EA’s football series has had a turbulent time on modern Nintendo consoles, as any long-time Nintendo Life reader will doubtless already know.
When the Switch got its first entry in the form of FIFA 18, this very reviewer pointed out that it was essentially a port of the Legacy Edition on Xbox 360 and PS3 at the time, which is why it was missing all the modes from the current-gen versions. Still, EA had ditched Nintendo consoles since FIFA 13 on the Wii U, so many of us were at least happy to see it on Switch in the first place, and hoped EA would build on it in the years to follow.
Infuriatingly, EA would instead proceed to release basically the exact same game on Switch – new kits and rosters aside – for FIFA 19, 20, 21, 22, and 23, meaning no fewer than six near-identical annual games all based on that Xbox 360 Legacy Edition of FIFA 17. It was already out of date in FIFA 18, so by the time it reached 23 (with Switch now on its fifth Legacy Edition of a Legacy Edition) it had gone beyond a joke, hence my somewhat contentious 2/10 review on this very site.
Indeed, work your way through all those reviews — all written by me, as some sort of annual Nintendo Life punishment ritual — and you’ll see the spiral of a man initially happy that EA football had returned to a Nintendo system but eventually plunging into despair and anger when it became clear it was just churning out the bare minimum each year.
Remarkably, this changed when the FIFA series changed its name to EA Sports FC. With a new title came a new beginning, and — for the first time since the GameCube era — EA Sports FC 24 (and 25 the following year) finally gave Nintendo players full feature parity with their Xbox and PlayStation counterparts. It had come too late in the console’s life to undo some damage — Ultimate Team was a ghost town after years of neglect — but it was finally ‘proper’ FIFA. Sorry, I mean proper EA FC.
Now it’s time for the series to make the jump to Switch 2, bringing with it the ultimate question. Has EA opted to do the same as it did on Wii U and Switch and give early adopters a bare bones experience again, or has it finally learned the lessons of the past and delivered a fully-featured football game at the first time of asking? Mercifully, it’s the latter.
EA Sports FC 26 on Switch 2 has every mode you’ll find in the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions of the game. That means every new feature, from the two new gameplay presets — Authentic for more realistic football and Competitive for faster passing and smarter keepers — to the improved Manager Career mode with its live challenges and unlockable Icon players.
The latter is a brilliant new addition, because until now Manager Career has usually involved picking your favourite team and just putting them through league after league, getting stagnant after a while. The new Live option gives you a bunch of shorter scenarios to choose from — such as starting with a 20-point deduction and having to escape relegation while making $20 million in transfers before a set date — which gives you an excuse to keep coming back and trying out new situations.
It also means the perennially popular Ultimate Team mode gets all the new features this year too, including the return of Tournaments and the new Gauntlet mode, where you play through a series of matches but aren’t allowed to use the same player twice, meaning squad depth comes into play.
It’s on the pitch where the most divisive decision can be found, so let’s get it out of the way first. When EA moved from FIFA to EA Sports FC and finally updated the game on Switch, it also shifted over from that ancient Xbox 360 engine to the Frostbite engine. The result of this was the Switch version dropping from 60 frames per second to 30, to accommodate the new engine’s update in visual quality.
Last year’s review of EA Sports FC 25 on Switch hoped that by making the jump to Switch 2 this would be fixed, bringing the game up to a full 60fps on Nintendo’s new console. Alas, that hasn’t happened yet, meaning this new Switch 2 offering still only runs at 30fps.
I know this will be a dealbreaker for some, and if you’re one such player, then I suppose this is where your review ends. For those still with me, it’s worth pointing out that the drop from 60 to 30 for the Switch 2 version may obviously affect the visuals but doesn’t really affect the gameplay. EA FC has never really relied on twitch controls because momentum is taken into account, meaning every pass, shot, and turn has always taken place after the button is pressed anyway.
As someone who puts hundreds of hours into the Xbox Series X version of the series every year, the game doesn’t appear any less responsive on Switch 2 than it is on Microsoft’s console. Of course it doesn’t look as smooth because it’s running at half the frame rate, but I can still play it just as well on Switch 2
Indeed, it’s those who regularly play the series on PS5 or Xbox Series X/S, and are likely to jump between those versions and the Switch 2 version, who’ll notice the frame rate more. If you’ve been playing on 60 and you’re suddenly forced to drop to 30, the difference will be jarring. It really does only take a couple of matches to get used to, however, and the generally slower pace of a football game — as opposed to, say, a racing game — means the frame rate may be disappointing but it’s certainly not disastrous.
