College Football 27 review: The greatest meal that leaves a bad taste in your mouth

College Football 27 is incredible. It’s unquestionably another level of polish and iteration beyond last year’s game, with dozens of small improvements that add up to the best-feeling football game since NFL 2K5. In so many ways CFB 27 deserves every ounce of high praise you can muster, but there’s also a level of reservation as we see the unparalleled joy and attention to detail from developers juxtaposed with the business realities of modern video game production.

Critically, and disappointingly this has resulted in a game with microtransactions where they don’t belong, sullying what could have been a watershed entry in the sports video game genre. We’ll circle back to those elements, but first let’s focus on the good.

Gameplay is better than ever

Simply put: The game on the field feels absolutely incredible. One of the biggest innovations the CFB series made when it re-entered the market was overhauling the run game, which has taken another step in CFB 27. The ground game rewards more patience than ever, where vision and understanding of football principles trump quick-twitch button motions. Sure, you can still make ludicrous dancing moves in the backfield before running 70+ yards for a touchdown, but this has been drastically toned down in favor of reading blocks, waiting for gaps to open, and making a move in the second level.

There’s more weight behind each step in the running game that makes cutting feel more impactful. This is complemented by more dynamic blocking that is less of a win/lose pancake and more engaged, natural-looking blocking. It makes every gain feel more earned and when you break a big run it’s truly rewarding knowing you read the defense, saw the gap, and made the play.

Despite this there remains some pain points. Once again, we still don’t have toss and counter plays really working as intended. They’re too slow to develop to make an impact beyond an occasional curiosity, and the AI blocking still struggles to identify their assignments correctly on these plays. It’s a minor gripe, but still notable.

The attention to detail in the passing game is also present on both sides of the ball when it comes to the pass. Offensively there’s now the ability to easily, and properly throw back-shoulder fades in the end zone by depressing left trigger while passing. These aren’t overpowered, and trying the pass with a poor quarterback or a receiver who doesn’t have good positioning will often result in an interception.

On the defensive side, we have much better, even more intelligent defensive back play. The addition of swatting at the ball and making intelligent plays introduced last year is back and more refined, but DBs are now better at maintaining their zone assignments, and now undercut routes as the primary way to force interceptions. This undercutting can also be controlled manually, giving greater control over DB play.

Similar to the run game, there is one glaring issue. There are far too many pop-up interceptions caused by a collision at the catch point. It was neat to see the first couple of times as an addition, but across numerous games there have been too many occasions where the ball has rocketed up in the air and been caught by a waiting safety. It makes it feel like something that has been added to the game that EA Sports wants to show off, rather than an organic part of the game.

The presentation has taken another step forward

If you’re already a fan of a top school, then you may only notice a few new wrinkles to the presentation, because CFB 26 already had you covered. There is a greater attention to detail when it comes to specialized uniform tweaks and turnover traditions. One extremely welcome area is the ability to tweak the crowd appearance for games, meaning you can ensure there’s a “green out” in the stands if you’re Oregon, or “stripe the Vaught” for Ole Miss — meaning the crowd will wear accurate clothing to better replicate the look of the stands.

The biggest area of improvement in bringing more schools into the fold when it comes to top-tier presentation. Vanderbilt is one school that has gotten a massive overhaul with their guitar solo added, along with the anchor drop. This is extended to several schools, and it really makes everything feel more alive.

Announcing is largely the same, but with some very key wrinkles. The commentary team is more likely to discuss real-world events from last college football season, such as highlighting Lane Kiffin’s dramatic exit from Ole Miss, or discussing how Arch Manning is making progress to become the player people thought he would be. This especially shines through in rivalry games, highlighting how the rivalry started, the history, and delivering interesting factoids only the most die-hard fan of a school would know. This deepens how CFB 27 is a love letter to college football.

New animations really help heighten the experience. Players will now have noticeable facial expressions on replay that show the emotion of the game. From taking a big gasp of air before throwing a Hail Mary, to wincing when a quarterback gets hit in the pocket, it all adds to the experiece.

On the audio side there’s a new host of top music that has been reimagined by the EA Sports marching band. This includes Chappel Roan’s “Pink Pony Club,” “Rehab” by Amy Winehouse, and “APT” by Rose and Bruno Mars. It’s more nice additions to the game, once again making the musical suite in this game second-to-none.

Time to address the elephant in the room…

Thus far we’ve established that this is the best-playing, best-looking, and best-sounding entry in the College Football series, but the game itself is marred by the rise of microtransactions. For the first time we have College Football Ultimate Team, which is fine for people who enjoy Ultimate Team modes, and understand the transactional nature of buying packs to improve their team — but I cannot understand for the life of me why EA Sports decided to add microtransactions to Road to Glory and Dynasty.

These single-player, offline modes about raising a player from high school, through college, and to the NFL or raising the prestige of a program have been standouts since the series launched and an extremely fun way to play. This year the decision was made to slow progression, but give the option to purchase coaching or player levels.

I need to do more testing on my end, but I am seeing some of the same pain points with dynasty progression as others have posted online. In short: It’s very difficult to create a coach and raise them to elite status, even after winning numerous National Championships, you will still top out as a middling coach. This isnt helped by the fact that recruiting has glaring issues, particularly with the interaction between your own recruiting and how the AI manages its classes. If you want to land numerous blue chips prospects you have to start your dynasty as an elite program, with very little wiggle room for a school to have a breakout class than changes its fortunes.

The established legacy of teams like Ohio State, Notre Dame, or Alabama seemingly has too big an impact on where players will go, rather than allowing for burgeoning successful programs to break into that top tier. This is made more problematic by the transfer portal, which favors top programs too much. As a result, you’ll see attrition hurt a dynasty over time with CPU-controlled programs, leaving only the elite to survive. It ruins some of the randomness that makes college football special and feels especially out of place following a season where Indiana was able to become national champions.

Final word

College Football 27 isn’t just one of the best football games all time, but one of the greatest sports games of all — when it comes to the on-field action. The game is peerless in presentation, and we’re fast approaching a point where the feel of playing the game itself is truly perfect.

Sadly, we’re seeing this game also get bitten by the microtransaction bug in a similar way to the NBA 2K series. It would be absolutely fine to have it siloed off in a multiplayer mode like Ultimate Team, where there’s already the expectation for the experience — but it’s tough to see it integrated into primarily offline modes like Road to Glory and Dynasty as a means to accelerate progression makes it feel as if the player is getting robbed of advancing organically, whether it’s true or not. While it’s certainly fair to say “you don’t need to engage with paying,” and that’s a fair statement, it’s also fair to wonder whether or not progression has been artificially slowed down to motivate people to spend additional money on upgrade points.

If you’re the kind of player who doesn’t care about min-maxing their coach and player, or who simply takes to games like this to play the matchups of the week, then College Football 27 is an unquestionable, categorical must-buy. If you spend all your time in Dynasty or Road to Glory, grinding to turn around a program or make the ideal prospect with an eye to eventually import them into Madden 27, then there’s going to be soul-searching about whether it’s worth it to you to pump more money into the game. This is the new-normal for sports games, but we don’t need to accept it. The end result is a game that is near-perfect in so many ways, but leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth on the back end.

8.5/10