I’m really struggling to enjoy this game. The AI just feels far too limited. Runs, movement, and decision-making look completely hard-coded—players will literally turn away from a loose ball instead of fighting for it, even when winning it would be easy.
I don’t want to spend my time memorizing meta tactics, spamming cutbacks, or abusing engine quirks. If the only way to win is by exploiting weaknesses rather than playing actual football, something has gone wrong. The experience becomes repetitive, predictable, and ultimately boring.
Defensive behavior is especially frustrating. Backlines drop off automatically, opening space for the opponent no matter what instructions you set. Trigger an offside trap and they’ll step up a couple of meters, only to immediately backpedal again.
Passing and shooting feel noticeably worse after this patch—almost like the game is pushing players toward TOTY-level squads just to compete. Tackling leads to even more lucky rebounds in the opponent’s favor. Overall, the gameplay loop just feels miserable and unrewarding.
Right now, it’s a terrible experience, and it’s hard to understand how anyone is having fun with it.
I miss Fifa 12 were i used to only play with a Bronze squad. Last time i had real fun with this game.
That said AI was just as dumb then. And annoyingz but at least i had fun with it
And as far as restoring the skill gap and logic i disagree completely. Please tell me how this patch requires more skill?
If u think it was to hard before, maybe that was the skill gap?
And how logic is it for defenders to drop deep creating space, attacker running into obvious offside. Or players just standing there marked or even when the ball is in front of them just turn and run away from it. Its a long list of unlogical things in this game i havent even scratched the surface
I hear the frustration, I had that before this latest fix to the patch. I think fifa 13 was my favorite and fifa 17 was good too - back when they had cleaner code and didnt layer year upon year of updates. Right now, ea is going private so maybe the non-yearly demands of being a public company can help the devs actually clean out the code (which I think this last patch is actually aiming to do). Ultimately, I think Ea should have half a team working on cleaning the code for fc27 and have the team working on a ground up game for 28 and beyond. 2k is likely to enter the space of soccer sims and I think they could do a really good job if nba2k26 and pga2k25 are an indicators. I think ea could make a really cool ground up game too but i think they'd need to abandon catering to the FUT aspect so hard, it kills authentic style football in exchange for money and card packs, etc.
One of the best replies, for a very long time.
Your second paragraph sums up this game, perfectly!!!
