Questions from prospective buyer

[ChiTownKid]

I recently bought an XSX, and I'm real close to picking up CFB25, but I have a couple of questions, and would be greatly appreciative for some insight...


1) How is the game play AI? Does it call the right plays at the right time, and how is its clock management (probably my biggest concern)?


2) What are the most obvious, egregious bugs? Anything game-breaking?


3) How is the off-the-field stuff (recruiting, etc)? Solid, or buggy?


4) When it comes down to it, do you recommend the purchase? Wait for a sale? Avoid?

Kind thanks in advance.

[DonkeyJote]

Re: Questions from prospective buyer

1) How is the game play AI? Does it call the right plays at the right time, and how is its clock management (probably my biggest concern)?

It's okay. I haven't noticed anything super egregious. It's no worse than most sports games. As far as clock management, my biggest gripe there is that the game uses Madden logic for Clock Management. So big first down inside two minutes, they're probably going to call a timeout. Which makes sense in the NFL, the clock is running while you're running up to the ball. But in college, clock stops on a 1st Down until the ball is spotted, so it doesn't make as much sense there, teams will normally run to the line rather than call a timeout there.


[/Quote]2) What are the most obvious, egregious bugs? Anything game-breaking?[/quote]

Nothing game breaking, but the lack of multiweek injuries in played dynasty games is pretty close.

3) How is the off-the-field stuff (recruiting, etc)? Solid, or buggy?

I haven't encountered any issues with that, seems pretty solid to me.

4) When it comes down to it, do you recommend the purchase? Wait for a sale? Avoid?

Kind thanks in advance.

I really enjoy the game overall. I'm having a ton of fun with it, and I think that if you like College Football, it's a must have. I'm enjoying it more than any Madden in years.

That said, it's November. There will be deals. Lots of them. Madden has historically been 50% off and I see no reason this game would be different. If you can wait a week and a half or so, you can probably grab it for $35 instead of $70.

Sent from my Pixel 6 using Tapatalk

[noarmsduck]

Re: Questions from prospective buyer

1) How is the game play AI? Does it call the right plays at the right time, and how is its clock management (probably my biggest concern)?

On field gameplay is fine. AI playcalling is mediocre. I just played against USC, we were both 11-0. First half was kind of tentative, but by the third quarter I was up 21-7 and then score another TD. They only threw 16 passes all game. When I was up 28-7 they got the ball back and ran the ball 3 plays and went 3 and out. Being down like that in the second half you would expect a team to be passing much more. This is not an isolated incident either. In this particular game I was stopping the run and the pass fairly well. However in other games teams are moving the ball on me through the air and they just choose not to pass.


2) What are the most obvious, egregious bugs? Anything game-breaking?

At this point nothing game breaking. The worst things are the lack of injuries and the issues with custom schedules. Despite a high injury slider, I only recently sustained my first multi week injury to a starter and I'm in 2029 in my Dynasty. He was back after missing 2 or max 3 games.

The scheduling thing isn't as bad as it used to be. The conference schedule with custom conferences might be fixed, but not sure on that. Custom schedules still have issues though. You can't remove a rivalry game from your schedule. As Notre Dame, I tried changing the Stanford game but it kept reverting those changes. To test, I also tried changing USC and Navy but neither of those would stick either. I couldn't even change those games to a different week.


3) How is the off-the-field stuff (recruiting, etc)? Solid, or buggy?

Solid, aside from the scheduling stuff mentioned above. Those issues were much worse a couple months ago though, and are minor annoyances to me at this point.

4) When it comes down to it, do you recommend the purchase? Wait for a sale? Avoid?

Would recommend, I've definitely had fun with it. If you're not jonesing for a football game to play you could wait for a sale though. Madden usually goes on sale Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend and again near Christmas and New Years. Could also keep an eye out on g2a type sites as well.

[piffbernd]

Re: Questions from prospective buyer

An buy for me, so much fun with it. I guess IT will be on Sale at black friday.

[Solidice]

Re: Questions from prospective buyer

the Digital versions are 40% off right now until Dec. 2.

https://www.ea.com/games/ea-sports-college-football/college-football-25/news/college-football-25-black-friday-sale

[IlluminatusUIUC]

Re: Questions from prospective buyer

Do you have Game Pass Ultimate? It should come with a 10 hour trial for CFB through the included EA Play sub.

[KSUowls]

Re: Questions from prospective buyer

1 - Gameplay is pretty good (provided that you can find a set of sliders that matches your skill level). Out of the box it plays pretty fast and more arcade-y than I prefer, but sliders can mitigate most of that. On the field is definitely where the game is at it's best. Clock management is much on par with the other EA football game over the last decade. Maybe slightly improved, but you're still going to see some weird time out. I'll mention presentation in this section too. It's not good. The separate commentator teams are a nice touch, but quite often their commentary does not match the action on the field (similar to Madden). The half time show is just straight up terrible.

2 - Not many bugs that I can really recall. The one that stands out may not even be a bug but rather an example of poor AI, but occasionally an AI corner will give a free release to a receiver on a deep route. Pretty annoying, but it doesn't happen every time.

3 - I do like the recruiting system. It's kind of a blend of the phone call system of PS2 NCAA Football and the more streamlined approach of NCAA 14. It's very easy to exploit and the AI doesn't provide what I would call realistic results. Overall I would put it in the positive column though.

