Good on the surface and fun for short gameplay sessions but after a while its issues steal the fun out of the game.
On the outside the game is very shiny. The character models even though they look a little cartoonish are overall very well rendered. You can make your player look unique and you often know who who are fighting, the details are very fine, tattoo outlines and your players history. Though I found that the body physique was rather limited to soft, ripped and average but I was used to UFC so I cant complain.
There are a few problems with the character models, especially with the winning animation and introduction animation. For example you can pace side side and when you find yourself in a boxing ring I can see my character more often than not walking into and phasing through the ropes then back again. With the winning animation if you pick jump on top of cage and you find yourself in a ring your character gains the ability to fly like superman....well hover in mid air.
Sometimes you will also find your character slightly disappearing into your opponent when you are mid submission or on the ground.
Other than that the graphics are top notch, as is the sound.
Gameplay however has many flaws, and praises.
When you jump right it you find out right away it plays different from other MMA games and has unique ground system and a stand up like fight night.
This can be a problem however, trying to mix the two. I often found myself confused with the controls and kicking the body can feel forced when you have to hold to other buttons while you hit making it hard to combo them with other attacks.
On the surface it's fun and is excellent for short sessions of play but after playing it for more than an hour or extensively over a number of days it can really grow tedious.
When you get higher in career even if on easy its almost impossible to land a punch even if you have maximum hand and combo speeds and if you wait for them to come to you they will just clinch or take down.
The stamina system in my opinion is rather flawed. Your character seems to lose stamina constantly and the refill bar goes lower and lower while the AI player seems to have almost infinite stamina.
To showcase this if you try and defend against a pass on the ground you lose a considerable amount of stamina and vice versa, you try to pass and get stopped you lose lots of stamina. But if you watch the AI stamina they seem to not lose very much stamina to the point where I took a person down and tried to pass over and over and they blocked me every time. I ended up with no stamina and AI had maximum stamina.
There really isnt very many pro's about this game. There are but we have seen them all before, the punching system is laggy unlike fight night but it looks spectacular. EA did a fair job and the franchise should only improve. It is a decent first attempt into the MMA style games but far from groundbreaking or perfect and it can be downright un fun at times.
Graphics:- 8.5---- Even though characters look rather cartoonish it is very well presented.
Soundtrack:- 7.5 A wide variety of music but no well known tracks which EA are known for
Gameplay:- 7 Many many flaws but not without its enjoyable little perks.
Overall 7.5