People say “It's the same game every year, just with updated squads” which has varying degrees of truth with each installment. FIFA 20 didn’t even launch with the updated squads. I’m not sure how accurate this year’s was given that I played it a few months after launch. They haven’t included Leeds United’s Elland Road stadium. Last year they introduced a brand new mode; Volta, which had its own storyline. This was a 5-a-side mode which remains in this year's game too, although I didn’t bother trying it this year.
In terms of main gameplay, things feel very similar to FIFA 20. I enjoyed FIFA 20, but thought there were some things that needed tweaking like set pieces. Set pieces feel the same here, so free kicks seem fine but it’s rare to get them, it’s rare to score from corners, and penalties still feel awkward.
Crossing was a huge problem last year, and now they seem more accurate, and you have a much higher chance of actually heading the ball (or at least on lower difficulties), rather than the game strongly favouring the defender. You may notice players will arc their body in order to win it.
Players sometimes make an effort to dodge tackles, so your player may jump and then carry on running with the ball.
In today’s game, many teams utilise a “sweeper keeper” so often pass to the keeper. This does happen in this game, but there’s plenty of silly passbacks then the keeper will panic and launch it out of play.
I think the referees are quite lenient. There were plenty of times where I aggressively flew into tackles and didn’t receive a card.
The biggest problem with the match engine is that many players are reluctant to make forward runs. Sometimes you can have the ball in midfield and stand still, and your surrounding players will also stand still - rather than making a forward run, anticipating the pass/through-ball. I think you can partially alleviate this somewhat by changing your tactics, but most teams have this problem by default.
I always thought EA prided themselves on authenticity but there’s still no sign of the VAR video technology and Juventus are still called Piemonte Calcio.
EA messed up Career mode last year, causing problems with scheduling, unrealistic results, and strange bugs like gamers were getting sacked for renewing contracts. It took them a while to fix some of the issues, but it still felt a lazy attempt. This time, they have spent a bit more time with career mode. The fixtures in the first year aren’t official, but at least they are sensibly scheduled. The results seemed very realistic to me. Training has changed so now your players train in groups and are assigned to a routine which you can play. Simulating gives you your previous best result. Training impacts your player’s fatigue and match sharpness.
Ultimate Team is a good mode in theory. You buy card packs to acquire players and items like attribute boosts, contract renewals etc. Even though you can play it in single player, if you lose connection; you are kicked out of the game with a 3-0 loss. It's a brutal punishment, because maybe you were on track to earn 500 coins, but then end up with nothing, a loss against you, and all your squad's contracts are 1 game closer to expiring. Like previous installments, I played several games until this happened, then abandoned the mode because it felt like a waste of time. There are “Legends”, so you can play with retired players like Zidane and Beckham. (This could have been included last year but I just didn’t notice it).
There’s a few annoying bugs where sometimes, some menus in career mode cannot be navigated as the game thinks you are scrolling up or down. Yet, you go to a different menu and it is completely fine. It seemed random which menu would break when I played.
When playing Tournament mode, it often selected the oldest save file by default - so be careful when loading games!
In career mode, your manager may turn up in a full player kit rather than the tracksuit/suit you specified. I’m sure the developers have intentionally put that in for the laugh. Surely it cannot be by mistake.
Overall, I think there are some improvements made but it’s not significant enough to rate it that much higher than FIFA 20. I felt like I wasn’t as enthusiastic for this year’s iteration either.
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after getting used to playing pes 2013 with updated squads for a long time, playing this at a friend's house was shocking. the defending is not bad, it's non existent. the gameplay is less realistic and less fun than a 10 year old game