Picked up the game again after letting it sit since launch and the first thing that stood out was how the formation adjustments actually stick between halves instead of resetting like I thought they did. Spent a whole match against some mid-table side just tweaking the midfield press triggers on the fly and watching the AI respond without the usual lag spikes.

The scouting filters still bury anything below a certain rating unless you manually expand every tab, which gets old fast when you're trying to fill out a youth intake on a budget. Ended up missing two decent prospects because the default view hides their training growth curves until you dig into the individual report.

Career mode tracks the simulated results across leagues better than I gave it credit for, especially how a single injury in the schedule ripples into fixture congestion later. EA SPORTS FC™ 27 makes the squad building side feel like actual management instead of just menu grinding once you notice those carryover effects.