EA Sports FC 26 Review: The series’ least revolutionary entry in years

When the first trailer was released for EA Sports FC 26, it was almost entirely themed around complaints about FC 25. It’s a bold strategy to try to sell an audience on a game by explaining why the last one was bad, but that’s been the case for annualised sports games for years.

While some may think that the FCs, NBA 2Ks, and Maddens of this world are propped up solely by the casual fans who purchase them, Call of Duty, and nothing else, sports games have some of the most dedicated, vocal, and largely ignored fan bases across gaming. The rise of the pseudo live service attachments to these $70 products has only accelerated that.

But now, by selling the game on the idea that EA is finally listening to the hardcore fans, there can be no room for failure. Every nitpick, decade-long issue, and anti-consumer practice would have to be addressed. Neglected modes reborn, and Ultimate Team’s status as a football-themed slot machine scaled back. While EA Sports FC 26 is a solid entry into the series, it’s far from the moment that will bring back the players who put in their transfer requests years ago.

The issue with breaking down the gameplay of an EA Sports FC game is how quickly things can change. Literally in the middle of writing this review, a patch has been released that changes the way players move with the ball and changes the reaction times of defenders. The game we were sent is not the game players are now playing. It will be a completely different game in a months time, and unrecognizable a month after that.

Personally, we preferred the version of the game that launched in early access. This first patch has already made players feel more clunky, and error-prone. It’s also frustrating that EA used the example of balls not bouncing away from players after a tackle as an example in the game’s first trailer, and it still happens constantly.

PlayStyles and Roles remain central to how players react on the pitch, and are the two most important factors in picking which player is the best for your team. These abilities determine if a player can shoot with the outside of their boot, or perform certain animations. It goes a long way to making players perform like their real-life counterparts, even if it renders players without these PlayStyles and Roles virtually useless.

Love it or loathe it, the game’s main mode for over a decade now has been Ultimate Team. Ahead of the launch of this year’s game, EA proudly announced that it would reduce the “power curve” in the Ultimate Team game mode. What fans took this to mean is that extremely high-rated teams would be difficult to achieve, and that promo cards wouldn’t come as quickly as in previous years. In reality, slowing down the power curve has been an excuse to make the game significantly harder for people who aren’t willing to spend additional money on packs.

Rewards for playing the game have been greatly reduced, meaning less packs, unless you’re willing to spend. Getting the crazy early-game teams is just as easy as it ever has been for those willing to splash the cash, but the free players have suffered massively. There was already a ridiculous disadvantage to not spending money in Ultimate Team, and this year’s changes make it even worse.

Game modes have had a moderate refresh, with the welcome return of knock-out cups and the upcoming gauntlet mode, which will see players be forced to use different teams throughout a series of matches. Champions, the mode’s ultra-competitive offering, is now split into two different sections so less skilled, or less rich, players can have a chance at decent, if once again reduced, rewards.

Ultimate Team is still where we spend the majority of our time with the game, and the prospect of building out a team that’s good enough to compete in FUT Champions is a compelling one, we’re just disappointed that the promise of scaling back the game mode hasn’t come to pass, and instead feels like another level to apply pressure on non-paying players.

Clubs remain FC’s most social mode, and is rapidly growing in popularity as players turn away from Ultimate Team. In Clubs, you play as one player on the team, while your friends, or the AI, play as the others. The game mode is about playing your position effectively and working together with your teammates. In reality, it’s about your friends wishing death upon you after you’ve tried to lash in a 40-yarder with your tiny right back.

While the pitch is still, and will probably always be filled with 9ft tall players with pink afros, the new Archetypes make building a specific type of player easier. You can also now register for three different clubs at once.

There’s something extremely pure about Clubs that no other game mode retains, and it’s the sense of pure fun that comes along with it. While there has been some effort to introduce a currency system and cosmetics, the Clubs community is just so steadfast in having a laugh.

The mode was so untouched for years that it seemed inevitable that it would be quietly removed altogether, but the groundswell of popularity it has enjoyed in the last few years has totally revived it.

On the other hand, Career Mode is in desperate need of a loan spell away to regain its confidence. The player career and manager career modes in EA’s games exist in an odd space. If you’re really hardcore about building up your team and your tactics, you’re probably already a Football Manager fan.

Sure, things are awkward this year since you’ve not had a new game in a while, but EA Sports FC 26 doesn’t do anything that would saite someone who considers themselves a Poundshop Pep Guardiola.

Clearly inspired by fan-created challenges and the popularity of “I took Woking to the Champions League in 6 seasons” style YouTube videos, EA Sports FC 26 now allows players to design and share manager mode challenges online.

EA should be commended for the spirit with which these were added; it’s ultimately just an easy way to do things that friends have been doing for years, but again the whole mode suffers from being a lacking imitation of Sports Interactive’s perennially popular beast. Career mode also still suffers from constant unrealistic transfers, another thing that was specifically called out in the pre-release marketing material as something EA had fixed.

For an entry that was supposed to be the one that fixed all the problems that the player base had, EA Sports FC 26 is one of the least revolutionary games in the series in years. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’ll be used in the future as the prime example of these games never changing.

If you’re into Ultimate Team like I am, there’s still a lot of fun to be had there, but I can’t pretend I’m not unhappy about the unsubtle moves to reduce the amount of rewards free players can earn. It’s a further move that’ll turn players away from a game mode that already has one of the most deflated communities in all of gaming.

Outside of EA’s money-making machine, the rest of the game gets some light touches, but little to shout about. If you were burned out on EA Sports 25, EA Sports FC 26 is a season to sit on the bench.