EA Sports FC 27 Review: Football Goes Open World Without Moving Forward

Over two decades of football games from Electronic Arts have booted up with the most mnemonic of audio cues in video game history: “EA Sports. It's in the game.” Never has the FIFA series, now rebranded as EA Sports FC, needed to heed its own message more than it does today. Once dedicated to everything that happens on the pitch, EA's arcadey football sims now care more about everything outside the game. The main act isn't as important as the circus around it.

EA Sports FC 27 perhaps best represents the franchise's continued outward expansion. Beyond Ultimate Team, the controversial, money-spinning centrepiece mode driving the series' priorities, the game adds a new open-world mode called The Grounds, where you can play street football matches and minigames with other players online. The annual football carnival keeps pitching more tents, each with a ticket booth.

EA markets the mode as a social hub where players can get a taste of football culture that starts on the streets before heading to the stadium. But essentially, the mode is just another way for the company to monetise FC games, because stuffing them with loot boxes, premium passes, and slot-machine-like player packs, then charging full price each year, isn't enough. On pitch-innovations and much-needed gameplay improvements take a backseat, and the belly of the beast grows.

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But here's the thing: After spending an unhealthy number of hours in FC 27's social hub, I must begrudgingly accept that the new mode is a lot of fun. It is stupid and silly and juvenile, but it is annoyingly engaging. The mode has matchmaking issues; it is prone to bugs and feels stiff and clunky—but it has a low-stakes, light-hearted social vibe that contrasts with other intensely competitive online modes. Quite unexpectedly, FC 27's new open world mode, despite its problems, is an overall positive addition.

To EA's credit, it has other improvements, too. The transfer market in Career mode has finally been overhauled. Gone are the awkwardly silent and absurdly comedic player negotiation cutscenes. Instead, FC 27 brings a no-nonsense transfer system that integrates TransferRoom, an industry-leading football transfer-value platform used by professional clubs, and its proprietary Expected Transfer Value (xTV) data metric for realistic player valuations. Transfers now also include detailed clauses, from performance bonuses to buybacks, adding much-needed authenticity to Career mode.

Career mode transfers have been overhauled in FC 27
Photo Credit: EA

Transfer economics have improved, too. You can structure transfer fees over multiple instalments, negotiate wage bumps based on season outcomes, and pay agent fees. These negotiations now take place over multiple stages, during which unexpected events could throw a spanner in your plans. A rival club could hijack the transfer, or you might find yourself in a bidding war for an up-and-coming winger. Or the player might ultimately decide the move isn't for them. These smaller details, clearly inspired by the Football Manager series—though not nearly as rigorous—make transfers engaging and interactive. As a manager, you have much more granular control over the transfer process, and the simulation feels deeper and more satisfying as a result.

Transfers aren't perfect, though. While it offers a more realistic framework for signing or selling a player, different parts of the machine can still break down. For instance, back-and-forth negotiations with a club can often lead to strange outcomes. A club will state its price and its preference for payment structure and clauses; you will counter with terms more favourable to you, and the club will respond by considerably raising its initial ask—as if you were negotiating with the Mafia. I also ran into a frustrating transfer bug when trying to sell a player who repeatedly failed to agree on personal terms with interested clubs, even after I'd accepted their transfer offers.

There are a lot more options for clauses in a transfer in FC 27
Photo Credit: EA/ Screenshot – Manas Mitul

Career mode also gets other improvements, like the new dynamic Overall system that adjusts player ratings based on factors like form, fitness, playing time, and morale. This added more incentive and purpose to my squad rotations, as I tried to manage player fitness and maintain the squad's morale to keep Overalls from dropping. Player data has also improved. You can now see a player's growth profile in detail in a dedicated menu. The same menu also ranks the player against your squad based on their attributes, determining if they are, at best, a backup option for a position already well staffed in your team, or a clear upgrade who would walk right into your starting XI. These rankings are especially helpful when scouting a new player for your club and assessing how they fit in your squad.

While the larger tactical system remains the same, EA has made positive tweaks to coach assessments, scouting, transfer and squad hubs, and the UI. EA has also expanded deeper simulation of other leagues from five in EA Sports FC 26 to ten in FC 27, broadening the authenticity of the football ecosystem around you. The club you manage feels less like a protagonist performing amidst props and more like a participant in a larger orchestra. But a similar noticeable improvement is missing in the gameplay department. EA has implemented the second iteration of the Authentic Gameplay preset introduced in FC 26 last year, promising realistic player movement, deeper off-the-ball controls, and smarter CPU. On the pitch, the result is still far from wholly satisfying.

Player profiles and stats are now much more detailed and helpful
Photo Credit: EA

EA Sports FC 27, a football sim released in 2026, still struggles to match the tight gameplay of PES 2021, a six-year-old game. I sunk hundreds of hours into Pro Evo during Covid; its on-pitch action remains unmatched in recent FC titles. The Authentic Gameplay preset brought major improvements last year, but it didn't fix issues that have plagued the series for years. FC 27 continues to feel clunky. AI behaviour, especially AI-controlled teammates, is frustratingly inconsistent and sketchy. Your team will constantly break the most basic tenets of football tactics, and you'll come close to breaking your controller.

Even when you've set tactical commands for the team and individual positions, you will often find your players working against your instructions. When you want your team to be compact and close ranks, they will leave the door open for the opponent. When you want width in your attacks, wide players will refuse to make runs. And player tracking and pressing will basically feel like gambling at a casino.

