head to head
FIFA: Road to World Cup 98 asks more than Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, and the gap is reads.

Execution · Competitive PvP
Fast arcade football execution with couch-multiplayer mind games.

Execution · Twitch Chaos
A party collection of timing minigames designed to keep everyone competitive.
FIFA: Road to World Cup 98 leans Execution (Competitive PvP); Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 leans Execution (Twitch Chaos).
FIFA: Road to World Cup 98 leans a little harder on execution, though the gap is small.
FIFA: Road to World Cup 98
Arcade-paced dribbling and shot timing decide matches
Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020
Button-timing and waggle minigames are the core test
FIFA: Road to World Cup 98 leans clearly harder on reads.
FIFA: Road to World Cup 98
Couch opponents can be baited; AI cannot
Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020
Light couch-PvP guessing in some head-to-head events
Same score on variance - which means the number cannot separate them. The difference is in what each one asks of you.
FIFA: Road to World Cup 98
Bouncy ball physics inject classic FIFA luck
Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020
Event RNG and party chaos level the field
FIFA: Road to World Cup 98 leans a little harder on optimization, though the gap is small.
FIFA: Road to World Cup 98
Simple era tactics and exploit goals are quickly mapped
Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020
Each event has a shallow optimal technique to learn
A matching score does not mean a matching test. Two games can both sit at 10 on execution and demand completely different things of you - which is why the reasoning above matters more than the number beside it.
full breakdown
FIFA: Road to World Cup 98 →
full breakdown
Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 →