Hello!
I played the 10-hour Game Pass trial of College Football 25 and I have thoughts and opinions about the game.
In short, it's not as good as I was hoping and I won't be dropping $70 on it. I'll wait for it to fully come to Game Pass in 6 months or a year.
To start with some positives, the game is gorgeous and the animations are very impressive. This is the same engine that the Battlefield games come from and you can tell. The way players bounce off of each other and bring each other to the ground never stopped wowing me. Someone seeing the replay of a play could be forgiven for thinking it's real players.
It's obvious in every facet of the game's presentation that the developers love and appreciate college football. Traditions and little details are oozing from every crevice. For my alma mater, the University of Iowa, they included having the players run onto the field holding hands, showing players waving at the children’s hospital overlooking the stadium after the first quarter, and the crowd chanting “I-O-W-A!” after touchdowns. That last detail is a huge deal to me!
In the early 2010s versions of the NCAA Football series, the crowd changed “I-O-WA! I-O-W-A!” Each year I hoped they'd fix it and each year the game featured the wrong chant. But I'm ecstatic to say that in College Football 25 they finally got it right. It's a small detail that most people wouldn't notice, but a huge deal to anyone who went to Iowa. From what I've read, it's the same for the majority of the 134 schools in the game.
The gameplay is MOSTLY good to great. After ten hours, I'm reminded of EA’s other returning sports franchise, PGA Tour, which came back out of hibernation last year. The developers leaned heavily into simulation, creating a game that was almost TOO realistic in its difficulty. I see a lot of the same design choices in College Football 25.
After spending my college years playing NCAA Football on All-Pro, the second hardest of four difficulties, I am STRUGGLING on Veteran, the second easiest of four difficulties, in College Football 25. There's a new passing meter that allows for more precise accuracy, but can also lead to bigger mistakes. The idea behind the meter is that you can more accurately place a throw at different depths down the field. In practice, it never quite feels right. When I have a throw not go where I want to, I have no idea why it happens.
That's actually a theme for a lot of the gameplay. Very little of how to play the game is actually explained. When you're playing a defensive lineman, there's three blue dots above your head. After a few plays, the offensive lineman have red pips in a semi circle around them. When you zoom out to the coaches cam view, there's tons of symbols and letters. None of these are explained in-game. A ton of vitally important information isn't explained in-game.
Over the week that the game has been out, I've learned something new that the game doesn't tell you on the games subreddit almost every day. Apparently you can hold the left trigger to strafe while running! Apparently you can hold the left trigger or the left bumper to throw a low or high pass! Who knew!?
Players are also sharing actual football strategy and insight to teach others how to play on the subreddit. Which is pretty cool on one hand, but on the other I REALLY am not interested in learning to read defenses, create unique route stems, or adjust pass protections. I just wanna pick a play and chuck the pigskin. But it really feels like if you don't learn some advanced football strategy you're at a disadvantage due to the game’s difficulty.
Another big addition to the return of College Football was a revamped recruiting system. Similar to the football gameplay, almost nothing is explained for how the recruiting systems actually work. The game just throws you into the deep end of mechanics, systems, and choices. It's a bit embarrassing to say, but I completely misunderstood how the recruiting in the game works. After 8 in-game weeks, I currently have the 134th ranked recruiting class out of 134 teams.
I haven't personally seen it, but there've been quite a few complaints about the game's simulation engine and how the Dynasty Mode seems to fall apart as players get into later years.
All in all, the negatives are just enough to make me ok with waiting a few months for EA to iron out all the kinks. Perhaps surprisingly, I can't deny that I had a lot of fun in my ten hours. I'm legitimately sad my ten hours are up. Despite struggling with some of the controls and completely failing in recruiting, I did enjoy both. But it feels like the game is only about 90% of the way there. After a few months of patches, I wouldn't be surprised if College Football 25 emerges as the greatest football game ever made. The foundation is rock solid and the potential is sky high.
