Summary

• Road to Glory mode in College Football 25 is immersive but Underdog difficulty can be boring for players.
• Underdog mode may force players to wait before playing the game, taking away from the overall experience.
• Realism in difficulty setting sacrifices gameplay enjoyment, making Underdog option less appealing.

College Football 25’s Road to Glory mode is largely a successful innovation on EA Sports’ part, except for one major issue. Road to Glory mode allows players to create their custom player and experience the life of a college athlete. Players have to balance their school work, social life, and personal brand on top of their on-field responsibilities, making the mode one of the most immersive in the game.

While there is a lot to love about Road to Glory mode, it isn’t flawless. Players may find that trying to play the mode with certain settings takes a lot away from the experience. Though this choice was seemingly done in service of College Football 25’s sense of realism, it does take away a bit from it as a video game.

College Football 25’s Road To Glory Mode Is Boring On Underdog Mode

Underdog Appears To Be The Highest Difficulty Setting For The Mode

When creating a custom athlete in College Football 25, players are given a choice between four different backgrounds, each of which comes with different perks and starting statistics. Elite players start with a 79 overall score, a free Mental Ability, and five skill points to upgrade with. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Underdog starts players with a 60 overall and no additional perks. This would seem to indicate that Underdog is the more challenging game mode, but in truth, it’s just the more boring option.

Players who pick Underdog, especially if they pick a skill position like Quarterback, will likely end up riding the bench until their overall stats get better. This essentially means that they just have to wait around until their player reaches one of the same stats as one of the lower starting difficulties like Contributor, which starts with a 67 overall ranking. This essentially just makes players have to do extra practice drills and sit through simulations before they can start playing in actual games.

Road To Glory Mode Is Realistic At The Cost Of Gameplay

Choosing A Higher Difficulty Becomes A False Choice

It’s easy to see where College Football 25’s developers are coming from when they made this choice. It’s more realistic that less experienced players with lower stat rankings wouldn’t be starters on a college team. However, this realism essentially makes the Underdog option a worthless game difficulty choice. Instead of being a higher difficulty setting, which players might assume, it simply forces players to wait longer before playing the game.

Players are not likely to choose Underdog because they want to widen the digital bench for weeks on end. Instead, they are likely looking to challenge themselves in the actual game, similar to how they might choose a team with worse overall stats to play with in Dynasty mode. Instead, all College Football 25’s different difficulties do in Road to Glory is let players decide how long they want to wait before getting to start.