The most refined and visually polished soccer game I've played this entire year

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EA Sports FC is an entertaining soccer game that feels more refined and visually polished than any of the sports games I’ve tried this year. It’s better than EA Sports Tactical Football and Captain Tsubasa: Ace combined. Although the controls are a little finicky, I’ve enjoyed scoring goals and managing teams for the past hour.

I’m no expert when it comes to soccer, so I always find it really interesting when games like EA Sports FC manage to keep me engaged. The game lives up to FIFA’s legacy and continues it through a new name. Despite the shift in title, the gameplay is still pretty much the same wherein I controlled players on a field and moved them around to score goals. But it also features a manager mode where I assembled a team beforehand and watched them play by themselves, which was very satisfying… at least, when I was winning. There are other features like training players, recruiting new ones via in-game purchases with earnable currency, and team-assembling too.

Despite the depth of the various systems, EA Sports FC does not have much of a learning curve.  I found the game easy to navigate and get the hang of. An in-depth tutorial also helped me learn the basics of the game—not to say that I was ever very confused by any of it.

EA Sports FC's controls were the only source of friction I encountered. Players were a little difficult to maneuver around the field. The finicky controls led to small moments of frustration where my player wouldn’t move how I'd intended, and it took some time for me to get used to how to handle everything.

But if you can move past that as I did, EA Sports FC is a lot of fun. It refines common themes in soccer games and simplifies gameplay to make a more comfortable experience. Most of the game modes are really enjoyable, even for a more casual football fan like me.