EA Sports FC 27 Review – Breaking New Ground (Or Trying To)

EA Sports’ yearly football simulation games are perhaps more synonymous with incremental annual upgrades masquerading as big, splashy improvements than most other franchises in the video games industry, but EA Sports FC 27 is something of a rare breed for the series.

Meaningful changes and additions are something we hope to see in new FC releases pretty much every year, but FC 27 actually delivers those changes. Unfortunately, the results are uneven- while some improvements actually do change things for the better, other flagship changes feel like they could have done with more time in the oven.

"Meaningful changes and additions are something we hope to see in new FC releases pretty much every year, but FC 27 actually delivers those changes."

Let’s start with the positive stuff, and not just because it tackles the area of the game that I personally pour most of my time into every year- career mode. EA Sports FC 27 makes a number of changes to the manager career experience, and for the most part, unlike most years, those changes actually do end up being as meaningful as they’re made out to be. Chief among them is the overhauled transfer system, which addresses some of the series’ longest running career mode issues in clever ways.

Gone are the stilted and awkward cutscenes that would see your manager negotiating transfer deals and contracts with managers and players, with a new and overhauled system instead slotting in. Each transfer negotiation is now a multi stage affair, requiring you to scout out players, enquire about their availability, and engage in negotiations with both club and player before finalizing deals. Each step feels much more deliberate now, with negotiations taking longer and requiring more thought and actual engagement with the mechanics.

More granular negotiation options are now on offer, allowing you to offer deals structured in a variety of ways to navigate your transfer budget, while clubs and players also have more realistic financial expectations going into negotiations, effected more believably in turn by players’ form. Clubs can also take their time to mull over offers submitted by you, while you also have other tools to resort to, such as publicly declaring interest in a player in order to pressure reluctant clubs into negotiations.

Though things are still not quite on the same level as something like the Football Manager series where transfers are concerned, the new system definitely does make for more believable and engaging experience, often even getting you embroiled in legitimate, long drawn-out transfer sagas. There’s also new cutscenes sprinkled in, as well as an entirely new hub with a slick new interface, all coming together to finally deliver the long overdue overhaul to the transfer system that we’ve been hoping to see in career mode for years.

"More granular negotiation options are now on offer, allowing you to offer deals structured in a variety of ways to navigate your transfer budget"

Career mode makes several other solid improvements as well. For instance, there’s the new dynamic overall system, which sees players’ overall ratings fluctuating through the season based on their form, fitness, how they are training, and other factors. Morale is one of those factors as well, of course, which means effectively juggling your squad and ensuring that your best players are getting enough minutes becomes much more crucial than it has been in previous years’ career modes.

Rival clubs also behave more realistically in terms of how they go about building their squads, which means AI transfers in later seasons in long-running career mode saves are less outlandish than they tend to be in most entries. The repetitive press and media interaction cutscenes have also been replaced, allowing for things to keep moving at a better pace. With a couple of significant overhauls and a handful of smaller improvements coming together, FC 27’s career mode feels fresher and more enjoyable than it has in years.

When it comes to the actual on pitch gameplay, the improvements are much more granular- albeit still worthy of praise. EA Sports FC 27 allows players to swap between competitive and authentic gameplay styles, with the former being closer to the arcadey style that FIFA and FC entries have usually been known for, and authentic gameplay going instead for slower, more deliberate, simulation focused gameplay. There is, of course, plenty of fun to be had either way, especially with the tried and true arcadey style of the series, though personally I found myself greatly enjoying the authentic style.

Much greater control is given to you, making everything from tacking and closing down to making runs and sweeping with the goalkeeper much less automated than you may have been expected to in past years. FC 27’s on pitch gameplay feels much slower, more skill oriented, and much more tactical this way, and though it can certainly take some getting used to, I’ve found it to be quite enjoyable so far. Set pieces have also seen significant tweaks, allowing you to set up corners and free kicks with much greater precision- though that also means opposing players are also much more adept at scoring with free kicks or driving in deadly crosses from corners now.

"Conceptually, The Grounds is a great idea, though unfortunately, it feels like it could have done with more fleshing out."

Unfortunately, not all of EA Sports FC 27’s big swings are success stories. In fact, the game’s biggest new addition, the social hub known as The Grounds, is perhaps where it is most disappointing. Similar (at least in a very superficial sense) to NBA 2K’s The City, FC 27’s The Grounds mode allows players to navigate a small open world town that serves as both a social hub and a hub for a variety of football related activities.

These range from 5v5 Rush games and 3v3 matches to 1v1 and 2v2 affairs and even minigames like balloon ball (which tasks you with, you guessed it, bursting balloons with a football). Outside of that, there are stores to shop at, targets to shoot down all over the map, football facts and tidbits to find in the environment, and more.

Conceptually, The Grounds is a great idea, though unfortunately, it feels like it could have done with more fleshing out. For starters, there isn’t nearly enough content in here to keep players meaningfully engaged for a long stretch of time. Then there’s the fact that the movement feels stiff at times, while the town itself can also feel a little dull.

Though there’s some nice environmental variety across its three zones (inspired by Britain, Argentina, and France), overall, it feels like a static location with not much depth and interactivity, and not nearly enough content to keep you engaged. Even worse are the supremely awkwardly voiced cutscenes that se real world footballers like Kylian Mbappe and Paulo Dybala speaking with your avatar character to deliver some of the most painfully milquetoast athletic advice the human brain could imagine. While I don’t doubt that The Grounds is an idea that can lead to a legitimately great mode down the line – and hopefully will – right now it feels half baked and shallow.

Overall, EA Sports FC 27 is definitely somewhat uneven with some of its bigger additions, but in other, rather critical areas, it does manage to make several meaningful improvements. Career mode in particular sees some long overdue improvements with transfers in particular, while the on pitch gameplay is also suitably addictive and enjoyable in the state that the game has launched. The Grounds could definitely do with significant post launch upgrades, from new content to crucial layers of gameplay polish, but by and large, FC 27 feels like a much needed change up for EA’s stagnating football series.

This game was reviewed on PlayStation 5.