After reviewing the NBA this year, I found myself itching to play more sports games. There is a very specific itch that these games scratch. I went into FC 26 enthusiastically. I don’t ever play soccer games, and rarely watch the matches. So I came at this with a completely new player perspective. 

FC 26 is fun, but it did not offer the level of control that I was expecting, especially in the way of playing defense. I also felt as though there was a mismatch between all of the AI on the field. While I did like what I played, I found myself wanting to be done with the game sooner than I had hoped. 

Game Modes

Career mode is my favorite in any sports game, normally. While I enjoy this career mode and some of the fun side things it offers, I do not fully enjoy playing this game mode. It’s hard for me to place, but something feels like it’s missing here. 

Before I dive into how the mode works, I need to talk about this character customization, which I really like. To start with, the character models are gorgeous; they really captured the skin and hair details well in this character creator. I decided to play as a man to attempt to recreate my NBA character, but you can play a career as a woman as well. There’s a lot of flair you can add to your character that goes beyond tattoos. You can customize how he runs, celebrates, and more. 

The character customization was extremely fun, though. I love how my character looks. I also love the bells and whistles included in this customization.

Once you’re out of the character customization, you’re brought to some incredibly clean UI. Now I had to wait to play a game and go through the simulated matches. Once you do this, you’ll get your chance to play your character. I did not have a good time playing any normal position on the field, but as long as I was playing, we won. Anything simulated was a loss, which I found disappointing. Part of the reason it was so hard for me to have fun is because of the AI. They never seemed to be on the ball, and I really didn’t want to be calling the plays. I had one match where they constantly ran out of bounds. 

After getting annoyed, I switched to goalie, but this is where the game's awkward controls take the forefront. Nothing about playing goalie is comfortable, even after changing around the controls. I find that this game has too many buttons to do simple actions, so you end up using almost the whole controller's worth of buttons to complete something that should be simple, at least in theory. Regardless, I found playing as the goalie to be a much better experience simply because you are not beholden to the weird camera angle and are much less dependent on your AI allies. 

There is a lot to like about FC 26, even as someone who doesn’t particularly like soccer. One of the game modes that surprisingly drew my attention was Clubs, which allows you to compete online and completely deck out your character in earnable rewards. I only played a few matches, but it was a blast, and if I return to the game, Clubs will be one of the biggest reasons that I do. It's fun to play this game online, even though there doesn’t seem to be as much skill involved. I was able to keep up with seasoned players with little to no issue, though that could just be how matchmaking was handled. 

While I didn’t spend much time in the other game modes, there is one last thing I’ll be calling attention to, and that is the training minigames. For a newcomer, I find these to be very important, and I look for them in every sports game that I play. The training minigames are superb and are the sole reason I was getting better at the game in the first place. They’re also just fun to play. 

Controls and Feel

Playing the game itself is fine, up until a point where the controls and AI become too much to ignore. Specifically, playing Defense feels simultaneously too difficult and wickedly simple. Which is why I found myself being confused about why the AI could never properly play Defense on my team. Even after adjusting the difficulty, it's as if teammate AI continues to falter, and it's not just on Defense. 

As for the other controls, shooting feels like it has a bit too much of a learning curve. Despite not following these games at all, I kept hearing about an overhauled player experience. I did some digging on the official website and even went back and played the previous entry. Interestingly enough, FC 26 feels better in every department aside from shooting. I didn’t like defending much in the previous entry either. With all of that being said, there is polish here that I really appreciated. FC 26 has fantastic ball weight, and you can really feel your players running up and down the field. While playing goalie, the way the character moves and feels is superb. While the highlight for playing Defense is how natural tackling feels, it's so smooth that I didn’t realize I was even doing it right until I paid more attention to the UI.

Final Thoughts 

While I found most of FC 26 fun, I was unable to click with the game as a whole because of the AI and weird control scheme. There are too many control inputs to do simple actions, which I find odd. This is especially apparent when playing as a goalie. 

I also found myself missing the ability to customize my UI and HUD completely. There are some customization options. I disliked most of the base options, including the angle of the camera, which I promptly changed for each gamemode. I also wish that the AI were more consistent, especially for your teammates. 

Review Guidelines
75

EA Sports FC 26

Good

FC 26 is fine for a while, but the longer I played, the more I became annoyed with the control scheme. The AI was a big fun killing factor, and no matter how many times I changed the game's difficulty, it never got better. Still, I had fun with a few of the game modes and love the training games.


Pros
  • Fantastic training games
  • Good weight to the players and the ball
  • Slick UI
Cons
  • AI is lacking in all areas. Especially on your team.
  • There are far too many button presses to do basic things, especially when playing goalie.

This review is based on a retail PS5 copy provided by the publisher.

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