FIFA 23 vs eFootball 2023, the match to elect football game of the year

FIFA 23 vs eFootball 2023

There are some rivalries, in the world of football, that have transcended the field and have become timeless symbols of sporting passion, engraved as they are in the collective football imagination. They are a treasure for everyone, not just for the fans involved, because let's face it, there would be no charm in a Premier League without Merseyside and North London derbies, or in Serie A without Madonnina, Lanterna or Roma derbies. . It will not have the same blazon as these great sporting events, but the match that is played every autumn between the football simulations of Konami and Electronic Arts has become a real classic of our times, also because for better or for worse, especially in Italy, it conveys still the attention of a large audience of fans.

Although both sides are supported by diehard fringes of ultras ready to sharpen their knives, we are sure that many of you still have to choose which team to cheer for this year , or are simply curious to find out who is ticking this time. We therefore decided to brush up on a long tradition such as that of the confrontation between football players, to answer the same question that arises every season. In a video game market where true currency has become consumer time, we won't tell you who between FIFA 23 and eFootball 2023 deserves your money (also because one of them continues to be free-to-play), but we will look instead to indicate which of them is the football game of the year as the result of an ideal football match that will be played between the best qualities of each of the two products. Get comfortable and get yourself a Borghetti, tickets for FIFA 23 vs eFootball 2023 are on us.

Gameplay: two football experiences never so close to each other

FIFA 23 has recovered some ground from its rival A fundamental part of the match, perhaps the most important of all, is played on the gameplay field , which has never seen the same formations of FIFA and eFootball as this year in terms of the game. While Konami's football has kept its distinctive formula intact, updating itself to 2023 with a cascade of small improvements that involved aspects such as the physics of the ball and the reactivity of the players, FIFA 23 has instead experienced a profound restructuring of its gameplay recipe, which brought him very close to the experience offered by his arch rival.

Among the fans, there is the consolidated opinion that the remote controlled gameplay of FIFA would be inferior in every respect to the exquisitely more realistic one of eFootball, but with the many innovations made with this chapter, the new simulation of EA Sports has been able to recover a lot of ground against the competitor. As we told you in our FIFA 23 review, this edition offers gameplay with a much more staid pace, and players return that same feeling of heaviness already seen in the simulation signed by Konami. This revolution owes a lot to the excellent work done by the studio with HyperMotion2, the technology with which two entire matches between professionals were captured to translate them into many, many new animations, about 6,000. The result is that with a far greater number of variables, every action is unpredictable and tackles, passes, saves and shots seem much more realistic than in the past.

The update to eFootball 2023 hasn't revolutionized the gameplay of the game On the other side of the fence, eFootball 2023 does not present any distortion of its classic mechanics, to the point that the gameplay is almost indistinguishable from that of last year if not for some imperceptible changes to some aspects of the game. Paradoxically, the developers have tried to make the players more reactive during defensive situations and to improve ball control in the attack phases, which results in a slightly faster gameplay than usual. For the rest, the usual, very enjoyable football experience made in Japan remains, even if we would have liked to see some more news.

As soon as the kick-off has been kicked off, the eFootball 2023 team already has an advantage thanks to a splendid choral maneuver, which sublimates in a fantastic network. Almost unexpectedly, however, as soon as the game resumes FIFA 23 is no less, and by offering the spectators a gameplay of the same goodness as that of the opponents it immediately manages to catch the draw: it is 1-1.

Gameplay: the difference in values ​​on the pitch is still enormous

FIFA continues to be the only football game with a career as a manager However, the delicate balance situation that characterizes the first minutes of the match does not last very long. As soon as we move to face the comparison between the contents included in the two video games, it immediately becomes evident that the formations are still separated by a sidereal distance. It is true, we told you about the difficulty of FIFA 23 to adequately renew all the modalities that make up this year's offer, but if we look at the proposal fielded by eFootball 2023, it is easy to understand why his opponent was enough to deploy spring, to take the lead.

The 2023 update does not introduce any new content within the title developed by Konami, which remains stuck in the pairing of Dream Team and Authentic Match. We are talking about a free-to-play experience, it is true, but the expectations of fans remain stuck even for the repeated absence of any offline activity worthy of the name. If Team of Dreams represents in fact a valid modality (also considering the ticket price), the Master League is still very far from returning to the field, despite some having seen it training with the group. The content offer of eFootball 2023 is so anachronistic that only two years after its release, in late October, will the possibility of playing online with your friends be added.

The Dram Team mode is the only true content of eFootball 2023 Considering what are the technical values ​​of the opponent, from a certain point of view it is more than natural that EA Sports has been careful not to invest too many new ideas in a chapter that is still a strong transition. As in a pre-season friendly, the Canadian studio was able to play the same redundancies as last year, leaving the new signings on the bench: the Career, the Pro Club, Volta Football and the Ultimate Team bomber go to compose a battery of content that has no equal in the entire panorama of sports video games, and even if each of these modes has been proposed again, more or less, under the same guise of last year, this is enough for FIFA 23 to wipe out the rival ever.

