Rugby 25

I'll be straight with you: I came into Rugby 25 the way I approach any competitive online sports title, wanting to know if the PvP is worth a damn, whether the controls reward skill, and whether the online infrastructure holds up past the first few weekends. The short answer is that this is the most content-rich rugby game ever shipped, sitting on a foundation that is genuinely not ready for primetime. The license roster is where Big Ant spent its budget and it shows. Over 140 international teams, more than 150 clubs, and 11 major competitions including the URC, English Premiership, French Top 14, Super Rugby, and the Six Nations all made it in. Exhibition matches, competitive tournaments, Career Mode, cross-platform online PvP, and a full Academy creator suite for custom players, jerseys, and stadiums round out the modes. On paper, it is the most complete rugby package ever assembled. In practice, the moment you get to an actual match, the cracks split open fast. Ruck mechanics are the core problem and they underpin almost every phase of play in rugby union. The button inputs are poorly communicated, the tutorials are vague enough to be functionally useless, and the AI exploits the ruck in ways the player simply cannot replicate. Passing is sluggish, lineouts feel unresponsive, and the difficulty sliders are broken to the point where switching settings changes almost nothing about how a match plays out. A post-tackle AI bug causes the tackler to constantly creep offside, generating a parade of penalties that kills any flow the game manages to build. The 50/22 kick, a pivotal modern rule, was actually removed from full release after existing in Early Access, which is the kind of regression that suggests development was not going in the right direction. Commentary is stale and repetitive within the first hour. The positives are real even if they are outnumbered. Visuals are legitimately solid for a lower-budget sports title, with recognisable player likenesses for the top squads and stadium environments that hold up. The cross-platform online PvP works in terms of connecting matches, and player-vs-player is a noticeably more engaging experience than grinding against the AI, where the problems are most exposed. Big Ant is pushing regular patches and the community megathread is active, so the trajectory is at least pointed upward. The Academy creation tools also give the kind of roster-editing depth that keeps dedicated fans busy while waiting for gameplay fixes. If you are a rugby obsessive who has been starved for a modern game with proper licensing and you can stomach playing something that is patched-in-progress, there is a narrow window of enjoyment here, mostly in online PvP against friends where the broken AI is not a factor. Everyone else should wait. The bones of a decent game exist somewhere under this release, but right now the ruck is still a lottery, the passing is still slow, and the AI is still offside.

Fred · Scout Team

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