EA Sports College Football 25 Beginner Tips Before You Start

EA Sports Football 25 has brought college football back to the virtual world for the first time in over 10 years, and that means even the toughest NCAA veterans may have to shake off a little rust.

To get you started right away, here are some of our best EA Sports Football 25 Tips for beginners to keep in mind as you begin, whether you’re embarking on your first major dynasty or collecting the best cards possible in Ultimate Team.

Choose your favorite team

When you first start College Football 25the game will ask you to select your favorite team. While this mainly affects the look of the main menu and the school the game starts with in the team selection screen, it also has an added bonus in Ultimate Team.

To get you started, the game will generate a new team for you that includes several players from your favorite team. While this may seem like you have to pick the best team you can find, they all add up to a squad with a total score of 65 and you’ll quickly replace the players you get from this. So don’t think about it too much, just choose your favorite team and don’t worry too much about the Ultimate Team squad you get.

First, start with some Ultimate Team challenges

Image: EA Tiburon/Electronic Arts

If you are a virtual college football veteran, there is probably nothing you feel like doing to jump right into your first dynasty. But College Football 25 has a lot of changes from the previous version, and the easiest way to learn about those changes is through Ultimate Team’s Challenge Mode, even if you don’t plan on spending a lot of time in that mode overall.

More specifically, you should play through the Ultimate Team 101 challenges as soon as you start the game. These will feel a little basic, but they should help you get used to the new passing mechanics, the redesigned option games (which use a different control scheme than before), and the new shooting mechanics.

Find your perfect playbook

College Football 25 has over 100 unique playbooks and 10 different attack schemes, which can make choosing the scheme you want a little daunting. Thankfully, Ultimate Team’s challenges are once again hitting the nail on the head with the Attack and Defense Scheme Test Challenges.

These challenges are designed to give you a taste of each scheme, from Air Raid to Spread Option, and show you which teams use which scheme. This should give you a solid foundation for your first few games and is a perfect starting point for experimentation.

Dive into some games

All that preparation and planning is great, but ultimately this game is about playing it, and that’s the best way to learn it, too. Play a few games with your favorite school, and once you get the hang of it, you can change it up and experiment with other playbooks and NCAA stars.

Experiment with the Switch Stick

Image: EA Tiburon/Electronic Arts

One of College Football 25One of ‘s new features is called Switch Stick, and it allows you to swap players in the defensive secondary with more precision than the one-button switches in previous games. That might not sound like much, but it can actually make a big difference — for example, when you’re trying to switch to a safety to cut off a route instead of a cornerback who’s already in coverage.

To fully exploit the Switch Stick’s potential, however, you’ll need to experiment with it quite a bit. The best way to do this is to simply play through a few games. In doing so, however, you’ll likely allow some embarrassing touchdowns, so it’s best to limit these to “Play Now.”

Start Dynasty mode with a test run

The Dynasty mode is really the star of College Football 25with all sorts of new additions to the formula that made it great over a decade ago. But with all these new additions, the mode is now even more complicated, and there’s a lot to mess around with in the menus. After all, if you’re aiming to build a Group of Five conference from scratch all the way to the College Football Playoffs, the last thing you need is to lose a five-star recruit because you pressed the wrong button in a menu.

That’s why we think you should start a test dynasty before you really commit. Start with a school you don’t care about so much that you don’t mind the mistakes. You could even start with an existing top group. That way, you’ll get a taste of what it’s like to land recruits and have some influence before you turn on hard mode and try to turn Old Dominion into a top-tier program.

Play as many solo battles as possible

Image: EA Tiburon/Electronic Arts

(Editor’s note: Ultimate Team isn’t necessarily for everyone, so if you’re mostly interested in the Road to Glory and Dynasty modes, don’t worry about the next few tips. They’re for Ultimate Team players only.)

Solo Battles in Ultimate Team are a mode where you compete against another player’s Ultimate Team squad. The twist is that the computer plays, not the player who created it. Each Solo Battle gives you more rewards than a normal match against the AI ​​- like Solo Season games.

Solo Battles are technically community events that last about four days each. During that time, everyone plays against the same user-created teams. New opponents appear every morning, and you can play against four of them daily. For each match, you’ll receive a Battle Score based on how difficult the match was, how you played, and whether or not you won the match. At the end of each four-day event, the total scores are tallied, a leaderboard of the best players is created, and everyone receives special rewards based on how well they did.

Check in sets

Sets are an Ultimate Team mechanic that allows you to turn multiple lower-rated players into a single player with a higher overall rating. You don’t need to worry about this too much when you’re starting out, but as you improve your team, be sure to check out the Sets menu to see if you can turn some of your old, unwanted players into meaningful upgrades.

Buy Ultimate Team Daily Recruitment Pack

You can purchase a new Recruit Pack every day at a discounted price. The packs only contain low-rated players, but for only 100 UT, it’s worth grabbing them every day to complete your first sets.