But defending has also received positive changes in FC 27 that put an emphasis on player control rather than AI-guided behaviour. As a result, Auto Tackles have been removed from the Competitive Gameplay preset. AI teammates also defend far less aggressively now, and the game pushes you to make manual decisions to press, tackle, and win back possession. FC 27 also tries to bring more freedom to corners, which have largely stayed the same for years. You can now jostle and position your attacker in the right space in the box to meet the incoming delivery. While the mechanic is tricky at first, you get the hang of it over time, and corners start to feel more authentic and freeform than the rigid set-piece structure of previous games.

Corners have been revamped to provide more player freedom in FC 27
Photo Credit: EA/ Screenshot – Manas Mitul

FC 27 also adds new controls for off-the-ball triggered runs. Now you can hold down the left and right bumpers on the controller and trigger a curved run from an AI-controlled teammate, allowing them to carve a space on the pitch by curving their movement around defenders into open space. Additionally, the pass and go feature gets a similar update with pass and follow runs that bend and curve to exploit available space. These granular gameplay options are a great addition, but they don't go far enough to make radical changes to the overall on-pitch gameplay. The lack of VAR implementation also stands out, especially when so much of the sport has come to be defined by the controversial technology.

Instead of putting its house in order, EA Sports FC 27 opts to expand the building and add new rooms. As I mentioned, these changes are unexpectedly positive. The Grounds mode is a highlight in FC 27 —a solid new fun mode that can be improved further in future games, because there's plenty of room to grow. There's clear potential in the new open-world social hub mode to develop into an interactive social space for football minigames, street matches, and live events. During my time with the mode, I befriended several strangers online and had fun playing 4v4 Rush, 3v3, and 2v2 matches with them.

The Grounds mode is an open-world social hub with street football matches and minigames
Photo Credit: EA/ Screenshot – Manas Mitul

The Grounds is also a place for unexpected hilarity, whether you're taking part in online games or following guided objectives. The mode features a compact open world divided into three neighbourhoods inspired by distinct football cultures in Paris, Argentina, and the UK, led by real-life superstars Kylian Mbappe, Paulo Dybala, and Chloe Kelly. The three mentors, along with Alex Hunter, the returning original character from The Journey mode introduced in FIFA 17, guide you through The Grounds and the mode's experiences. The mentors are voiced by their real-life counterparts, which leads to some incredibly stiff, funny interactions. I nearly fell down laughing when Kylian Mbappe talked about playing football while growing up in France.

I had the most fun in 4v4 Rush queues in The Grounds, and 1v1 matchups are a blast, too. But while the small-sided street football matches shine, the Kickabouts, football-based minigames, feel poorly thought out. You'll also have a hard time finding players queuing up for Kickabouts. The Grounds also has visual bugs and glitches, plus long wait times and a bloated UI and menu experience. Despite the flaws, The Grounds is a worthy addition to FC games, and if EA focuses on expanding and improving the mode's features rather than pushing more microtransactions and cash shops, it can become a series staple.

Kylian Mbappe's performance as a mentor in The Grounds mode is hilariously bad
Photo Credit: EA/ Screenshot – Manas Mitul

Ultimate Team also gets a few new features, most notably the Gallery, a new card collection system that lets you curate players across multiple categories, much like the iconic Panini stickers. Squad Building Challenges have also been streamlined, but they remain as grindy as ever, especially if you want to earn your way to a special-edition player card. I do feel, however, that FUT has become more generous, giving you decent options and letting you compete against other players online. With rewards earned through progression, the season pass, SBCs, and objectives, you can build a competitive club. Nevertheless, Ultimate Team's focus on cash shops, casino slot-machine-style player packs, and aggressive monetisation continues to leave a sour taste in your mouth.

Another area where EA Sports FC 27 seems stagnant is graphics and visual presentation. After the game's launch, I saw social media flooded with complaints about a visible downgrade in FIFA and FC games over the years. Side-by-side gameplay clips comparing FIFA 17 and FC 27 didn't do the latest entry in the series any favours either. While player models have surely become more detailed, match visuals have not improved noticeably. In fact, clips from older games show better, more realistic, and more varied lighting, stadium shadows, and weather effects. Matches now look flatter, even though there's more detail within the frame. EA has now gone an entire console generation without bringing a radical graphical upgrade to the series, and it must make a meaningful visual leap with future FC titles.

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EA Sports FC 27 doesn't bring a meaningful leap in visuals
Photo Credit: EA/ Screenshot – Manas Mitul

As most recent releases in the long-running football sim franchise, EA Sports FC 27 feels like a negotiation over long-overdue improvements. Rather than an outright, undeniable upgrade, the football title delivers progress, stagnation, and regression in equal measure. Granted, some updates feel fresh, largely thanks to The Grounds mode and its social-focussed experience. And the long-awaited revamp of transfers in Career mode is appreciated, too, even though it arrives much later than it should have.

But the gameplay tweaks implemented year after year are only showing diminishing returns with each new title in the series. The introduction of the Authentic Gameplay preset in FC 26 felt like a big leap, but FC 27 fails to build upon that new foundation and push the on-pitch experience to the next level. EA Sports FC requires a radical gameplay overhaul, not iterative upgrades, to fulfil its potential. For now, it feels like the series has parked the bus on recent innovations.