For years, we awaited the return of EA Sports College Football video games. Following its return last year, the series now faces the unique challenge of following a release buffed by nostalgia and excitement. The series also deals with fans who are relatively critical of annual sports sim releases. How does EA Sports College Football 26 stack up against its NFL counterpart, and where does the franchise fine-tune itself to build on last year’s success? Let’s dive into our EA Sports College Football 26 review for Xbox Series X.

One of the largest headlines for EA Sports College Football 26 is the inclusion of over 300 real-world coaches. Immersion is everything in sports sim games, and getting to squad up against Kirby Smart or Dan Lanning is a really excellent touch. With these coaches is also the added benefit of more accurate playbooks, designed to match the real-life strategies you’ll see these figures taking on gameday. While you can still create your own coach for Dynasty Mode, it’s an enjoyable experience stepping into your favorite team’s on-field general and calling the shots.

Detailed player types and abilities pair with the real-world coaches to give you 10 new archetypes and 84 player abilities to play with as you assemble a team with a shot at the National Championship. Between these new details, the real-world coaches, and Home Field Advantage 2.0, an enhanced benefit to playing on your home field, many little things are helping to fine-tune the franchise following its grand return to gaming consoles.

This year’s entry includes an expanded Dynasty Mode, which I spent most of my review time playing. As you work to preserve and cement your legacy, the all-new Trophy Room is your space to showcase every individual award won throughout your career. It’s this visual space where you’ll find the successes you have managing the team, or teams, at which you coach, materialized in a fun way. One major improvement this year is the Transfer Portal, which not only is your cheat code to securing top-tier talent, but now mimics much of the movement you’ll see the sport’s top stars navigating.

Location-based visits also help you to identify talent for your squad as you recruit new players into your program. If the management sim stuff like transfers and recruiting doesn’t appeal to you, you can always play the role of an Offensive Coordinator or Defensive Coordinator. That said, new dynamic development of players and the increased level of detail you have in managing players coming on to campus and potentially leaving in the Portal make this a really wonderful mix of gameplay and sim content.

In terms of gameplay, I’d like to share my impressions, comparing them to my experience rather than the notes EA provided for the updates they’ve listed. All in all, AI is significantly smoother this year. There are fewer throw-the-controller moments for things like no-look interceptions or crazy routes run by WRs that don’t match play calls. There is also a better balance to your ability to strategize at higher difficulties. Last year in EA Sports College Football 25, it felt like the AI would just choose if it was going to score or not, regardless of your best efforts.

One aspect that I feel remains unchanged for the better is the pace and speed of the play-to-play gameplay. Last year, I noted that College Football 25 felt so much faster and more sporadic than Madden 25. New updates to the tackling and running mechanics make the game feel more sluggish. It’s not dull, but it lacks the pace and intensity differential that I enjoyed so much in last year’s game. While things like passing aren’t necessarily worse for it, the run game is now much less fun than it was last year.

Based on my experience in about 25 hours of gameplay, running the ball requires near-perfect blocking, which rarely occurs. I feel as if there’s a good chance this gets patched, but at launch, running is not a tactic I feel I can rely on. Trucking the opponent when I’m running the ball feels like an impossible task, leaving me with juke moves that work fine if I have a speed back in, but power running feels obsolete. Inversely, I’m not seeing as much success stopping AI running backs from mowing me down as they see necessary.

The alterations to the physics of tackling in general feel much less reliable, which is likely a correlation to the new player attribute system. There’s probably a method of nerfing some attributes and boosting others that really only happens once the game launches, but until those changes are made, I’m throwing the ball 9 times out of 10. Combined with the slower pace of play, it’s almost as if the game has become less realistic and somehow less eventful as well. These are two changes that can be remedied, but they need to be boosted before this is an overall improvement on last year’s reboot.

EA Sports College Football 26 makes strides in some areas from last year’s return of the franchise, but some changes have been made that are worse compared to last year’s version. There’s fine-tuning that needs to occur before this feels like a good trajectory for the series, and I do have faith it will occur. Have patience, and you’ll enjoy this game as is, but there could definitely be some improvements to make it feel as fun as a Saturday slate of rivalry games and conference clashes.

An Xbox Series X|S review copy of EA Sports College Football 26 was provided by EA for this review.

Phenixx Gaming is everywhere you are. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.

Also, if you’d like to join the Phenixx Gaming team, check out our recruitment article for details on working with us.

Phenixx Gaming is proud to be a Humble Partner! Purchases made through our affiliate links support our writers and charity!

EA Sports College Football 26

69.99

6.5

Score

6.5/10

Pros

• Great improvements to AI randomness
• Good updates to Dynasty Mode
• Fun enhancements to the realism of the league, including real coaches

Cons

• Major drawbacks to the pace of the gameplay; things just feel slower
• This feels like two steps forward one step back for the franchise