I won’t lie; for as much that UFL‘s initial announcement was a positive thing in my opinion, I was somewhat skeptical if it would ever see the light of day, and actually become something worth caring about. Considering how EA Sports FC basically rules the football simulator space with an iron fist (eFootball is too incompetent for anyone to bother nowadays), more competition was absolutely necessary. Football Manager might be the best football video game out there, but it’s a management sim, it’s not meant to compete with EA Sports FC directly. UFL was trying to carve its own niche, despite its nonexistent brand recognition and the fact it’s a free-to-play game.

Expect a less realistic, more approachable, more arcade-friendly gameplay loop.

The F2P model they are going for, according to the developers, is not “free-to-play”, but “fair-to-play”. In essence, according to the developers themselves, UFL is meant to be a fair experience for everyone, whether you decide to spend money on it or not. The sole online mode this game has to offer is based on growing a team from crappy origins, playing matches, earning in-game currency, improving your players’ skills, competing against other people in through skill-based matchmaking, and purchasing new members of your squad as a result.

In this regard, I do have to commend the devs. More than once was I put against someone who had actually spent real money on credits to afford a bunch of beefed up players, and still managed to win the game. It doesn’t matter if you have Endrick and Samu Omorodion as your striking duo; if you don’t know how to play the game properly, a noob like myself can still beat you without a sweat. It takes a while before you’re able to actually afford good players, but UFL is somewhat generous with the amount of experience and credit boosts you can acquire by simply beating daily challenges.

You’ll need to grind for better players, but you can also improve your crappy starters’ stats with enough willpower and stubbornness.

UFL didn’t act like a wallet predator trying to convince me to spend money on superfluous crap. Most of the game’s premium currency is dedicated to skins, customization options, and whatnot. For the most part, I was playing against folks using the one set of kits UFL gives you from the getgo, with the same badge, stadium, black boots, and so on. If they are fine with this model, with just half a dozen whales financing everybody else’s fun, I’m not going to complain. The game itself is actually quite fun, so I didn’t mind looking like literally everyone else.

Now, don’t expect the same level of technical expertise and refined gameplay as EA Sports FC. UFL features a decent gameplay loop and good controls, but it’s a tad bit more arcadey, less realistic. As a result, it’s a bit more accessible to newcomers, whilst veterans will have to “unlearn” how to play virtual football in order to fully adapt themselves to this game. Performing tricks and fancy shots is easy enough. Scoring headers from a corner kick became second nature. Free kicks and penalties are unnecessarily unintuitive. There are a handful of AI-related issues, as well as the occasional bug. This is far from a perfect and polished offering, but I expected a lot worse.

Well, expect a bug or two every now and then…

I also expected worse from the presentation. The visuals aren’t anything impressive, but get the job done. It runs on Unreal 5, the framerate is a constant 60fps, famous players look like their real-life counterparts, whilst the remaining 99% of players in the roster look as generic as they could be. One thing that impressed me, though, was the in-menu soundtrack. I thought that UFL was going to save money by featuring a minimalist soundtrack, but nope. They went all in on a soundtrack that’s even better than most EA Sports titles, featuring Masked Wolf, Greta Van Fleet, The Offspring, and Airbourne.

UFL is not hideous…. but it’s not a visual masterpiece, either.

As far as free-to-play practices go, UFL never fully tried to convince me that it was necessary to spend additional money on it in order to fully enjoy it. In fact, I didn’t expect to play it as much as I did; it’s grindy as hell, but skill-based matchmaking and the fact you need to actually learn how to play the damn game in order to succeed made it a very fair and engrossing football experience, even if it’s lacking in modes and a bit of polish. There’s a lot that needs to be improved, but as it stands, I’m quite pleased with UFL. It might not be an EA Sports FC killer, but it adds some variety to a niche that was in dire need of new competitors.

UFL is available now on PS5 and Xbox Series S/X

Reviewed on PS5.