FIFA 21

FIFA 21 EA Sports. It never changes. Genre(s): Sports Platform(s): Microsoft Windows PlayStation 4 Xbox One Nintendo Switch Stadia PlayStation 5 Xbox Series X/S Release: Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One October 9, 2020 PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Google Stadia December 4, 2020 Engine: Frostbite 3 Developer(s): EA Vancouver EA Romania Publisher(s): EA Sports Country: Canada Series: FIFA Predecessor: FIFA 20 Successor: FIFA 22

FIFA 21 is a 2020 football/soccer game developed and published by different divisions of Electronic Arts. It is the 28th installment in the FIFA franchise. This is the first FIFA game to be released for ninth generation consoles.

Why It Gets a Penalty

1. The game's player ratings are nothing but a joke.
2. Controversial marketing campaign: EA advertised it and its loot boxes in kids' magazine, read more about it here.
3. Pro Clubs still doesn't have an update. Yet, it is even worse than in FIFA 20:
   • In Pro Clubs if you want to do a Drop-In match, it can kick you out for no reason.
   • Pro Clubs has a broken skill points system as players are not getting their skill points.
   • There are certain kits that you cannot use in Pro Clubs.
   • If you set your team to high press, your team will lose all their stamina pretty much giving you the loss.
   • In Drop-In, you will be controlling another players character. There is also a glitch where both kits will be the same color.
4. This game is nothing but a reskin of the previous FIFA games. It has still the exactly same graphics like its predecessors.
   • Even worse, the Legacy Edition (the second one for the Nintendo Switch) version is exactly the same thing as the FIFA 20 version, still with only updated kits, squads, soundtracks and stadiums, making it a reskin of FIFA 19 Switch with the FIFA 21 name, and still has same problems as 18, 19 and 20 on Switch.
5. Similar to other FIFA titles, numerous bugs and glitches were reported by players, nearly on par with Cyberpunk 2077, and they still exist without any fixes, including, but are not limited to:
   • There is a speed glitch where you can reach your full speed instantly when you have the ball (The player must have around 90 Balance and Agility).
   • In VOLTA, there is a major bug in which you can encounter a giant goalkeeper. It makes the game mode almost unplayable as the goals are much smaller and the giant pretty much covers the whole goal.
   • There is a possibility that the ball will get stuck to the crossbar and the goalkeeper will not catch the ball, resulting in a goal that is preventable.
   • There is a glitch where you can make many accounts, and you can transfer your coins to your own account in Ultimate making you have a massive advantage in getting players and completing SBCs which will give special players. Even if you lose every game you will get a minimum of 10K.
6. They got rid of the EA Catalogue which is where you can buy certain things with in-game currency and is now part of the game like the financial takeover but for Scout Future Star in Career Mode you had to pre-order the game. Otherwise, you pretty much can't use it.
7. The game suffered from many licensing issues (mainly due to the exclusive licensing deals of Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer 21), including;
   • Juventus and AS Roma does not appear in the game and thus replaced with a generic counterpart (Piedmonte Calcio and Generic Capitale, respectively), as well as the whole Italian Serie B.
   • La Spezia and Crotone do not have their official kits or logo.
   • Many Brazilian teams are not in the game.
   • Several national teams are not in the game, such as Croatia.
   • In the base game, Boca Juniors and River Plate are replaced with their generic counterpart Buenos Aires and Nunez, but in the CONMEBOL Libertadores broadcast packaging, it is listed as Boca Juniors and River Plate.
     • This also means you can get away with playing as River Plate or Boca Juniors by selecting them through the broadcasting packaging, despite the fact that they aren't supposed to be there as licensed teams.
     • Despite EA claiming that they have the CONMEBOL special packaging, the Brazilian teams still only have generic players, which makes no sense because Boca Juniors and River Plate has their actual players in the game, which also makes no sense as this added Brazilian teams like Flamengo.
     • Despite Atlético Tucuman and Deportivo Tolima making it in the Copa Sudamericana, they will not show up in the CONMEBOL Sudamericana package, which makes zero sense because Tigre is the only team in the Argentine 2nd division in the game, yet they managed to get them in.
8. FUT (FIFA Ultimate Team) is where most of the effort is going to, as EA makes most of their money through the purchase of FIFA points, which is used to gamble on card packs.
