Do not buy the game if you want to enjoy career mode
Career mode is worse than ever, even more broken than EA FC 25. I don’t know how they managed to make it worse, since EA FC 25’s career mode was already the worst. They keep adding stuff that nobody needs instead of fixing the real problems. The mode feels slow and heavy, and it’s annoying how your players feel like they’re being pulled back when running with the ball.
The game now seems to be all about passing. Wingers can’t dribble past the AI anymore, so you’re forced to keep passing, because dribbling doesn’t work well. Meanwhile, the AI can dribble past you easily, even doing what you want to do but better. In EA FC 25, there was a cool feature that let you dribble fast while still controlling the ball, but they removed it, and dribbling feels way worse because of it, completely ruining the feeling over wingers in the game.
After just an hour playing career mode, you can see lots of problems. The main strategy is now just passing until you get a chance, and the game feels slow and heavy, making it hard to control the ball or turn quickly. The AI has an easier time stealing the ball, they just stick their foot out and take it. Doesn't matter how fast your player is going or how fast the ball is traveling. The AI's defenders don’t move out of position, so you’re stuck passing around the box for a long time until you get a decent chance they probably just block.
AI runs are a little better than in EA FC 26, but still not as good as in FIFA 23, where fullbacks and midfielders made more natural runs. Overall, the game feels sluggish, as if players are running through quicksand.
They’ve added sliders to adjust gameplay instead of fixing the game itself. It’s like they don’t want to code a better game, so they just give us more sliders to tweak instead. It’s getting really frustrating, and the game still isn’t fun or smooth.