I'm enjoying this FIFA game on my phone, but I'm beginning to realize part of the reason why the FIFA franchise (and other sports games) rarely were much fun for me.

Firstly, the controls are always really complicated. I definitely got into the "street" versions of both FIFA and especially NBA Street, largely because the controls are watered down, which makes those versions halfway accessible to people who haven't owned every single FIFA game ever made. Predictably, the controls are pretty shitty on the touchscreen, but on the plus side I believe it also forced them to simplify it a little bit.

The main thing that is really frustrating me though, is how reminiscent the gameplay is of an RPG where you will sometimes find yourself in a match that you either literally can't win, or in which you would need to play perfectly in order to have a chance at winning because of a difference in skill stats. I like the RPG aspect of putting a team together. (Actually, I like it better than the actual gameplay.) But a lot of the skills, most notably defense and goalkeeping (which is completely automated), can hardly be influenced by the skill of the person playing at all. Instead, it plays like a real-time RPG where, for example, you can't kick the ball away from an opposing player because 1) that's how the stats happen to compute, and 2) your control within the confines of that action is really limited/nonexistent. So really, it's only partially playable.

I'm tempted to think that this kind of gameplay might be intentional. Like a lot of iPhone games, the download here is free, but there is a huge amount of in-game upgrades that you can purchase with real money. So maybe the idea is to first you get the players hooked, and then they’ll start dishing out real money when they're sick of losing, regardless of how well they play. Bastards!