EA FC 25's Player Career Mode Fixes My Biggest Issue Over the Last Few Years

I’m an EA FC career mode addict. Whenever I’m unsure of what I fancy playing, it’s my go-to. Whenever I finish a long day of work and get my child to sleep? Career mode. Can’t sleep? Yep, nothing like a career mode session before breakfast.

You can imagine how thrilled I was, then, when this year EA placed equal importance on the mode after years of it being left in the dust in favor of Ultimate Team. From Rush integration and Youth tournaments to player roles and revamped menus, there’s a lot to like, but my favorite feature is how much of the early game I can now skip.

EA FC 25’s Career Mode Finally Respects My Time

When you jump into EA FC (or FIFA before it), there’s always an element of repetition. You create your player, set their stats, and then go through the motions of training and leveling them to reach the first team.

It’s par for the course with the “rags to riches” football fantasy, sure, but when you’ve done it every year for the last two decades it starts to wear thin. Hitting new goal-scoring records while still being rated 78 in the Premier League and not getting called up for my international squad is all too common — but not this year.

I spoke to EA during a trip to the Romania studio earlier this year, and they told me they’d been inspired by MMOs like World of Warcraft and the way they don’t force players to start fresh with a new release.

That means when I jumped into EA FC I could create a player up there with the best in the world right from the jump, or I could choose to be more realistic with it. I found a nice middle ground, with an overall rating of 82 for my 20-year-old wonderkid CAM from Essex, UK, meaning there’s a high ceiling but I’m not starting off too powerful.

A Dedication To Roleplaying

That may also sound like table stakes for many sports games, but being able to skip straight to the point in career mode that you want to makes it feel more like a sort of football toybox.

Assigning stats and PlayStyles to build out an NBA 2K-like player build allows for a roleplay fantasy the likes of which we’ve not seen in the series in years, especially when allowing you to change your player’s position partway through the season. Can my lanky CAM become a striker during an injury crisis and adapt to a new role? Will they move to a defensive role in the latter stages of their career? These are all fun scenarios to attempt.

By letting you pick your own starting point, it’s possible to make this year’s game feel like an extension of your created player’s career from EA FC 24, and that’s something I’ve been looking forward to for years.

I will concede, however, that it’s not perfect. This year’s game feels particularly buggy, with menus getting stuck regularly. Transfers also seem to be bonkers at times. I jumped into the Arsenal team and the club looked to sell Mikel Merino almost immediately to a Premier League rival. It also drives me up the wall when I miss out on a big transfer because my attacking midfielder didn’t tackle enough players to earn a move.

I’m hopeful these things will be ironed out in time, but for now, this is the happiest I’ve been with career mode in years.