Ever since I first saw it in December 2024, I had been looking forward to playing Rematch. The game's Sifu DNA was evident, and it looked like the most arcade-y version of football we could play. With fast pacing, tight controls, and all the points in the world for flair and flashiness, Rematch was near the top of my list of games I looked forward to in 2025.

Plenty of comparisons were made, likening the game to "Rocket League, but with people", which became a meme in and of itself, but it was evident what the game wanted to be, and it was just that. Now, having played it over a week since its release, I'm disappointed to state that the game is neither as fun as Rocket League, nor as deep or mechanically sound as EA Sports FC entries.

Rematch marries arcade controls with stylized soccer

I'd been looking forward to this game for quite a while

As I launched the game for the first time, I had all the excitement in the world for Rematch. I couldn't wait to dive in, go through the tutorial, and start scoring bicycle kicks on goal. Heck, I couldn't wait to uninstall FC 24, either. After a few hours, a few things were made incredibly clear — the game's core gameplay is solid. You play in a team of three, four, or five players, competing against a similar number of opponents on a small soccer ground that's covered in glass. This means no goal kicks, no throw-ins, and no referees or offside penalties.

You're only ever in control of your own player character, so you're going to be calling for passes, making assists and running all over the ground, even taking up goalkeeping duties sometimes. Matches end in six minutes, or when a team scores five goals on the other. The game looks great, and performance, despite running on the Unreal Engine, was no issue at all. The painterly style of Sifu is undeniably impressive, and it remains that way throughout.

So far, things are simple, but sadly, that's also all there is to the game right now. A few matches later, you can play ranked contests, but the gameplay doesn't change, and neither do the problems.

Rematch's gameplay isn't enjoyable for a very long time

I don't want to spend hours before having fun

The problems with Rematch's gameplay were evident from the tutorial itself — the first step of the game. The tutorial is incredibly short; it barely tells you or familiarizes you with any of the mechanics or controls (even missing some important ones, as I later discovered them while playing in-game), and the opponent AI is just downright terrible.

Next, the ball doesn't actually control all that well — you'll miss it right next to your feet more often than not, unless you keep a specific button pressed that, again, wasn't told in the tutorial. Constantly moving the camera around to find the ball, and then focusing on the players rushing you for it, all while you're struggling to keep the ball at your feet didn't exactly translate into the smoothest of gameplay experiences.

The game assigns some tricks to dedicated buttons for flair, but when everybody and their dog is doing it at the touch of a button, all players on the ground know how to cancel it or fight against it.

There's a steep learning curve, and no satisfaction before mastery

I found it rather tough to like the minute-to-minute gameplay

With ten players on the ground, if even a single player can control the ball decently, it becomes clear from the get-go that they're going to be in possession for most of the match. Look, I would have read everything I just said and said "skill issue" myself, but when almost everybody in the game seems to be struggling to pass remotely accurately or shoot straight, the problem doesn't lie with the player.

Clearly, the learning curve is incredibly steep here, and, sure, I enjoy a difficult game as much as the next guy, but the game doesn't start being fun until a very long while, and unless you actually put in hours alone in the game mastering the controls and the stick, Rematch falls short of its promise of short, simple bursts of soccer enjoyment.

Matchmaking issues and a lack of crossplay only make Rematch's problems worse

It's time we stopped pretending our friends aren't on different platforms

That's right — there's no cross-platform support in Rematch as of now. It will be added at a later date, but that $30 transaction will be done today. No crossplay in the "next big soccer game" is insanity, if I'm being honest, and it's one of the biggest reasons I can't recommend Rematch to anyone at the moment. There's also nothing you can do here on the single-player side of things, outside the tutorials and a freeplay mode where you get a ground and a ball to yourself while you wait for matchmaking.

We can't pretend that we don't have friends playing on different platforms, and for a multiplayer game that's all about its online component, no cross-platform support is a dealbreaker. Speaking of matchmaking, it comes with plenty of issues as well, prime among which is a waiting time of five to six minutes before you can hop into any match. I played the game on Game Pass for PC, and the fact that there's no crossplay between Game Pass and Steam, either, is why I couldn't get in a match until a full five minutes were usually over. 3v3 was particularly troublesome, and I came across waiting times of over nine minutes twice before just sticking to 5v5, because at least it took a couple of minutes less.

The only way to enjoy Rematch would be with friends

And I doubt it would last more than a few hours

The only scenario where I could truly see myself enjoying Rematch would be if my entire group of friends had it, or if half the players on the ground were friends. That way, we could all talk about the game's janky movement mechanics while we missed fifty passes and shots straight until somebody understood what they were doing.

With no extra content except a Battle Pass full of cosmetics that asks for more money upfront (but also lets you earn enough in-game credits to buy the next one), Rematch doesn't have a lot of content going for it right now. Rocket League has been free for a very long time, and it's far more polished. On the other hand, FC 25 is selling for half the price of Rematch, thanks to the Steam Summer Sale. It's twice the game, and then some.

I can't recommend Rematch in good conscience

Rematch talks about how it's just getting started, and major updates are definitely on the way. That also means that the $30 anyone spends is for being beta testers, while a major 2.0 update would come around by the end of the year or later to finally realize the full game's true vision. In the meantime, Rematch still presents a concept that is incredibly fresh and so easy to love on paper, and yet its execution leaves so much to be desired.

In its current state, with nothing for a single player by themselves, a terrible tutorial and learning curve, and botched matchmaking and de-sync issues aplenty, I can't recommend Rematch. I may have got the title on Game Pass, but the storage it's currently eating up on my SSD is still pecking at the back of my mind, and I'm debating uninstalling it until it improves dramatically.