFA” name, EA remains stuck in a familiar rut with EA Sports FC 27. The good news? The on-pitch football experience is better than it has been in years. The bad news? Once the final whistle blows and you return to the menus, it is impossible to ignore the fact that almost nothing else about the game has changed.
Step onto the pitch, and the first thing you notice is the game’s pace. The frenetic, arcade-style “ping-pong” passing of previous entries has finally been slowed down. The ball feels noticeably heavier, and players no longer glide across the turf as if wearing ice skates. If you try to blindly sprint down the wing and spam crosses, smart AI defenders will dispossess you with ease. You have to actually build play through the midfield, look for gaps, and wait for wingers to make clever overlapping runs. For fans craving an experience that mirrors real-world tactical battles, this is undoubtedly a major step in the right direction.
Goalkeeper performance is no longer entirely at the mercy of a random number generator (RNG), either. They react faster to close-range headers and don’t get beaten by the same long-range shots match after match like they used to. Of course, you still get those ridiculous moments where defenders trip over each other in the box, gifting the opponent an easy tap-in—after all, EA’s football games wouldn’t be complete without at least one absurd physics glitch popping up every week. But overall, the 90 minutes of play feel more balanced and rewarding.
The problems begin the moment you step off the pitch. Ultimate Team remains the flashy, microtransaction-driven engine that sits at the heart of the entire game. Admittedly, EA has made some welcome UI tweaks to speed up squad sorting, but the core loop remains unchanged: spend money, open packs, grind the Weekend League, and then watch helplessly as the expensive team you built is surpassed by others just a month later. Meanwhile, Career Mode has received only superficial updates—such as new cutscenes and minor tweaks to press conferences—while completely ignoring long-standing player requests for a deeper scouting system and more realistic contract negotiation mechanics.
If you simply want to pick up a controller, gather a few friends, and play a few realistic matches, FC 27 might well be the smoothest soccer simulation on the market. Just don’t expect revolutionary changes; beneath its flashy new gameplay veneer, it still relies on the same engine EA has been using for a decade.