EA FC 27 Thoughts: Why We Don’t Expect Much to Change

FIFA used to be one of those games you could play with a mate for hours and still want another match. Now we’re supposed to get excited about another 99-rated special card for some random player, even though the football itself has become less enjoyable.

Quick Answer

Recent EA FC games have given us less of what we enjoyed about FIFA, while Ultimate Team keeps finding more things for players to collect. FC 27 has interesting Career Mode changes, but unreliable defending, awkward squad management and launch bugs leave us doubtful about how much better it will be. NBA 2K27 also gets complaints about familiar problems and another annual purchase, and its most realistic footage may depend on settings or mods that other players are not using. We want both series to make the sport more enjoyable to play and give us enough improvement to justify buying the next game.

Why EA prioritises Ultimate Team

EA has a pretty obvious financial reason to keep players coming back and spending: in the financial year ending March 2026, live services and other revenue brought in $5.383 billion, around 71% of the company’s $7.531 billion total revenue. That figure includes extra content, subscriptions and other services across EA, but the company also specifically points to Ultimate Team spending as an important part of its business, with FC accounting for a substantial share of it.

A leaked FIFA 21 presentation obtained by CBC in 2021 described the priority as “All roads lead to FUT”, with plans to steer players towards Ultimate Team from other modes. EA disputed the interpretation that it was pushing people to spend, saying its focus was engagement and most FIFA players never bought in-game items. We still think that focus helps explain the distance between what EA keeps promoting and what we want from a football game.

FC 25’s late-season FUTTIES catalogue includes 99-rated versions of Rodrigo De Paul and Jamie Bynoe-Gittens, alongside 99-rated Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. We find it hard to care about the highest rating in the game when it gets handed out that freely, especially when collecting increasingly ridiculous versions of footballers becomes the attraction. The connection to the football we watch gets weaker, and the next batch of special cards does nothing to make us more interested in playing.

That is separate from disagreeing about whether a footballer deserves an 84 or an 87. We can argue about ratings, just as we argue about the teams in our European league predictions, while agreeing that recent EA FC has been poor. Having an opinion about a player does not mean we enjoy EA’s game, and we doubt its priorities will change much while the current approach keeps people collecting and spending.

Why the same bugs keep coming back

The employee account often shared in these discussions comes from a 2022 Reddit comment by a user called shaidyn. They claimed that smaller bugs were regularly pushed aside near release while they worked at EA, then carried into later games where the fact they had already shipped made them easier to deprioritise again. We cannot verify their employment history or whether they worked on FIFA, so this is not proof of how the current FC team operates. But as an explanation for why the same stupid problems can survive across multiple yearly releases, it is not difficult to believe.

That is the part EA should not get a pass for. A bug being postponed once because something more serious needs fixing is understandable. The same bug surviving into the next game, and sometimes the one after that, is a management failure. If EA keeps reusing the same systems, works to the same annual deadlines and repeatedly decides that familiar problems are acceptable enough to ship, then players are effectively being charged full price for another version of a product that still carries old defects.

And this is why blaming individual developers misses the point. Developers do not decide the release date, the annual business model or how much time a team gets to clean up old technical debt. EA does. Players should not have to care whether a recurring bug survived because of deadlines, priorities or internal organisation; they paid for a new game, and seeing the same broken behaviour again is evidence that fixing it was not important enough to the company.

NBA 2K27 gets similar complaints

We initially looked at some very realistic NBA 2K footage and wondered why EA could not make FC look that convincing. But that comparison gave 2K too much credit before we had even established what we were looking at. A great-looking clip might be running on max PC settings, using mods, or showing the game under ideal conditions, and none of that tells you much about whether another yearly release is actually worth buying.

Some of NBA 2K27’s early player impressions on Operation Sports sound very familiar if you follow EA FC: too few fouls, players who do not feel heavy enough, and complaints that the game feels too similar to last year. At the same time, other players have praised things like improved defensive matchups, which is a good reminder that saying “they changed nothing” is usually too simple. A Reddit discussion about whether 2K27 is worth buying tells a similar story, with complaints about delay and slow gameplay mixed with praise for steals and blocks. These are still individual opinions, but they tell us a lot more than one impressive-looking video.

The graphics part needs also some context; Max settings, mods, and DLSS are not the same thing. Max settings are simply options already built into the game, while modders can change things themselves; LagoaMods, for example, offers custom skin textures, sweat effects and courts for NBA 2K. If footage uses work like that, part of what you are seeing comes from the modder, not just 2K, and buying the game will not automatically give you the same result.

NBA 2K27 also officially supports NVIDIA’s DLSS 5, which uses AI to improve lighting and material detail. 2K says the feature is optional and requires an RTX 50-series graphics card on PC, so it would be just as wrong to assume every realistic-looking clip is heavily modded. We do not know the exact setup behind the footage that originally impressed us, so we cannot pretend everyone buying the game will see the same thing.

There are still some genuinely interesting ideas in 2K27, including four-team trades and more detailed contract rules in MyNBA. Those changes interest us in the same way FC 27’s Career Mode changes do, but features on a press release are not enough on their own to earn a recommendation. 2K also sells virtual currency, boosts and card packs through its premium editions, so its players have plenty of their own reasons to question what exactly they are paying for every year.