As the minutes go by, it becomes clear that eFootball lacks the lymph to hold up the comparison with the opponent, who seems to have twice as many men on the field as the training coached by Konami. The new scion of the Japanese series remains crushed in his half of the field, and although Dream Team often tries to advance the center of gravity, he is always totally alone in attack. FIFA 23 performs in a reasoned tiki taka among all its modes, until the Career is served with a through ball from the Pro Club and immediately raises a wide cross in the area that FUT, with a spectacular overhead kick, throws into the net for the momentary 2-1 a few minutes before the end of the first half.

Licensing issue: two categories of difference

The licensed teams of eFootball 2023 are reproduced in great detail, but for each championship they count on the fingers of one hand If in the past PES had always been able to play with FIFA in terms of gameplay and game content, the series has never been able to fill in years and years of rivalry the gap in official licenses. With the transition to the free-to-play formula Konami does not seem to have any intention of reversing the trend and, although eFootball presents itself today at the appointment with the 2023 update accompanied by several exclusive licenses concerning the main Serie A clubs, the comparison between the two football productions still remains merciless today.

We will not go too far into the discussion, since it is enough to unroll a few numbers to get a quick idea of ​​the distance that separates the two videogames on the subject of licenses. eFootball 2023, in fact, currently includes only 26 international teams, and more than half of them play in Latin American leagues. Do you support Fiorentina, Juventus, Turin, Atalanta or any other Serie A team not present in this very short list? Well, forget about being able to play with your favorite team, except for a few rare timed events that sometimes involve unlicensed leagues.

The battery of licensing put in support of FIFA 23 is truly impressive FIFA 23 travels at a completely different altitude and, hold on tight, includes the beauty of 700 football teams from over 30 official leagues, for a total of over 19,000 players entered with their real name in the game. A simply impressive block of licenses, an archival photograph of world football that makes the title developed by EA Sports the only point of reference for anyone with an ounce of football passion. Or, more simply, for anyone who even has the ambition to play with their favorite team.

From the very first moments of the recovery, FIFA 23 continues its dominance on the level of the game thanks to the excellent names that make up the its 11 owner, a melting pot that contains talents from the four corners of the world. On the contrary, the new eFootball, apart from an inexplicable predilection for Latin football, does not offer so much variety and fails to develop countermeasures to the excessive power of the opponents, who reach the double advantage in no time at all. We are on 3 to 1, and there is still some time to go until the final whistle.

Technical profile: a narrowing gap

EA Sports' football simulation, once again this year, has shoulders an excellent technical sector From the point of view of the technical sector, there is no doubt that both Konami and EA Sports have managed to produce high-level football simulations, after years of surreal animations and unrecognizable faces. That of the Japanese publisher, in particular, has made huge steps forward compared to the screenshots that made the round of the internet in 2020, and is now a football game that features realistic animations, excellent quality textures, a lighting system effective and of the players who are finally very similar to their real counterparts.

Unfortunately, eFootball is facing a triple A colossus of the caliber of FIFA 23, a product historically always avant-garde, in every edition. The title of EA Sports is extraordinarily curated again this year, and stages the game of football with a fidelity that is unparalleled, enhancing its photography thanks to incredibly advanced models, actually superior to those seen in eFootball. The gap is very thin, we realize it, but we cannot ignore its existence and it is therefore right to reward the work done by the Canadian house in the realization of the last FIFA.

In the last part of the match, eFootball is shakes off the difficulties and captures the ball of the game, starting to ring a series of offensive actions that go very close to the net. It is the opposing goalkeeper who saves the goal on more than one occasion, performing an exceptional performance that represents an avant-garde for the game of football. FIFA 23 defends itself so well that Konami's football ends up granting a small distraction, capable of producing a lightning fast counter-attack that brings the score to 4-1 just seconds from the triple whistle.

Final scoreboard

Ted Lasso in FIFA 23 Being referees of this heated rivalry, like every year, has put us in the very uncomfortable position of bestowing praise and reproach, a responsibility that we hope can be rewarded by offering you as faithful a cross-section as possible of what are the playful proposals of each title. The end result may seem merciless to you, but as Ted Lasso would say, success is not about winning and losing, but about being motivated to be the best version of yourself on and off the pitch. And if healthy competition isn't going to give us more and more beautiful football games, what else could it be?

In any case, have fun with the football simulation that most belongs to you without feeling like a Serie A or Serie B player because, if football is life, as long as it remains on the consoles and PCs of those who are driven by this passion we will all win, no one excluded.

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