First impression

So, I received EA FC 27 as a gift and decided to give it a chance, even though I said I wouldn't play the series anymore starting with this edition.

As a first impression, after playing a few matches last night, the gameplay is much better. It feels much closer to real football.

The lack of AI assistance in defence actually helps instead of getting in the way. If you can anticipate what your opponent is going to do, defending works really well. In previous editions, it sometimes felt like the game was literally pulling your defenders away with a magnet, while the attacker would just run through on goal and there was nothing you could do to catch him. Now it feels different. It actually resembles real football.

The attacking side is also pretty good. It's not perfect, but attackers don't constantly make ridiculous runs towards the opponent's goal while being permanently offside, and they don't hide behind defenders nearly as often as before.

So yes, the gameplay is actually very good. Please don't ruin it with updates again. Please! 😂 It already feels slightly less fluid tonight compared to last night, but maybe that's just my impression.

As for the rest of the game, I can't really say it's worth the money.

The new Career Mode features are interesting, but they also feel somewhat useless. The mode has basically been the same for years and it needed some serious updates.

Honestly, Football Manager 2008 has more features in some areas.

Why can't we have U19 or U17 teams in EA FC?

You have licenses for all the UEFA competitions, which is great, but the career experience itself becomes boring very quickly. There are too few leagues. Ideally, every country should have all of its available divisions, and weaker leagues should also have lower divisions.

In most leagues outside the major ones, Career Mode becomes boring because you can't even get relegated if there is no lower division. The domestic cup competitions also don't really behave like they do in real football.

Transfers should be much closer to reality as well. There should be more competition between rival clubs for the same players. That kind of system existed in games from 2008, but somehow we still don't have it properly in EA FC 27.

The scouting system should also be significantly improved, as should youth academies and player development.

The Ground is supposed to be some kind of open-world experience, but there really aren't that many meaningful features.

It feels like the same repetitive stuff from offline Career Mode combined with Clubs.

And speaking of Clubs... the game still kicks me out of the mode and gives me an error after finishing a match roughly every two games.

It feels like you simply added some new colors and presentation to certain matches while keeping essentially the same boring features underneath.

And now, the crown jewel: Ultimate Team.

This is where I start getting a little frustrated.

It's honestly ridiculous to see the same bugs that have been reported by players for years still showing up.

For example, you complete an SBC and when you submit it, the game kicks you out of Ultimate Team. When you come back, the squad you used for the SBC has been changed and suddenly your chemistry doesn't work anymore.

It's not a huge problem by itself, but it wastes time for absolutely no reason.

Another small but annoying bug: sometimes when you enter a match, the opponent's formation is displayed incorrectly, with attackers and midfielders appearing in completely wrong positions or similar things.

This bug has existed for years. I genuinely didn't expect to see it in a brand-new game.

Two major problems with the Transfer Market.

First, the coin distribution warnings.

I've already been kicked out of the Transfer Market around three times within a relatively short period and received warnings about coin distribution.

I bought a player for 1,200 coins and sold him for 1,600.

Wow! You caught the cheater. 😂

I have the unfortunate experience of being wrongly banned from the market in the previous game, so I understand how many players feel about this.

It really doesn't look good if this is how cheating is being handled in the new game.

Second, the state of the market at the beginning of the game.

This is partially related to the first point.

I find it ridiculous that some players already have the best cards in the game in their squads and teams worth hundreds of millions of coins so soon after release.

There should at least be some kind of daily limit on how many FC Points a player can purchase.

And if some of these players are using something illegal to obtain that many coins and build these squads so quickly, it should actually be easier to detect them at this stage of the game.

If there are already accounts with tens of millions of coins, those accounts should be relatively easy to investigate.

The same applies to market automation and bots. If someone is using software to instantly buy thousands of players the moment they are listed on the market, surely that should be much easier to detect than banning legitimate players who buy a few dozen cards and make a profit from trading.

I really hope EA improves this part, because after what happened to me in FC 26, seeing the same warnings again in FC 27 is not exactly reassuring.

Overall, FC 27 has surprised me with the gameplay. I genuinely expected it to be worse, and right now I actually enjoy playing matches more than I did in FC 26.

But outside of gameplay, there is still a huge amount of work to be done.

Please, EA — don't ruin the gameplay with the next update, and please start fixing the problems that have been reported for years.