The game features a career mode, which was designed to be an "onboarding experience" to teach the player the basics of four MMA disciplines which include boxing, kickboxing, wrestling, and jiujitsu.

As players progress in the game, they can choose to accept or decline fights, which will affect the development of the fighter's career.

Similar to UFC 3, the game utilized the Real Player Motion technology, which was designed to make clinches believable.

On the day of announcement, EA also revealed that Jorge "Gamebred" Masvidal and Israel "The Last Stylebender" Adesanya would be the cover fighters for the game.

[6][7] IGN praised the new submission system and career mode, but said that "longstanding problems still remain in the ground game and some dated visuals".

[11] Push Square stated that it was "significantly better" than its predecessor,[12] however, Hardcore Gamer said it was "fun albeit bland".

[14] A post on Reddit showing advertisements in the game for the second season premiere of the Amazon Prime Video television series The Boys, which included two full-screen pop-ups at the beginning and end of the replay, a smaller pop-up on the timer overlay during gameplay, and the show and service's logos layered in the middle of the Octagon canvas, garnered over 86,000 upvotes as of September 5, 2020.