On July 19 EA sports college football 25 was released to all audiences. This is the first time since NCAA football 14 that a college football game is on the market.
One mode that has gotten everyone excited is the road to glory mode. In the road to glory mode you get to create a player and try to have the greatest college career possible.
Road to glory customization
When you create your player, you can have your player be from any town in the US. It doesn’t matter how small, if it exists your player can be from there. However, the customization for your players physical features is rather limited. There are preset heads that you can pick. The only thing you can change from these heads are the hair and eye color.
However, your players’ play style has much more customization. You can choose whatever position you like in the road to glory mode. However, QB seems to be the common position. From there you can pick what archetype you want your QB to be. For example I choose field general as I prefer to have better throwing abilities compared to being able to run. Your archetype impacts what your starting overalls will be.
Another thing that impacts what your starting overall will be is what star level prospect you choose to be. Road to glory gives you four options for starting off your player. You can be a five, four, three or two star prospect. Whatever level prospect you choose will impact your starting overall. If you want to be great from the jump you should be a five star prospect, but if you wish to have a challenge you should be a two star prospect. I chose a four star prospect which started me at a 75 overall.
You can choose to sign with any college you want in road to glory. However, some colleges will have more demand for you than others. The two factors that will impact if a college wants you is your overall grade and if the team has talent at your position already. If you sign with a team with low interest you will be a walk-on, meaning you need to keep your grades up to stay on the roster (more on that later!) I chose Rutgers for two reasons, first since my college doesn’t have a football team and two since they had a QB who was basically the same overall as me which meant I had a legitimate chance to start.
Lastly, you have the mental attributes. You can pick from one of many attributes. I picked the winning time attribute as it helps you in close games. You also have three preset mental attributes, fan favorite, road dog and clear headed. All of these mental attributes can be unlocked through reaching certain accomplishments in road to glory.
Road to glory role playing elements
Just like a real college student, you will need to balance your priorities. Each week you get energy points you can commit to six things, academics, leadership, health, training, XP and your brand. Using energy points for each of these has benefits, and ignoring them has consequences.
Academics is a big part of the game. No, you won’t need to take an actual test, but your tests are simulated based on your academic points. If you do poorly you could be put on academic probation. Luckily you will also be given chances to get extra credit and to do extra studying to get the most of your academics.
You will also be faced with moral dilemmas throughout your season. Classmates will invite you to parties during class and curfew time and offer you PDFs of upcoming tests. You can play it safe and avoid temptations or you can run risks. Parties can help get your brand up and being given the PDF of a test can help your academic score. It’s up to you to decide which risks are worth it.
After my first week on the bench, I was given the chance to fight for a starting spot in week 2. I had to do three drills, scramble survive, pass skeleton and option attack, and get a better score than the current starter to win the spot. I won in two of the three drills and got the starting spot. The scramble survive was the hardest for me since my player didn’t have much mobility.
Road to glory gameplay
When you first become a starter in road to glory mode, you can only run the play the coach suggests. Once you earn more coach trust points you will have more plays to select. You have a limited number of audibles in a game based on how much the coach trusts you.
There are a lot of ways to earn coach trust points in road to glory. In game you can earn them by completing passes. However, you also lose coach trust points by throwing incomplete passes. One of my few problems with the game is you lose coach trust points on incomplete passes no matter what. It doesn’t matter if your receiver dropped it or if you were just getting the ball out of your hands to avoid a sack. The game is effectively encouraging you to take sacks so you don’t lose coach trust points.
During my first start vs. Akron, I noticed they couldn’t hold onto the football for more than two minutes. At first I thought the game might just be easy. However, during the next week’s game vs. Virginia Tech, they were able to go on a couple extended runs. I’ve generally felt like teams play to their overalls in the game. The teams you expect to play bad do in fact play bad and vice versa.
One of the biggest improvements to gameplay compared to its Madden counterpart is the route running. In Madden, receivers will sometimes randomly stop running the route, which can lead to incomplete passes and interceptions. Even once they catch the football they will sometimes take awful routes and end up getting tackled. Neither of these problems are in college football 25 from my experience. This helps make road to glory an enjoyable experience.
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