First impressions
• S l o w . V e r y s l o w. Hopefully this will be addressed with a later patch, but given this is Pro Clubs and not Ultimate Team, I won't hold my breath.
• AI is better in areas, but worse in others. They'll give you pretty good passes and through balls (assuming you call for them at the right time, and not when they're facing the other way trying to volley it). On the other hand, if a player simply dribbles towards them they will shit themselves like Jonny Evans and Chris Smalling.
• AI GK is woeful. He will every now and then pull off a worldie from a 1 on 1 that the striker should really be putting away, and then he'll fumble the most pathetic of shots, usually for someone to follow up and tap in.
• Celebrations have changed. Usually you would only have the camera zoom in to the final celebration if there was only one player on your team (ie in a drop-in game). Now it will always zoom into you, even if you had 5 or 6 players in your team. Slightly annoying when your team usually uses the celebration time to knee slide through our opponents and send them flying.
• Finesse seems to be better, whilst not overpowered. My Pro is obviously far from what I'm used to using (just used my 6 hour trial period, got him up to 85 CAM including boosts from catalogue).
• Long shots seem to be very slow. Could be because my shot power is low (not sure as didn't check).
• Near post (either silly angles or far distances) goals are very OP. Will find yourself choosing to aim near post until a patch as across goal can go horribly wide (ie Olympic Soccer on the Playstation's "that's closer to the corner flag than the goal).
• All your of player's appearance, name, details etc will carry over. Bicycle trait, black gloves etc also carried over and the gloves and ankle tape were already applied to my pro. The traits (that are unlocked via catalogue rather than via completing accomplishments) are unlocked, but not set to default. Handy for those (like me) who were gifted high unlocks like the bicycle trait.
• As my teammates either didn't buy EA Access, or weren't around to play this weekend, I didn't get to test how the setup for league/cup games works. I know everything is formation layout (rather than go up and down a list to choose your position, move players etc), as I did this as the captain whilst in drop-in games. Hopefully you will be able to nominate set piece takers before the game (like you can in Ultimate Team), but again I won't hold my breath.
• As I couldn't get into a Cup game, I can't say whether or not stats from those games (appearances, goals, assists, red cards etc) count towards your stats in your club. FIFA 14 would rightly count them towards accomplishments and on your main menu in Pro Clubs, but always used to irk me that it didn't record those stats (or towards your W/D/L record).
• During my last game before my trial ended, I did notice that AI players had full names (rather than an initial). I'd always wanted to be able to edit the AI players names, so you could create classic squads etc. Sadly my trial ended just before half time and I wouldn't go to my club settings to check.
• I certainly enjoyed my 5 hours (spent an hour on FUT), managed 15 goals in 15 games which is much better than previous FIFAs with a very basic Pro. But at the same time it almost felt like Pro Clubs has, yet again, been overlooked as it isn't a game mode that makes them money. The online community seems pretty passionate about this game type, so it would be sad if this is the case. Dropping the mode from the old-gen consoles appears to have pissed a lot of people off, some to the point that they won't buy another FIFA game as that's the only mode they play and they can't afford/justify spending £300-$400 on a new console.
As there's only 5 or so days until release I doubt there will be many questions, however if there are please fire them this way!