FC 27’s Career Mode still interests us

EA’s FC 27 Career Mode changes include transfer payments spread across seasons, performance bonuses and buyback clauses, alongside clubs competing for signings. Dynamic OVR lets ratings change with a player’s form, morale and fitness, while playing through an injury risks a longer absence. These additions interest us because deferring a transfer payment commits part of a future budget, and deciding whether to risk an injured player should affect more than the next match. We want more of those decisions in Career Mode, provided the game handles their consequences sensibly.

Squad rotation becomes frustrating if tired players need rest but immediately complain about missing games. EA’s September 29 Career Mode update acknowledges feedback on stamina and ratings, along with work on how quickly players demand transfers and how often offers arrive for listed players. Its October 2 patch fixed a bug where happy players could secretly request transfers without sending a message, which meant a basic part of managing the squad had arrived broken at launch. A game that expects us to respond to player demands needs to tell us what those demands are.

Our guide to making FIFA Career Mode more realistic uses club history and sensible recruitment rules to make saves more interesting. That can give a career more meaning, but personal rules cannot repair inconsistent player demands or a transfer system that behaves badly. We need the game’s own systems to work together across several seasons, otherwise each extra feature gives us another thing to work around.

What players are saying about FC 27

We still prefer the look of FIFA from around 2015 to the FC 27 footage we have seen, although a fair technical comparison would need comparable platforms and settings. In a discussion about FC 26, players criticise harsh lighting, overly bright pitches and waxy-looking models, while an FC 27 gameplay discussion raises similar objections to colours and player models. EA has introduced optional Enhanced Ultra Visuals on PC, so there are changes to examine, but the footage so far has done little to change our preference.

In one FC 27 launch discussion on Reddit, the original poster reported crashes, commentary cutting out and players changing positions, while seeing little visual improvement over FC 26. Some replies enjoy the greater emphasis on manual defending, so the thread contains more than one verdict. We are interested in that kind of detail because it explains what people are experiencing; another promotional post getting excited about new cards tells us very little about how a match plays.

EA’s September 30 gameplay update and its Career Mode update also acknowledge issues beyond the repaired transfer-request bug. In the updates available on October 5, the following still awaited a resolution:

EA has also said it will be cautious about changes after players complained that patches altered the feel of last year’s game too quickly. That makes longer-term impressions useful even for someone who enjoys FC 27 now, because the mechanics they like may change as EA responds to other players.

Our FIFA ranking and tier list

Our history with FIFA goes back to FIFA 2003, and we enjoyed plenty of editions before the FIFA 13–17 period that gets so much love in our discussions. The three personal TGK lists agree much more about recent EA FC games than they do about some older releases, with FIFA 20 and FIFA 23 producing particularly different opinions.

We combined the 18 editions all three people ranked, giving each list equal weight. Because they use different numbers of tiers, we put the best tier at 100 and the worst at zero, spaced the others evenly, then averaged each game’s placement. Those numbers only help combine our preferences, and ties stay tied, which gives us eleven games across the top ten places.

FIFA 17 and FIFA 13 each reach the top tier twice, with very little separating their averages, while FIFA 14 also gets strong support across the group. FIFA 16 has two Very Good placements and a Mid, which shows how much one person’s experience can affect the combined result.

The tier list groups those averages into five equal bands, from 80–100 at the top to below 20 at the bottom, with slashes marking ties within each tier. FC 27 is included as our provisional early verdict; only one of the original lists ranked it, so it has no three-person average.

FIFA 20 reaches Great on one list and Good on another, with the third person putting it in Meh. FIFA 23 divides us more sharply, going from Great to Meh to Shit, which explains why its combined position looks much worse than one person’s experience. FC 25 and FC 26 occupy the bottom tier on all three lists, while FC 24 escapes it once and still finishes below the older games.

Several games appear on only one list and keep their individual placements: FIFA 07 in Very Good, FIFA 06 in Good and FIFA 08 in Meh; FIFA Street and 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa in GOAT; and FIFA: Road to World Cup 98 in Mid. FIFA 2003–05 are absent from the lists, so they have no combined ranking despite being part of our history with the series.

Final Verdict

We think recent EA FC has been shit, and FC 27’s Career Mode additions have not yet given us enough reason to expect a different outcome. The transfer changes interest us, but dependable defending and sensible squad management matter throughout a season, long after we have tried the new features.

Our early praise for NBA 2K went too far because attractive footage told us very little about what its players were putting up with. We want the same thing from both series: a game that feels good to play and improves enough to justify another purchase. EA has made FIFA games we loved before, and we would be happy to praise it again if playing with a mate became that much fun.

FAQ

Which FIFA is TGK’s favourite?

FIFA 17 narrowly leads FIFA 13 in the average of our three personal tier lists, with FIFA 14 completing the top tier. These are retrospective preferences, and the group disagrees much more about editions such as FIFA 20 and FIFA 23.

Does FC 27 have worthwhile Career Mode changes?

The transfer options, ratings linked to form and fitness, and added squad-management decisions interest us. We still want those systems to work consistently across longer saves, particularly after the launch complaints about player demands, generated ratings and the interface.

Is realistic NBA 2K footage showing the standard game?

It depends on the setup: the video may use the game’s own graphics settings, optional DLSS 5 or community mods, sometimes in combination. DLSS is graphics technology, mods are modifications, and DLC refers to downloadable extra content, so those terms do not describe the same thing. Check what the creator used before expecting the same result on your machine, and judge the gameplay separately from how convincing a clip looks.