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It’s been 11 years since NCAA Football 14, the last college football game EA produced, so it’s no surprise that fans of the series were delighted to hear that the series was making a return. But with how dominant Madden has become in the intervening years, College Football 25 needed a strong return if it had any hope of recapturing its former fanbase. And fortunately for EA, a strong return is exactly what they’ve got.
If you were worried about this just being a carbon copy of Madden, then you’re in luck, as the game has been fully built from scratch. So while anyone who has played Madden before isn’t going to struggle to play College Football 25 (it is the same sport after all), there are plenty of new mechanics to get to grips with to make your time with the game more interesting.
The level of control players have on the field is much greater than it is in Madden. You can customise your plays to make the best of your star players, or perhaps to expose the weaknesses of your opponents. Similarly, you can run certain types of defences depending on the opponent to nullify their star players. The game also features a new throwing mechanic that requires precise timing to pull off consistently, making each play feel risky, but satisfying. Each of these mechanics lends itself to a gameplay formula that is simple for beginners but rewards players willing to put in the practice to master them.
Another brand-new mechanic is a player health system, adding a degree of realism but one that can put a spanner in the works for your team. If one of your players takes a particularly nasty hit, it can affect their game, perhaps leading you to rely more heavily on other players to avoid risking your injured player making a mistake.
Beyond the mechanics, EA has done a stellar job of capturing the spirit of college football, especially when one considers that it’s not the main football game on the market. The game features 134 teams from conferences across the country, each with rosters jam-packed with real-life players. But the attention to detail doesn’t stop at just the rosters, as the traditions of each school are captured too, with mascots, cheerleaders, and all the pomp and circumstance that come with the frankly preposterously ceremonial nature of college football.
And you’ll experience plenty of that ceremony in the game’s Dynasty mode, a managerial mode that sees you take over as the head coach of one of the game’s illustrious, or perhaps more ignominious institutions, in a bid to conquer the world of college football and guide your chosen team to glory.
All things considered, a lot has been packed into this mode. Outside the rip-roaring on-field action, Dynasty mode captures the kind of in-depth spreadsheet action seen in titles like Football Manager or F1 Manager. You’ll scour your pipelines for the best talent, dropping names onto shortlists, and planning how exactly you’re going to convince them to play for you over everyone else. Each player is vastly different, too. Some are ready to go and can be dropped right into your team. Others might have huge potential but might need to be redshirted for a season while your seniors prepare to depart. For me, the planning might even be better than the gameplay, as watching someone you put the effort into scouting turn out to be a gem is a blast, but I won’t act like it’s not a major disappointment when they don’t.
It’s a good job Dynasty mode is as good as it is, too, as the game’s other modes don’t ever really capture the same magic. Road to Glory sees you take on the role of a single player rather than coaching the team. Instead of the tactical and scouting aspects, you’ll have to juggle things like GPA and coach approval. It’s perfectly fine, but has no real depth, making the mode feel like more of an afterthought, with ‘people will want it, so we’ll stick it in’ being the driving force behind its inclusion rather than an actual desire to create it.
Things only get worse when it comes to Ultimate Team. As a longtime FIFA, and now FC player, I have had all too much experience with the travesty that is Ultimate Team. It’s a tragedy to find that the version in College Football 25 is largely the same. Get packs, open packs, don’t get a player worth using, and repeat. It’s disappointing, to say the least, and I don’t see much reason to play this or Road to Glory over the obviously superior Dynasty mode.
But as good as Dynasty mode is, it falls prey to the largely clunky, and at times ridiculously thought-out UI. Dynasty mode will often have you neck-deep in menus, scrolling through seemingly endless branches of options to find what you’re looking for, something which could be easily solved by a dedicated menu showing you exactly what you need to do, when you need to do it. One bizarre issue is that, when scrolling through certain menus with RB/R2, there’s no option to scroll back the other way. So if I’m looking for a certain conference, say, and I accidentally press RB one too many times, I have to go all the way around again. I know this sounds inconsequential, but for how often it happens, it’s a glaringly obvious thing to miss out, and just part and parcel of the poor UI design.
But at the end of the day, whether it’s poor UI or shallow game modes, I enjoyed my time with College Football 25. The commitment to capturing not only the rosters of more than 100 real-life teams, but the unique cultures of those schools is astounding and made all the more enjoyable by the solid gameplay. I do wish Road to Glory had been a bit more interesting, but with the depth and quality of Dynasty mode, it feels redundant to ask for more, especially from a game returning from a decade-long hiatus. Put simply, if you’re a fan of football, be it college or professional, or just a fan of Madden, you’re going to love College Football 25.
About the Author
EA Sports College Football 25
- Platform(s): PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X
- Genre(s): Sports
