EA FC 26 review: "Ultimate Team's huge, divisive changes have me torn – FIFA's successor has moved away from serving football purists"

Each year, a significant portion of the gaming community serves its verdict on the new FIFA – sorry, FC – before they've even kicked a licensed ball in anger. (Admit it, you've already glanced at the above score and decreed it right or wrong.) In an attempt to address those preconceptions, EA Vancouver has built EA FC 26 around community feedback, with intriguing results. It's both faster, and slower. It's at times more intelligent, at others stupider. It's both more fun, and more frustrating. Schrödinger's favorite football game, if you will.

Let's dig into game speed, because this is the most pronounced – and profound – change. In addition to customizable user sliders, FC 25 quietly implemented two gameplay presets: 'Classic' and 'Simulation'. A year on, they evolve into 'Competitive' and 'Authentic'. These make for a marked difference in how the match engine handles. The former is the basis of online play, and all about gamer skill. It's rapid, with the onus on trick-stick skills and goals, goals, goals, as user-controlled players race about unaffected by fatigue. 'Authentic', meanwhile, prevails offline, with believable weather interference, tiredness effects, and lifelike errors applied to shooting, passing, or heading.

Explosive Gunners

The focus on pace and attacking play has long been clamored for by Ultimate Team die-hards and influencers. And 'Competitive' gameplay certainly delivers on those fronts. You want high-scoring games, bossed by explosive wingers, twinkle-toed CAMs and ruthless STs? They're here. Those players and their team-mates are super responsive too, with deadly runs into space and fewer frustrations surrounding input delay. 1-0 to the Arsenal? Try 5-1, or 7-4, or 8-2 – all in slick and speedy HD.

Now consider the flip side. Even with some new jockey animations, defending is brutal, as team-mates regularly lose their shape to aid those attacking outcomes and big scores. For years I've set my Rivals and Weekend League teams up in 4-5-1 or 4-1-4-1 formations to soak up attacks and tire opponents, with the hope of nicking a decisive goal after they've subbed off their exhausted 95-Pace forward. Any notion of that in FC 26 is dead. Improved keepers, and the removal of 'tacklebacks', help a little, but keeping clean sheets is now miracle work. Indeed, keeping the opposition under two goals is miracle work.

It's a shame, as a swathe of off-field Ultimate Team frustrations have been ironed out. Rivals progression, complete with occasional bonuses, delights. Silver items matter again thanks to the return of live tournaments focussed on cards with a max-OVR of 74. Pack percentages remain controversial, but feel pleasingly generous, spitting out coins more frequently than in previous editions. Decent players, too: I've already packed Toni Kroos and Lionel Messi. GK Evolutions are similarly stellar. Plus EA seems cognizant of how power curve wrecks the mode by March every year, with fewer OP special items available off the bat, and Evo upgrades largely based around Roles and PlayStyles, rather than ratings increases. Promising.

Different grass

Those who do wish to defend capably are better served in offline fixtures, such as those found within manager career. Here, gameplay is more gently paced than any FC or FIFA in recent memory. Sprint speed and skills still have an effect, but so does the tactical set-up of your back four (or five), while myriad variables found in real football come into play. Wind changes the trajectory of clearances and crosses, and a wet pitch can see the ball skid on or slow down mid-dribble. Fatigue really matters, as do your substitutions.

Neat fan-requested developments flesh the mode out further. The new manager carousel sees bosses poached or sacked around the footballing world, and each brings their tactical set-up to their new club, injecting variety. Even better are random events which imbue personality, and happily disrupt the match-match-match-transfer grind. Controlling West Ham as Irons favourite Carlos Tevez my experience evolved regularly. A bank error saw my transfer budget halved from £64 million to £32 million. Kyle Walker-Peters and El Hadji Malick Diouf were ruled out of a London derby at Arsenal after consuming 'dodgy food'. Mads Hermansen and Aaron Wan-Bissaka followed soon after thanks to a clash in training. I've lasted longer in the job than Graham Potter will, and am looking forward to what unfolds next.

If that isn't enough variety, all of this is fully customizable, too. At the outset you can manually assign points deductions and transfer embargoes for an extra challenge. Or play fresh short-term scenarios via Manager Live – such as building a new team of Galacticos around (Brazilian) Ronaldo, in order to unlock the Real Madrid 2002 Retro kit. A few legacy issues grate – the once-groundbreaking transfer negotiations cut-scenes have had their time – but the mix of authentic gameplay and off-field fun make manager career FC 26's most balanced, well-rounded mode.

Rush goalies

In its second year, five-a-side offering Rush has also been bolstered by quality-of-life improvements. FC 25's single biggest issue in this replacement for Volta was players rubber-banding their controller without being booted, and I've not encountered that issue once as yet. Derek Rae's commentary makes for a welcome alternative to the excitability of Fernando Palomo, while shorter celebrations, deeper chat options, and the opportunity to play as the keeper keep it neck and neck with Rematch on the small-sided kickabout front.

Fan-service touches are implemented outside of Rush, too. For all my frustrations with defending in 'Competitive' play, its new camera view helpfully showcases more of the pitch – and stadium too, increasing the sense of matchday atmosphere. Details such as seeing away fans celebrating in local pubs enhance it further.

UI changes aren't merely cosmetic, either. A second bar below your player name denotes his or her skill move rating and foot preference, and can be further customized, while accessibility features include a high-contrast mode that switches out traditional kits for single blocks of color.

For the majority, however, a new FC game all comes down to Ultimate Team – and this year it's going to prove more divisive than ever. Not, for once, because of its pack-opening mechanic, but those tweaks to gameplay speed, and fatigue, and any hope of smart, sound defensive play. The community has spoken, and EA has answered with all the pace and tricks and goals demanded of it. The move is, in one swoop, both understandable and deflating. Online, FC 26 is categorically not a game for the footballing purist – but how many of them are actually left?

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