NHL 25 Review

Every year I get my hopes up thinking, “This is it: This’ll be the year that EA’s NHL finally gets it together and delivers on its full potential,” only to then spend dozens of hours playing a game that is almost fundamentally the same as the one I played the . There are rare exceptions to this; even though I had my issues with NHL 24, the Sustained Pressure System and Exhaustion Engine at least added something new to the overall gameplay, and ’s Be a Pro Mode has become a staple since its introduction. Unfortunately, NHL 25 isn’t one of those exceptions. Despite an overhauled Franchise Mode and updated AI, this ultimately just feels like a shinier version of last year’s entry.

On the surface, it’s clear right from the start that NHL 25 is the first game in this series built exclusively for current-gen consoles. The graphics are sharp and the action on the ice looks better than ever. Animations are smoother and there’s something satisfying about seeing how much wear and tear you put on the ice over the course of each period. Players now look much more like actual humans and less like animatronics, so zoom-ins on faces will hopefully no longer provide as much nightmare fuel.

Those visual improvements even extend to the menus in Franchise Mode, which is the only mode that’s seen any meaningful changes this year. It’s immediately noticeable how much sleeker the redesigned hub menu is and how it makes things easier to parse – there’s less need to hop around menus to find specific statistics, which are now displayed front and center. But there have also been actual gameplay additions to Franchise, too. For example, GMs must now convince free agents to sign with their team if the player’s interest in the organization is too low, which makes things interesting by forcing you to work for the players you want.

How you'll go about doing that is up to you. Maybe it’s by promising to let a prospect play on the first line, potentially weakening your line-up out of the gate for a chance at long-term growth. Alternatively, you can attempt to charm them into signing, but if that fails it might kill their interest in your offer entirely. Players can even negotiate no-movement or no-trade clauses into their contracts, which is a very welcome feature the NHL playerbase has been requesting for a while now.

GMs can also discuss what the team should be focusing on during the offseason with head coaches, which essentially provides interesting season-wide buffs and debuffs to choose from for your team. Players can be approached with a new conversation system to let you develop them individually, too – that could be by assigning seasonal goals to chase or on-ice plays to execute, which will lead to unlocking X-Factor abilities if successfully completed.

I’ll be upfront and admit that Franchise Mode has never appealed to me too much because that type of sports sim management is not what I’m personally looking for in a hockey game – I prefer to be out on the ice rather than in the office. That said, I did go back to revisit the Franchise Mode from NHL 24 ahead of this review, and I definitely think that the conversation system gives just a bit more control over my organization in a nice way. Still, it’s not entirely clear to me just how much impact some of these choices actually have outside of contract negotiations. I’m sure the changes will be more appreciated by those who spend most of their time being the GM of their dreams, but for such a highlighted feature of this year’s entry, I didn’t find myself any more compelled to invest my own into the mode.

So what about the modes outside of Franchise? Well, if you're wondering how Be a Pro is different this time around… it’s not. Even the intro cinematics seem to be the same as last year, which is doubly bad because I had this exact same complaint in 2023. The entire mode just seems shoehorned into each installment with the bare minimum of care or attention. Be a Pro constantly getting snubbed is a gigantic bummer. It would be nice to have a real campaign with an actual story, like in . Instead, its cutscenes are just silent text bubble exchanges with stilted writing and boring dialogue choices. It’s like dealing with those annoying mobile game ads in between hockey matches.

NHL 25 Gameplay Screenshots

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In addition to the returning Sustained Pressure and Exhaust Engine mechanics, NHL 25 does add a feature called Next-Gen Vision Control, which is supposed to help give you more precision with how you play based on the given situation. If you hold down the left trigger and you have the puck, for example, you’ll align with the net as your target. If you do it while on defense, you’ll automatically face the puck instead, which can help with things like poke-checking. Vision Control can be useful at times, but not so much that I ever found myself really needing to rely on it, so I didn't end up using it much as a result (which is disappointing when it's the only significant mechanical change to the on-ice action).

Part of the reason for that is also because initially I didn't even know how to use it, as this is the fourth year in a row without a training mode; why it was removed after NHL 21, I’ll never understand. New players hoping to learn how to play are out of luck unless they constantly pause the action to check the controls, which are paired with an overwhelming list of moves that probably aren’t going to make any sense to them in the first place. (Not to mention opening the menus kills any moment-to-moment momentum on the ice because they’re so sluggish to navigate.)

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As far as the online modes are concerned, there’s a new Wildcard option in HUT that gives you a salary cap and then has you draft a team under specific restrictions that change over multiple seasons. I like the idea of Wildcard providing a way to keep things feeling fresh while challenging players at the same time, though HUT’s still not something I ever find myself too engaged with. More notably than just the addition of Wildcard, progression in all HUT modes has merged into one singular HUT battle pass. It’s a simple but welcome change as it keeps progression unified.

And of course, you can still buy premium card packs in HUT with microtransactions thanks to the in-game currency, NHL Points. As always, you don’t technically need to purchase any of these packs to play the HUT modes, but it’s undeniable that doing so gives you higher odds of getting better players for your team, lending the whole thing its usual pay-to-win stench that turns me away from the mode almost entirely. NHL Points can be used in World of Chel (which has also basically not changed at all) as well to buy premium battle passes, cosmetics, or to instantly unlock unique character classes instead of grinding for them, which feels similarly skeezy. Bundles of NHL Points sell for anywhere between $2.49 to a whopping $149.99 — which the screen labels very clearly and boldly as the “best value” of the bunch, but I'm not convinced that value is for players as much as it is for EA.