EA Sports FC 26

AI teammates are the most frequent gameplay complaint, in 16% of written-out reviews, and they come up more among long-time players (8% of under-10-hour reviewers, 21% of 200-hour-plus players). Your own AI players do not defend, mark, press or make runs, while the opposition AI plays near-perfect possession football. Players describe centre-backs backing off into the box, goalkeepers who parry into the path of strikers, tackles that bounce straight back to the attacker, player switching that picks the wrong man, and passes that go to a different teammate or straight to the opponent regardless of where the stick points. Pace attributes are another sore point: 99-pace forwards caught by slow defenders. In Clubs the complaint is the AI filling empty positions. These reviews are 17% positive.

Framerate problems are the most repeated technical complaint, in 15% of written-out reviews and 19% of those from players under 10 hours. A recurring description is precise: the game runs smoothly at 60 to 120 frames per second, then drops to 3 to 15 after half-time, a cutscene, a set piece or the second match, and only a restart fixes it. Reviewers with recent RTX cards report it too, owners of 4 GB VRAM laptops warn others off, and a few suspect a memory or VRAM leak. Menus lag as well, and some describe a "slow-motion" state where inputs are ignored even when the framerate counter looks fine. A few players found workarounds (frame caps in the driver, launching through the NVIDIA app, lowering settings), and a couple say later patches improved things; others were still asking for a fix as FC 27 arrived.

Connection problems appear in 12% of written-out reviews, climbing to 17% among 200-hour-plus players, and those reviews are just 8% positive. "Unable to connect to EA servers" errors, mid-match disconnects that are scored as a loss, seconds of input delay even on fast connections, and cross-region routing (friends in the same country placed on distant servers) are the core of it. A cluster of July 2026 reviews describes Pro Clubs matchmaking breaking down, with matches impossible to find or league games that would not start; one reviewer says online Clubs "was unplayable for a week or so." A few Seasons players also complain that an opponent who rage-quits while losing voids the result, so the winner gets nothing.

The game crashing, freezing, soft-locking in menus, hanging on a black screen before a match or refusing to launch comes up in 11% of written-out reviews, and these are among the most negative reviews in the set (9% positive). Short-playtime reviewers are overrepresented, and many of the refund stories come from people who never reached a match. Longer-term players report lost career saves after crashes, DirectX errors and updates that broke a previously working install.

Reviewers who call FC 26 a copy of FC 25 (or FC 24, or FIFA 23) with a roster update point to the same animations and cutscenes and to bugs carried over from previous years; 9% of written-out reviews make the charge. Some pair it with a vow not to buy FC 27, and a few admit they will anyway. A minority of returning players push back that the game is a real step up from the edition they last owned.

Around 9% of written-out reviews complain about the interface, and newcomers under 10 hours do so more often (12%). The grievances: a stack of around seven unskippable "Welcome to Ultimate Team" and reward screens that reappear every time players return to the main menu, a full-screen FC 27 pre-order prompt on launch, slow menus that make a server call on every click, deeply nested options (loading a saved tournament or changing keybinds sends people to YouTube), and settings that reset between sessions.

8% of written-out reviews raise pay-to-win, packs, gambling or cash-grab monetization, mostly around Ultimate Team but also Pro Clubs, where changing position or archetype costs club coins or real money. Players describe losing to opponents with fully upgraded squads days after starting, pack odds that feel stingy, and a season pass that pushes premium tracks. One reviewer's summary: "the only thing that works in this game is the payment options."

Controller problems on PC come up in 7% of written-out reviews, and the main one is specific: if a keyboard or mouse is touched, the game may lock match input to the keyboard and ignore the controller until a restart, sometimes mid-match, leading to inactivity penalties in online play. Others report controllers that vibrate constantly in menus, pads detected as the wrong player, and PlayStation controllers that need tools the anti-cheat blocks. Players who fixed it describe having to never touch the keyboard after launch.

Leads that evaporate late, keepers who become unbeatable, players who suddenly feel heavy, and rebounds that always fall to the other side: 5% of written-out reviews, rising to 11% among 200-hour-plus players, accuse the game of deciding results. The accusation covers both online and offline modes. Some of these accounts overlap with latency and input-delay complaints.

Around 5% of written-out reviews, heavily weighted toward 200-hour-plus players (14%), complain that PlayStyles and running styles dominate over attributes: Finesse and low-driven shots, Bruiser shielding and Lengthy acceleration decide matches, and the same meta formations and skill-move spam appear in every online game. Some describe the balance as "ping-pong" football with 6-5 scorelines.

The EA App and Javelin anti-cheat get between players and the game in 4.5% of written-out reviews, and in 8% of those from players under 10 hours: long anti-cheat start-up screens, the game refusing to run alongside legitimate software such as DS4Windows, Riot Vanguard or Steam Link, secure boot requirements appearing after an update, verification codes that never arrive, and anti-cheat that blocks offline Career Mode. Linux and Steam Deck owners cannot play at all. A smaller set report bans they say were unjustified, sometimes on the first launch, with slow or unhelpful appeals.

About 2% of written-out reviews report cheaters, lag switching or exploiters in Rivals, Champs, Seasons and Clubs, and say there is no effective way to report them. These reviews are mostly negative.

About 3% of written-out reviews, mostly offline career players, say there is no comfortable difficulty: Professional produces 10-0 wins, while World Class turns small clubs into "prime FC Barcelona" with its passing, as one reviewer put it. Some spent hours adjusting sliders, or downloaded slider sets from YouTube, to find a middle ground.