The time has come – I have tested the FC 25 career mode! How does the new game play? We start with the many setting options, the new menu in career mode and dive into team management, the youth academy and the new options for customising the game.
And off we go! Zinedine Zidane welcomes us to the new, very successful intro for the game, invites us into his chic office and explains the meaning of tactics in football, accompanied by a few game scenes. This gets us in the mood for the new FCIQ tactics system.
It’s always a bit like Christmas when the new EA game comes out. New music, new visuals, new menu navigation. Pure anticipation and goosebumps! But before you dive into the new career mode, there’s a whole range of things to choose from.
Do you want to play with weather influences? Then the ball takes a different trajectory when it is very windy, the players can slip or the ball becomes slippery. Little, strong, medium, how much can it be? This question is asked again and again in career mode. Never before have you been able to customise the game so much.
In the gameplay settings, you can choose between ‘Dynamic’ and ‘Realistic’ – the sliders are then adjusted accordingly. With realistic gameplay, the players run significantly slower, with dynamic everything is more arcade, kick and rush. But of course you can also customise the sliders as before to create the perfect level of difficulty.
There are now some really important decisions to be made in career mode that will have a decisive influence on the character of the game.
Board expectations: Should it be possible to be sacked as a coach, yes or no?
Transfers: Should transfers be possible? Or should there be a ‘transfer embargo’ for a few seasons? This way you can save edited scenarios
Scouting: Should players have to be scouted as before? Should scouting be quick or should the scouts take longer? If you switch off scouting, you can see the values of ALL players immediately in the game. This is a completely new experience, allows you to find talent quickly, but takes away the magic of the unknown. Each to his own
Rush youth tournaments: How long should the halves last? And should the youth players play at their current level or at their maximum potential? So you can give them
Training plans: Do you want to play with training plans? And how much impact should they have on player development? How quickly do players recover after intensive training? You can also switch training exercises on or off directly before the match
Player development: should the youth players develop quickly, slowly or normally? And the players in the first team
These significantly extended setting options are absolutely fantastic, because they allow everyone to customise the game as they wish. We’ve been waiting years for this, so a big thumbs up to EA.
All you need to know about career mode – you can reed it here.
And then the first career begins!
The familiar intro to the start of a career from previous years appears. As with most of the cutscenes, nothing has changed, although there are different perspectives later on. For example, during the transfer talk – EA has changed the camera perspective a little.
The first important innovation: the newspaper with sports news has been replaced by a social media stream with comments, including emojis. This looks modern and shows humour, a clear improvement on the static news. Sports reporter Fabrizio Romano is also quick to get started with transfer news.
You can play with men’s and women’s teams and even switch between men’s and women’s teams. Before you start, you can choose from many coaches. In Germany, unfortunately, only the BVB coach, currently Nuri Sahin, and the coaches of the third division are available for licence reasons. However, all coaches of the German Bundesliga women’s teams are included. Even those from England.
The real faces of real coaches from Pep Guardiola to Carlo Ancelotti look much better – the new Cranium technology does a great job here. This becomes even clearer when you create your own coach. You can fulfil almost any wish here. Choose from almost 200 eyebrow types, conjure up freckles, scars or moles on your face.
Finally, all available hairstyles are customisable. Above all, however, you can build your face so that it comes really close to the original. Or use pre-designed head shapes. Green hair is possible – the editor is finally the way you want it to be. There are also more options for outfits, such as trousers with club stickers.
The new menu – takes some getting used to, but with good shortcuts
The menu has been completely reorganised and adapted to the layout already familiar from FUT. This is a change, as was already the case with FC 24. At the beginning, it’s quite a search to find your way around. The control centre is restructured, you see news, the newly introduced ‘Tasks’ bundled with the date. Then you have to work your way through menu items such as Team, Transfer or Office, the menu bar is now at the top.
Shotcuts are great: You can use the left sprint button to select a quick overview with the most important menu items, for example. You will quickly get used to this and will soon be flying through the new menu navigation.