Everything else off the field may as well not exist from a dynasty perspective. The game gives you absolutely zero reason to ever spend any time in the menus outside of recruiting. Stat simulation isn't great, and the game actively works against you whenever you are looking through some of the screens. For example, if you want to look at the Heisman race it will only tell you how that player did in their last game, it does not give you season stats for each player on the watch list. You can't even pull up the player card from any award screen menu to look at those season stats manually. The only way to see them is to exit and go to the league stat screen and search for that player. You also won't find anything like a matchup preview in the menu screen that tells you how each team ranks in things like pass ypg, points per game, etc. The only time you will see this is during the post season, and even then it only tells you I think total offense, total defense, and total points per game. The NCAA Football games have never been super deep in this off-field stuff, but prior versions still did it better outside of recruiting.

4 - As someone who is purely an offline dynasty player and likes simulation style games and is a long time fan of the series. I would not recommend it, especially if you have already waited this long. I haven't even turned it on in almost 2 months, and at no point in playing it did I ever feel like "this game is really fun". It has some nice aspects to it including the gameplay as well as some other small features that I didn't go into. It's also nice just to see a modern college football game with real players. In many ways though it feels like a step back regardless of this being the first iteration in over 10 years.

[MizzouRah]

Re: Questions from prospective buyer

As someone who is purely an offline dynasty player and likes simulation style games and is a long time fan of the series. I would not recommend it, especially if you have already waited this long. I haven't even turned it on in almost 2 months, and at no point in playing it did I ever feel like "this game is really fun". It has some nice aspects to it including the gameplay as well as some other small features that I didn't go into. It's also nice just to see a modern college football game with real players. In many ways though it feels like a step back regardless of this being the first iteration in over 10 years.

This sums up my feelings as well, it has its moments, but I still haven't made it through my first season after purchasing at release.

[dirk1970]

Re: Questions from prospective buyer

Nothing game breaking, but the lack of multiweek injuries in played dynasty games is pretty close.

That's my current injury list after 3 games:


starting QB: out for 3 weeks
two 2nd string DE: both out for 6 weeks
starting DT: out for 1 week

[Collegefbfan]

Re: Questions from prospective buyer

I will agree with finding the right sliders. Gameplay is fine. Recruiting takes a bit to get used to but still fine. The bugs related to scheduling and custom conferences have kept me from creating my own. I don't do digital, always disc in case I want to sell it later. If the digital version is that cheap, go for it. Disc copy, wait for black Friday or find it on ebay.

[Locke888]

Re: Questions from prospective buyer

Gameplay is good. Everything else is super halfassed.
NCAA14 made me come back to it every few days at most. This one? I’ve played 1 game in the last 2 months. Not immersive and too much stuff missing or broken.

[NDNathan]

Re: Questions from prospective buyer

4 - As someone who is purely an offline dynasty player and likes simulation style games and is a long time fan of the series. I would not recommend it, especially if you have already waited this long. I haven't even turned it on in almost 2 months, and at no point in playing it did I ever feel like "this game is really fun". It has some nice aspects to it including the gameplay as well as some other small features that I didn't go into. It's also nice just to see a modern college football game with real players. In many ways though it feels like a step back regardless of this being the first iteration in over 10 years.

Absolutely agree with this 100%

[DonkeyJote]

Re: Questions from prospective buyer

It's Free on Xbox this weekend, and on sale for $41.99

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[Feros Ferio 7]

Re: Questions from prospective buyer

I don't know how much stock I'd put in the word of people who haven't played in 2 months. A lot of the issues with the game that were not working correctly have been fixed.

I've been playing football games for over 30 years and this is the best one I've ever played. Does it have flaws? Yes. But the game works very well.

If yiu like football video games this is the game for you. The cpu actually fights back in games. If you play poorly you can lose on Heisman. In Madden I would play poorly and win by almost 40.

Try the free play weekend and see. But a game that I can just keep playing like this one is worth a look.


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[KSUowls]

Re: Questions from prospective buyer

I don't know how much stock I'd put in the word of people who haven't played in 2 months. A lot of the issues with the game that were not working correctly have been fixed.

I've been playing football games for over 30 years and this is the best one I've ever played. Does it have flaws? Yes. But the game works very well.

If yiu like football video games this is the game for you. The cpu actually fights back in games. If you play poorly you can lose on Heisman. In Madden I would play poorly and win by almost 40.

Try the free play weekend and see. But a game that I can just keep playing like this one is worth a look.


Sent from my iPhone using Operation Sports

I don't want to call the bolded part disingenuous because I don't think that you're being intentionally deceitful, but there are a couple of issues. One, my post really wasn't critical of bugs or aspects of the game that weren't working correctly (outside of in-game presentation which the October patch notes made no mention of addressing) which makes any fixes that I haven't experienced kind of irrelevant. Also, this implies that two months is a long time in the realm of post launch changes for a sports video game which just isn't true.

For reference the game has received title updates on August 4th, August 29th, September 19th, and Oct 24th. This means that the state of the game on September 19th was the same as it was a full month and 4 days later on Oct 23rd. That kind of puts into perspective what "2 months" of real time really means in this genre of game. Now, if I had said that in late September then maybe there would be a better argument, but it is currently mid-November.

The last time I played was just after the September title update. So the only changes that I would not have been able to experience would be those included in the October title update on October 24th, and the notes for that update made no mention of any of the things that I criticized. That story remains the same even if you include September's changes too (plus both August updates if we really want to get into it). Which isn't surprising because it is extremely rare to see any sports game receive a post launch update that does something other than fix bugs, tune AI, provide a roster update or add some kind of window dressing like new uniforms.

I do agree though that if anyone is on the fence then the free play weekend is a great opportunity to try it out yourself. As this thread perfectly illustrates we all have our own ways of playing, and what is important to one player may not be important to another.