FIFA21 Review

Let's start with the most overhauled part of this yearly installment - Career Mode.

This year's career mode has had a massive overhaul, changing up the way that training and gameday work, bringing in new entry menus that help set your career modes up with the ability to organise finances, additional tournaments like the Champions League and the Europa League in the top European clubs.

Moving on to Menus -

With the Catalogue Store no longer being a part of FIFA, this gives the starting menus a bigger role. So if you wanted to do a road to glory with a very small club but wanted to give them $500 million you would be able to very easily, instead of spending your well earned EASFC coins on a single-use financial takeover; but not all is good, I feel like this makes the starting screen way too cluttered and doesn't show all of the information that you require which can become quite frustrating.

Once you get into the new save first you will be able to select a beginning pre-season tournament, which is much of the same as years past, but once completed you will see the difference that this year (2021) shows on the main page and with the development pages.

In FIFA21, you are no longer just training 5 players a week, but now you have the option to do just 3 trainings but with up to 5 players at a time. This is one of the best upgrades I can say about this game, making real enforcement on training, but also showing you the repercussions of training in more than just a little bar at the bottom of the player's name. It now shows the sort of stats that it effects whilst now adding another 'state' to worry about, "Sharpness" which shows how much a player wants to play. Sharpness majorly affects fitness, so you will have to evenly distribute the training and rest days out or you will definitely be kicked out of the club this year compared to last.

I have about 25 hours in a Manchester United Career mode to rebuild the club and it is very difficult to both balance training days with rest and recharge days to make sure that your players are happy and content with playing for you or they will want a transfer without any question. The transfer system in this game is no different, unfortunately. I was hoping that more was added then just 'Strict and Loose' transfers - which is a feature to make the game more realistic and like its competitors Pes and Football Manager - but it just makes the game more grueling, because if you are a small club like Leeds or Sheffield Wednesday you won't be able to make many signings making the experience less fun and more daunting, and even trying to sign players for big clubs like Barcelona or Manchester United is less likely because you have a lot of rivals and your rivals won't do any business with you no matter what it is.

Ultimate Team is much of the same this year, having the staples like the Draft, Squad Battles, and Divisions Rivals (more on this a little later), FUT has found a way to keep its player base pretty much undeniably and is the most supported mode that FIFA offers because of the microtransactions that produce Electronic Arts the most money, but FUT hasn't started on the best foot (no pun intended), I have tried to play Rivals every weekend to test myself against the best of the best in the Australian Region, but the servers have not been able to hold up with the excess of users trying to earn the best rewards possible. EA, however, has given the best solutions possible by extending Rivals by an extra day so every player can get their best rank possible. The challenges that FUT offers are also very helpful, giving players the ability to earn special players and better player packs for basically free. Squad based Challenges are very much the same as well, giving some players the ability to determine if they want to spend a dollar on the game or not, or if they just want to grind the games out till they are able to afford the best packs possible, but the difference in spending money is a lot different, giving players an easy way out even though they just spent $100 on what is basically just a seasonal upgrade.

Now personally, I have not played Volta yet, but from all of the videos and reviews I have read, it doesn't appear that Volta has changed much since last year. Meaning if you loved Volta and the small-sided side of "Football" then you will continue to love Volta. Personally, I won't be rushing to play Volta as I wasn't a fan last year, but I will give it a try sooner or later.

With no story mode, like the journey or the Volta story last year, FIFA 21 has a lot of ups and downs, showing me that FIFA should really do what PES has done and given a "barebones" edition for free and then for the diehard fans (like myself), charge $50 (or around that mark), for more features like customisable kits or better 'Launch Day' packs in Ultimate Team.

I will say that, if you love FIFA and have for years I already know that you have either bought this edition or are planning on it, and if you have never played FIFA before this edition might be the best one for you to pick up because gameplay-wise this FIFA is the best available. With new movement mechanics and a more refined 'Agile Dribbling' system, and the better engine mechanics leading to less AI-controlled players falling over each other and actually playing like they would in real life, defending is a lot harder because the AI plays more like Humans do. Ball play is exceptional, with the way that the ball moves after you have kicked it feel really weighted and as close to how the ball actually feels in real life. Shooting feels a lot different this year with goalkeeping being changed so players last year that just relied on speed and being able to take longshots is a lot less determined and a lot more impractical, with keeper covering their closest posts a lot better than they ever did in previous installments.

So in conclusion, if you love Football then you will absolutely love FIFA21. If you want to learn about the most popular sport in the world then I highly recommend you pick up a copy of this game, but if you have never played FIFA before be prepared to throw a few controllers if you don't have a good temper.

Rating: 7/10

FIFA 21 has done enough to distinguish itself from previous installments of the FIFA franchise, however, I don't believe that a few minor changes are enough to warrant anything higher than a 7.

Author: Tyler Allen (a.k.a. Shad0wstarr99)

'You can find Tyler usually jamming out on Call of Duty Modern Warfare when he isn't grinding the decks on Tony Hawk Pro Skater...'