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What has been achieved: Everything about the youth academy is in one screen. Youth players, youth soccuts, youth tournaments. That makes sense and is more systematically organised. However, it’s even more complicated to access a calendar via the Office menu. This was even better organised in Fifa 23. Everything is bundled under Team: Team management, team centre, tactics.
FCIQ is a new world – tactics, player roles, training plans and scouting
Then we come to the new centrepiece of the game, which significantly changes the character of the career mode and offers a much greater depth of play in the direction of micro-management. EA has summarised this under the heading FCIQ.
As before, you can set basic tactics such as wing play or counter-attacking – and buy suitable ‘coaches’ to improve the corresponding parts of the team in the existing game system. However, the player roles that can be assigned are a completely new system. Combined with the spatial coverage that goes hand in hand with these roles.
This opens up a wide range of possibilities – because a striker can now be a ‘false 9’ and also work towards the back, or wait for balls up front as a push forward and classic 9. Defenders can be forwards and knock balls away, or they can become co-playing defenders. The full-backs on the offensive, running through to the baseline? Should the midfielders work at the back or initiate attacks?
Even the goalkeeper can play along or stick to the line, with more or less risk. In addition to the basic formation such as 4-4-2 (the most playable formation in FC 25), you can give the boys or girls specific instructions from the more than 50 player roles.
If this is all too complicated for you, you can also use the AI’s instructions, and there are detailed tutorials in the game. You can then save your chosen formation.
FCIQ also influences training and scouting
Training will also be more detailed: there is a new automatic feature here – you can automatically prescribe more or less intensive training for players with certain energy or bite values. Here you can work out training plans to your heart’s content if you want to. However, you can also customise each player according to their fitness and energy levels
The new player roles also play a role in the training plans and can thus be trained – starting in the youth academy. In this way, the club can be given a playing philosophy that is practised by everyone from the D-youth to the professionals. Pretty cool!
And when it comes to scouting, you can now search in even greater detail for individual player roles and playing systems. You can search for the professional or player type that fits exactly into the tactics and game system you have created. Here, too, you can micromanage to your heart’s content and get the best out of your team and players. But you can also leave it at that and just use the rough tactical guidelines – and compensate for the deficits in the gameplay.
The new youth academy – with really young players!
The second major innovation in career mode is the youth academy, nicely summarised in one menu item. The first important message: the youth players look really young, not like 30-year-old family men. Young faces that age, that’s real progress. The faces are not perfect thanks to Cranium, but they are somehow closer to looking realistic.
As soon as you have four outfield players and a goalkeeper, you can play a Rush youth tournament – that’s a really cool feature. However, not in the fancy Nike-Ruhs stadium, which is reserved for FUT, the tournaments take place on a training pitch without spectators. But it’s really fun to try out your youth players on the small pitch. You can test them out – and success gives their development a boost.
You can now scout youth players in 160 countries (but not the scouts for adult professionals). So getting youth players from San Marino is really fun and gives the youth player much more individuality.
Team and transfers – new look, otherwise as before
Now let’s take a look at our team. The menus have somehow been reorganised, horizontal instead of vertical arrangement, larger font, but otherwise little has changed. During the transfer, the familiar video cut scenes appear, albeit – as mentioned – from different camera angles. Transfer ratings are as before, the sequences for new signings are as before.
A first summary of the career start: lots of individuality, many settings, more depth of play
This first impression of the new career mode is promising. Yes, not everything is really new – the new menu navigation is a familiar EA trick of packaging old wine in new skins. You soon get used to it. And you could certainly film more and new sequences in transfer talks, the arrival of new players at the club or the start of a career.
The big plus is the almost infinite customisation options, from the design of the manager or your own player to the basic settings of the game. That’s a big step forward. How exactly the FCIQ tactics system affects the gameplay has yet to be tested – but tactics fans and micromanagers can let off steam with training plans and tactics settings to their heart’s content. A clear step in the direction of more football manager.
Let’s give it a try, the career mode certainly looks pretty smart in its new guise.