Many of you will have spent many hours with this now...where would you say it ranks compared to previous FIFA titles?
For me it's the best one yet.
If the game was more challenging in CM, I'd hands down say it's easily the best FIFA.
Honestly, this game shines when you're more in the middle in terms of skill level. I don't mean to be insulting, but once you get to the higher levels - either in single player or multiplayer - much of the best of the game cancels itself out and the bullshit tends to reign supreme.
So for example while CM is a bit of a cakewalk for me and kinda dull as a result, playing FUT Squad Battles on Legendary or above is absolutely brutal, but usually not in a good way, with the ball bouncing to the CPU on most tackles I put in, while the CPU is lethal with long shots and crosses to the point I don't know what else in my power to do aside from just getting better players (my squad is already rated something like 82).
It's the same with online multiplayer, but in a different way. FIFA isn't the best when it comes to being optimized well for online play, so I get a lot of matches in which it's difficult to express skill and games are too often decided by who gets the lucky bounces of the ball. Or it's just determined by who has the best team. Or who is best at exploiting the game, like with timed finesse shots. That's not necessarily all that different from previous editions but the consensus seems to be that multiplayer is more random than ever and I kind of agree.
So I think it really depends on what type of player you are and what mode of gameplay we're talking about.
I've found the stunner-goals to be a bit too frequent. Seems quite easy to hammer one in from distance. It does happen in real life as well, of course, but not nearly as often as in the game, in my opinion. One of the things in the game I wish they'd tone down with a patch.
Yeah, this is one of the biggest complaints in multiplayer - it's easier to score from distance than close up. The meta right now is essentially playing for timed finesse shots from distance, since they are crazy OP. Hopefully this'll get addressed in the first real gameplay patch.