Extremely disappointing
1 out of 5 — Extremely disappointing
FC 27 has been an extremely frustrating experience for me. I mainly play The Grounds, and I honestly cannot understand how the gameplay has regressed so much compared with FC 26.
When you buy a new game, the minimum you expect is for it to improve on the previous one. Unfortunately, that is not the case with FC 27. In my opinion, the gameplay is significantly worse than FC 26, to the point where FC 27 barely feels like a football game anymore.
Matches have turned into a constant race where, if you slow down or try to stop, you simply get hit and lose the ball. Protecting the ball feels almost impossible. You cannot properly slow down, look around and decide where to make your next pass. Instead, the gameplay often feels like you have to pass the ball somewhere — anywhere — before another player crashes into you and takes it away.
The player responsiveness is also extremely frustrating. There is a noticeable delay between my controller inputs and the player's actions, which makes the gameplay feel slow and unresponsive. As a result, passes are frequently made in the wrong direction, and asking the CPU AI for a pass often produces the wrong result. Sometimes the ball simply goes somewhere completely different from where I intended.
The overall gameplay feels terrible. There is almost no freedom to change pace or create space naturally. Trying to slow down, accelerate, turn or change direction often results in simply being run over by another player. This does not feel like football; it feels like constantly trying to avoid collisions.
The match experience itself is also unreliable. Every so often, something goes wrong with a match. I have experienced situations where I am removed from a match because of a matchmaking error before the game even starts, the game gets stuck while waiting for the match to begin, or the game becomes stuck after the match while waiting to load the match rating and return the teams to the lobby.
These issues completely ruin the experience.
Career Mode also has some very frustrating details, especially when it comes to unlicensed Italian teams. I understand that licensing restrictions exist, but I find it disappointing that EA does not seem to take the extra step of at least creating kits with colours and designs that resemble the real teams.
I am an Inter Milan fan, and seeing the kit used for the unlicensed version of the club is honestly terrible. It negatively affects the immersion and makes Career Mode feel much less authentic.
In my opinion, it would actually be better to give players the ability to edit these kits in the same way they can customise a created club, rather than forcing us to use these generic and poorly designed kits. At least allowing players to customise the colours, patterns and overall appearance would make the experience much more enjoyable while still working within the licensing limitations.
These details may seem minor, but when you are playing a long Career Mode, they have a significant impact on immersion and the overall experience.
I am 40 years old and I have been playing FIFA since 1994, and later the EA SPORTS FC series. I have been playing this franchise for more than 30 years, so I have experienced an enormous number of different versions of the game. I am not expecting perfection, but I do expect a new release to provide a meaningful improvement over the previous game.
Instead, having FC 26 already, buying FC 27 genuinely feels like I threw my money away.
For me, FC 27 is a huge step backwards from FC 26. The gameplay is frustrating, unresponsive and unreliable, and it simply does not feel like a football game anymore.
1 out of 5. I regret buying it.
