Fifa 18 review round-up: Journey sequel and meaningful improvements mean new game is worth it, even if little has changed

There are still some fairly significant problems

Gaming fans sample EA Sports FIFA 18 as Bayern Munich play Real Madrid on the screen at the Los Angeles Convention Center on day one of E3 2017 (FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images)

Fifa 18 is here. And there's one big question: will you get it?

It's the question all football game fans are forced to ponder each year, come September. But that just makes the question more urgent, since you know that there's the opportunity to wait a few months and get it a bit cheaper, or wait a year and get a new game entirely.

Initial reviews suggest yes, for one big reason: the Journey mode, alongside some other little tweaks. But there are more than a couple of caveats to that, most of them about what actually happens on the pitch.

In many ways, it's possible to predict the conclusion of every review. If you're a keen fan of Fifa, then buy it, since the small improvements and updates to players and kits are more than enough to make the game a significant upgrade; if you're not that bothered and have one of the games from the last couple of years, don't bother.

But EA Sports seems to be doing more and more to try and counteract that predictability, with changes both bad and good. Last year, for example, it introduced a proper single player career mode in The Journey.

This time around, there are no such spectacular changes. Instead, EA looks to consolidate and improve those new features, adding a little more sophistication and maturity to the game.

For the most part, that appears to work: the second chapter of The Journey has received plaudits surpassing even last year's debut. But there are problems, too – most of which revolve around the changes EA has made to the actual football parts of the game.

"FIFA 18 shows Alex Hunter moving into a wider world of football, and while that story experience is absorbing, it also reveals how much work areas like the career mode – which hasn't meaningfully changed in years – need," wrote Matthew Kato in Game Informer. "It's still worth it to play all the modes the title has to offer, but this is a title that caters to its superstar."

But problems on the pitch are still there. Many reviewers write that that developers have shifted the focus to attacking play, for instance.

That means that strikers are far more likely to avoid tackles, especially using the new controls that have been added – but that also means that the world's best strikers are all but unstoppable on runs and in front of goal.

"Ultimately, FIFA 18 introduces enough new ideas to suggest it’s not sitting on the laurels of its success," wrote John Robertson at IGN. "However, it’s a simplified experience, one that fails to embrace the complexity of football at the highest level. Its focus on attack makes for spectacular matches, but they often feel like extravagant offensive training sessions than a proper match with depth and strategy."

That pattern is clear in many of the reviews. Almost all praise the extra depth that has been added to the game off the pitch, in the form of updates like the improved Journey mode and changes to Ultimate Team. But each of them point out that those advances aren't being matched by the changes in the way the game works when you're actually playing football, which of course is the central point.

"It's off the pitch that EA excels," wrote Oscar Dayus at Gamespot. "From the variety of game modes on offer and how everything's presented, to the constant updates in FUT's Team of the Week, Daily Objectives, and discussion of real-world happenings in commentary, FIFA 18 captures the world of football and confidently translates it into a video game. On the pitch, however, EA's soccer series is still lagging far behind PES 2018's more fluid, satisfying football. This year's improvements are welcome, but more needs to be done in the coming years if FIFA is to be a world-beater once again."

Polygon laid out the occasional lack of complexity and repetition that some parts of the game have long relied on, and which haven't changed this time around.

"But FIFA 18 is still seductively deep and delivers excitement," wrote Owen S Good. "It gave me the feeling that there is still so much to learn about what appears to be a rather straightforward sport, and that the game would gladly help me understand. This is always the time of year when I ask myself why I don’t just spend all of my time playing FIFA, and FIFA 18 poses the question more forcefully than ever."