One of the main reasons for the frame rate drop is to keep the game stable while maintaining visual quality, which it definitely does. Put it side by side with the other consoles and you’ll obviously see they’re not like-for-like, though Switch 2 really does a good job of maintaining visual detail. Player faces are great, the kits are nice and sharp when you zoom in on them, and all the pre-match animations (including fans arriving outside the stadium and the manager giving the team talk in the dressing room) are here too.
There are even some smaller details in there that EA could have been forgiven for ditching to keep things running smoothly, but still manages to include. The most obvious example is mascots, which are new to this year’s game on other formats and are present and accounted for here. It could have been easy for EA to drop this frankly unnecessary addition and claim the Switch 2 version could have done without it, but play as Celtic in Celtic Park and you will indeed see the glorious sight of Hoopy the Huddle Hound prancing around at the side of the park, getting in the way of the supporters sitting in the front row.
More concerning is the menu system, which is really starting to creak and strain. After years of having more and more new features dumped on it, these menus are already janky on more powerful consoles, but on Switch 2 the Ultimate Team UI is so clunky that it froze up a few times during my initial team set-up and I had to reboot the game. I’m hopeful that this will be addressed in a future patch, but until then be warned that while responsiveness isn’t an issue off the pitch, it’s certainly lacking off it.
Other limitations aren’t directly EA’s fault this year, though they may still be the result of the previous years of neglect Switch owners got when the series was known as FIFA. Ultimate Team, while wonderfully fully featured on Switch 2, simply doesn’t have the community it does on PlayStation and Xbox.
This is most obviously felt when trying to find a match online on Switch 2. Because the gameplay engine isn’t identical on Nintendo’s console, crossplay understandably isn’t possible, but whereas it’s easy to find a match within a split second on other consoles, I had to wait a minute or so to find another Switch 2 player. This will hopefully get better when the Standard Edition launches, but it’ll still be a vastly smaller player pool than the Xbox, PlayStation, and PC crossplay community.
One thing that theoretically should be possible but isn’t yet is a fully shared transfer market on Ultimate Team. PlayStation and Xbox users have a shared transfer market which means there are often tens of millions of players and cosmetic items listed for transfer. Once again this year, Nintendo players are left with their own separate transfer market, which at the time of writing only has 13,550 items for sale, meaning far less choice and — due to the lack of multiple listings meaning less need for competitive pricing — the need to spend more coins on specific players.
It would be even more of a dream to allow for cross-save, meaning you could play your Ultimate Team or Manager Career on PlayStation or Xbox at home (to take advantage of the better visuals), then load it up on Switch 2 and continue it on the go. Instead, each version of the game is its own standalone thing, meaning you have to start from scratch and have a completely different campaign running on each console.
Take all of this into account and the bottom line is still that EA Sports FC 26 is the new best ever Nintendo football game (don’t worry though, ISS 64, you’ll always be my main love). The wishlist of improvements for next year is clear: if EA can offer some sort of performance mode which allows for 60fps gameplay, and find a way to tap Switch 2 users into the same shared Ultimate Team transfer market used on other consoles, you’d be looking at a near-flawless Nintendo version of the game.
As it currently stands, it’s still a fantastic football game with hundreds of hours of gameplay to be found across its numerous modes, unmatched authenticity, and engaging control on the pitch. Once you’re used to the frame rate, it’s an absolute joy to play on handheld, and while the game engine isn’t 100% identical to other formats, it’s far and away the closest thing we’ve had yet to getting ‘proper’ EA FC on the move.
Ultimately, there isn’t much competition on Switch 2 yet anyway — Konami’s eFootball continues to be conspicuous by its absence — so EA Sports FC 26 was always going to be the default choice regardless of its quality. It’s a relief, then, that EA didn’t take advantage of this fact by phoning in a half-hearted port like it did so many times on Switch, and has instead started as it hopefully means to go on this time with a fully-featured version from the get-go that gives Nintendo owners the respect they deserve.
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