The New EA Sports FC Mobile Game Revives Final Fantasy’s Best Minigame

EA Sports FC Tactical logo

Yesterday, EA Sports announced a new spinoff game for EA Sports FC – formerly FIFA – called EA Sports FC Tactical. EA describes it as “a new way to play the World’s Game on mobile devices” and that it features “strategic, turn-based gameplay.” I say it’s a straight rip-off of Final Fantasy’s best minigame, and features “Blitzball gameplay.”

EA’s announcement press release is exactly what you’d expect for something like this. It goes on about how there’s more than 5000 real-world players in the game across 10 leagues, throws in some buzzwords about ecosystems and immersion, and promises fans that they’ll be able to play it in early 2024.

Related: Molecano Is Taking Over My Life

Here’s the fun part though: often, mobile games will get tested in specific regions before rolling out globally. And often publishers will pick English-speaking countries with smaller populations, like Canada, to test it out. In this case, EA picked Australia and New Zealand, and hey! That first one is where I live.

Knowing that somebody at GLHF would have to cover it sooner or later – and knowing that somebody would have to be me given my status as the only Australian on staff – I begrudgingly downloaded the game. I typically am not a big fan of soccer, although I did root for the Tillies in the women’s world cup, so I was kind of dreading this… so imagine my surprise when I played through the tutorial and realized it was just a reskinned version of Final Fantasy X’s Blitzball minigame.

I’m not kidding, this isn’t a bit — mechanically, EA Sports FC Tactical is almost identical to Blitzball if you set Blitzball’s movement to auto. Whoever has the ball automatically moves towards the goal, and if they run into an opposing player the action freezes and each side gets to pick an action.

If you’ve got the ball, you can choose to pass, make an attempt at a shot, or try to get past the defenders to keep going. You and your opponents will have numerical stats, and if yours is higher you’ll be successful, and if not they’ll likely get the ball. Just like Blitzball.

Either side can use special techniques that increase the likelihood of getting the ball where they want it to go, and these special techniques have unique animations that show the power of what players are doing. Just like Blitzball. Honestly, every part of this game feels like Blitzball, except the overworld view.

As a kid, I spent hundreds of hours on Blitzball in FFX. As an adult, I spent even more. In my opinion, it’s easily the best minigame in the entire Final Fantasy series, and I’ve always wanted a standalone title that was just Blitzball. It seems EA Sports heard my prayers, because that’s basically what EA FC Tactical is.

This game was co-developed by KLab, which also worked on a suspiciously similar game called Captain Tsubasa: Dream Team. It’s a very similar premise, but it requires a little more manual input, and features anime boys instead of real-life people. I haven’t played that game, but I have played other Captain Tsubasa games, and I suspected it was related after I saw the special move animations.

Now, I’m not going to accuse KLab of ripping off Blitzball, even though I did in my intro, that was just a joke, I promise. I think it’s more an evolution of the developer’s own games, which through streamlining and focusing, has happened to end up very similar to Blitzball. It could also just be that KLab staff grew up playing Final Fantasy, like I did, and intentionally or not, got inspired by it.

Whatever the reason, the result is the same: a soccer game that I actually want to play. It’s been for a little over 12 hours for me, and I’ve already sunk four hours into it. If you liked Blitzball too, you should probably check it out, either now if you’re an Aussie or next year if you’re not.

Watch out though, because the Besaid Aurochs (that’s my soccer team name in EA FC Tactical) are going for the crown, and we won’t let anyone get in our way.