Ok, where to start with this? Firstly, I like the title better than 23 because that was the bottom of the footy barrel for me, I'd genuinely rather never pick up another football game again than play that for 10 minutes of my life. 24 is clearly better in terms of players positioning on the field but good grief, it's like only one or two players on your team make any supportive movement that reflects what is happening on the field at any one time. The ball just rolls past players who make no effort (even with pass intercept turned on) randomly to either intercept a pass or move to mark a player clearly about to receive the ball. The skating is still very evident as is the ball glued to the foot just like FIFA 95 when you turn with the ball. The ball goes from loose and free with an organic feel to not adhering to the laws of physics once a player has made contact. Bumped the first touch error up to 90, 95 and 100 to see if it affected the players control but Cambridge United have the ability to field Messi in any position once you're over the halfway line. Engagement drops as you get towards the last third and we're back to the defences who don't give AF.
I played a couple of games of 19 afterwards and there's just no way I can touch 24 again unless they remove the nanny hand-holding when you're in possession but your team are blind, lazy and deaf when your team doesn't have the ball. It's just the player you're controlling against the CPU basically, that's the best description. Other players are less than interested in the game until you switch to them. Everything 15-19 bought to the table, this game takes it away. The tackling is neutered so timing a tackle to get the ball and knocking the player out of the stands at the same time is a lame affair and mostly, any attempts at a physical game is a joke because the controls don't respond very well, especially direction wise on a slide and the momentum is random and doesn't take into account how fast you were travelling before you slide or often, what direction you were facing.
This game must be aimed at 10 year old girls because if you wanted to stereotype a 10 year old Barbie loving girl as what she would like if you made a footy game especially for her and her friends, this would be it. Women and men equal on the field (please! - I don't care how woke or progressive you are, this is BS, the best women players in the world can't compete with boys U15 teams and it's been shown in real life repeatedly so why have a game where the girls are as good, if not better than the men? You have to spend 10 minutes in settings to turn off the dozens of auto-assists throughout the game and even when turned off, they're only sometimes turned off, auto actions still occur randomly.
I don't care how many patches they release, this game isn't going to touch 15-19. You either keep an older game from that date range or before to play when you want to feel like you're playing the real game and you play this when you want bells, whistles, balloons and sideshow clowns. The best example I can give after all of this is for those of you who play first person shooters, FIFA 15-19 and prior were like Black Ops 1-3, original Modern Warfares, etc. FIFA 23-24 onwards is basically the equivalent of Fortnite.
