I’ve been puttering around with Big Ant’s Rugby 25 for a little over a week now, after it was released to Early Access earlier in the month. It has been a very long time since there has been a Rugby game that has really held my attention for more than a match or two. In fact, I think the last time I genuinely enjoyed a rugby game was when New Zealand developer, Sidhe, was at the helm. And that’s well over a decade ago now. So, with Big Ant being a significantly higher profile developer than the last few to take a crack at the sport, I’ve had my hopes high.
Related reading: Another Big Ant sports game leaving Early Access soon is Tiebreak Tennis. Our early thoughts.
The long and short of it is this: Rugby 25 is in a very early Early Access state right now. But it’s also quite clearly going to be a superior take on the sport. It’s not just potential – the quality’s already there. It’s just that the (admittedly) many rough edges need to be polished away to let the core shine.
One of the biggest selling points to the game is the typical M.O. of Big Ant: It is ambitious with the licensing and player likenesses. We don’t have anywhere near that full scope in the game right now as there are only a handful of teams, but with the full release we are being promised more than 140 international teams, and 150 club sides across 11 competitions. That is genuinely incredible. I remember when EA had the FIFA license and would produce World Cup games that let you take the absolute minnows like Mongolia and Guam right through finals glory, and it’s rare that other sports games have aimed that high. This one will do that, and that’s a breath of fresh air as other sports games seem to aim more and more narrowly. Meanwhile, the Japanese team is already in there so, frankly, I’m already served as far as my main team is concerned.
Once you get into the game you’ll see that it’s much like Big Ant’s other games. There’s a lack of cinematic flair and “match day” atmosphere, but that’s offset with a wealth of stadia to play in, they’ve all been rendered as meticulously as possible, and the player likenesses are good, even if the animation is a little clunky thanks to the way that movements occasionally “snap” into pre-programed positions and animation loops. These defects are minor, though, and it is largely thanks to the presentation quality that Big Ant continues to be the one sports specialist that manages to sit somewhere between “scrappy indie” and “overproduced EA/2K Games.” If you ask me that’s the best place to be because it means that Big Ant can offer high-quality production values without needing to throw microtransactions and other hostile monetisation elements at players.
When you get into a match, you’ll find that the basics are there, and that’s why there’s a lot to be hopeful for as the developer continues to field feedback and push out these patches. Currently, players move across the field nicely, passing and swapping between players is decent, and the all-important kicking game in the sport of rugby works better here than in the last few other efforts at the sport. The very basic foundations are there, and you can play a game of rugby as it is. Most importantly it’s blatant to see the potential for an enormously fluid, tactical game of rugby, even if it’s the full vision isn’t quite there yet.
The biggest issue for me is that Big Ant really needs to work on providing players with visual and tactile feedback. It is enormously difficult to understand if you’re putting the right pressure in with tackles, in particular. One of the most fundamental parts of rugby is the ability to use ruck to try and pull the ball to your side. It is critical to make this element of the sport easy to understand, easy to interact with, and enjoyable. The last couple of Rugby games have had plenty of errors, but in fairness to them the rucks were always well-implemented and if they did err, they erred on the side of being too intuitive and easy. With Rugby 25, following a tackle, all the players kind of just collapse or hover around the ball to form the ruck, and a controller with possible button inputs pop up, but there’s no indication of anything really happening when you press those buttons. The next thing you’ll notice is that the ball has been won (almost always by the side that previously held the ball), and when there’s a turnover it’s hard to understand why.
The other big issue I have is that when you’re on the attack, your teammates are quite passive, which means that you end up losing a lot of ground in passes, and lengthy passing sequences are a genuinely bad idea because you’ll be pushed back hard. Given that I personally prefer extended passing games that use the entire field, I’m currently struggling to play Rugby 25 more than I should be. In the real-world sport rugby players time their runs so that they’re hitting the ball at full flight when it’s passed to them, and they certainly won’t stand around when the ball is heading in their direction.
Related reading: Big Ant’s main property is the Cricket series. Our review of the most recent.
If I had the ear of the Big Ant team, my other item on my wish list – the other thing I would dearly like to see Big Ant focus on – is AI. This has traditionally been a real blind spot for them. With the typical Big Ant game, winning a game can be difficult, but the difficulty has more to do with the opponents being perfect and having the impact of player stats dialed up rather than the AI playing smart. Right now that’s exactly what the AI does in Rugby 25 too. AI-controlled players basically run directly into tackles until the game decides it’s time to kick the ball. Meanwhile, players look just like their real-world counterparts, but they all behave exactly the same way once on the field. It would be good to see tactics and spontaneity worked into the opposition AI, but more importantly than that, it would be good to see situational awareness. The AI should not be approaching the game the same way if they’re on their own try line as if they’re a few metres away from their opponent’s. This situational awareness AI is something that Big Ant would do well to make a few strategic hires in across all of its sports properties, because for me it’s this single concession to the limitations of budget and team size that truly separates the “gamefeel” of what its developers do to what EA and 2K do… though I do realise that it’s also the upper end of complexity with AI.
Overall, though, I am entirely certain that by the time Rugby 25 leaves Early Access, it will be many very good things. It will be a game with an astounding depth of licenses, to do justice to one of the few truly world sports. It will offer a smooth and flowing game of rugby that will properly capture the dynamics of the sport. It will look great in both screenshots and in action, and aside from potentially the AI, all the major issues that are currently present will all be wiped away. As a sports game developer, Big Ant needs to wade through a pile of very angry gamers to hear feedback, but the company is very good at listening to constructive criticism and feedback, so if you are a rugby fan, then jumping onto the Early Access and then sharing your thoughts will help shape this to be, finally, after more than a decade, a rugby game worth a damn.