9. They managed to make the goalkeeper controls much worse than FIFA 20's goalkeeper controls, which means that if you play Pro Clubs or offline in general, it's either you have a terrible AI in the goal or an actual goalkeeper with malfunctional controls. It's hard to make just a simple catch.
10. Despite Nunez and River Plate being the same exact team, Nunez has a higher rated midfield while River Plate has a higher rated defense.
11. Career mode is better; however, there is a glitch that if you play a match, the game has a random chance to crash. The same thing for simulating the matches, with the only way to have this not happen is by simulating on the calendar.
12. Customization is off. It feels like it has fewer options than previous FIFA games:
    • Allison, one of the best goalkeepers in the game, has the wrong gloves on. This is a running theme for most players as they have different kits in the game. Similar to Armani in FIFA 20 where his Nunez version wears generic EA sports gloves while his River Plate version wears Reusch gloves.
    • Less customization for goalkeepers. Several brands from FIFA 20 like Sells and Uhlsport are missing, not to mention that most of the gloves aren't even real and some of those gloves are a copy of the Nike Mercurial Touch.
      • Speaking of the Nike Mercurial Touch gloves, they don't have the official color way in the game. And as for the cleats, most of them are Adidas with pretty much every other brand having a few cleats to choose from. About 2/3 of the cleats are generic or Adidas.
13. When the game launched there were reports of FIFA points being transferred to FIFA 20 instead of FIFA 21 as well as the transaction not going through.
14. In the launch of PC, there were problems, like that the fact that the game would crash when trying to load.
15. The Player Career mode is just the same, but you can now simulate matches. And that's it. Nothing to see here.
16. They messed up the goalkeeper animation in Pro Clubs. You can do everything right and your goalkeeper will not make a save because the developers made the animation so bad that goalkeepers are now almost unplayable.
17. The retail version cover art in all editions look awful, and it looks like it was made in Microsoft Paint using the copy and paste tool.
18. Division Rivals is broken. The rewards for being in Division 1 is not that good. If you are ranked 2 in Division 1 you get only 55,000 coins but being ranked 1 in Division 4 (which is easier) gives you 65,000 coins. Not to mention, you get more packs in Division 4. Not only are players literally losing games on purpose to not be in Division 1, but the rewards are also worse.
19. Unrealistic goals in the game. The crossbar glitch will most likely end with a goal. Another glitch can occur where if the goalkeeper rushes out and saves the ball, the ball will go into the other side of the field and enter the goal.
20. This game's gameplay is reliant on pure attack and no defense, meaning you will see the same players every game because EA couldn't code the game correctly. Players like Mbappé and Ben Yedder are frequent in the game.
21. Scripting is at its worst in this game. There is one example of a guy who only had 10% possession and misplaced a lot of passes during the first half. After the first half and if you are the guy with 10% possession, the game will help you win. Players like Ramos will be faster than Mbappé and the game pretty much makes you win as all your commands will work.
22. EA removed a few kits from the market and made them purchasable only with FIFA Points and/or way more coins than they would sell for. They are literally kicking the greed dial to 11!
23. As usual with FIFA, hundreds of players are still missing face scans.
24. Near Post OP is still a big issue in this game, and has been since FIFA 20 brought it back, so if your opponent gets close enough to the goal, your goalkeeper, no matter how good, will not stop the shot from going in.

Redeeming Qualities

1. You can now play VOLTA online with friends.
2. You can finally jump into the match during a simulation if the match isn't going well.
3. The soundtrack is nice, like previous FIFA games.
4. You can now do unlimited financial take-overs.
5. Career mode was not released in a broken state unlike FIFA 20.
6. The art style of the game looks really great.

Reception

The game had mixed to average reviews by critics and was heavily panned by gamers for its recycled content from previous years and next to no major improvements being made. On Metacritic, the game has a User Score of 0.8 by user score for the PlayStation 4 version (making it the lowest rated FIFA ever on the PlayStation), and the Nintendo Switch version has a user score of 0.3 on Metacritic, officially tied with Madden NFL 21 and Diablo Immortal, for the lowest rated game by users. In the UK the physical sales were down by 42%.

The Legacy Edition, alongside with Madden NFL 21, was ranked #8 on Angry Joe's Top 10 WORST Games of 2020! video.

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