Revived my acct just to write this. PES has been my game since the PS2 days. I especially disliked FIFA 17, felt like a foosball game more

Revived my acct just to write this. PES has been my game since the PS2 days. I especially disliked FIFA 17, felt like a foosball game more than a football/soccer sim. Furthermore, EA can eat my *** and if it went under I honestly wouldn’t really mind. But this is the first Fifa I’m buying in over a decade because it’s made enough improvements, especially on the controls & physics, to the point where all the other stuff like presentation, licenses, modes & graphics actually put it over for me.

PES devs deserve the praise & cash after all these years (though they also deserve better than Konami as their boss…) but I find it pretty amazing that this is the year so many are finally flocking to it, after literally Decades of arguing with FIFA stans that EA’s game was trash & that PES was where it’s at. I’ll admit even now, PES’ classic feel on the controls cannot be beat…. But a football/soccer simulation that does not make. The truth is that PES has no midfield game. Matches are generally just 90 mins of counter attacks, through lobs to the wing, a flurry of shots, and repeat until the whistle blows. Any good PES player will churn out 25 shots per 10 minute game like clockwork and the only way to stop it isn’t with actual defense on the field, but by memorizing defensive settings combos in the gameplan menu which apply the same to pretty much every team regardless of personnel & essentially functions as a game within a game. PES is fine, but PES is PES… It’s got it’s own rules & internal logic and if you abide by them, you’ll have fun because it feels nice to play. But again, that doesn’t make it a football/soccer simulation.

I’m seeing a lot of people complain about FIFA’s pace, but it is much more like the real thing. You actually have to think about how you’re going to move the ball up the field & make the most of your possessions. There is actual incentive to pass Backwards sometimes, like in real life, to reset play… Try that in PES in a competitive game, I dare you (you’ll have it snatched from behind by the opposing striker and give up a goal). There are different ways to approach offense unlike in PES where every good player sets the same 3 FWD formation regardless of the personnel because they know the game is so heavily offensive that playing any other way is pointless. In FIFA you can actually play team defense based on field positioning instead of feeling like you’re skating on ice with no choice but to try to steal the ball 1 on 1, at which point it’s off to the races again. If all this makes FIFA “too slow” for people then I really have to question those people’s understanding of the sport.

None of this would mean as much to me if the game didn’t feel right on the controls, which is exactly why I’ve stuck it out with PES & dealt with all the BS (like bad servers & lack of licenses, uploading kits & stadiums & all that) for all these years. There is no doubt that the physics & feel have finally improved to the point where it’s a no brainer for me. And while the controls may not be as loose & Mario-like as PES, it’s certainly better than any FIFA in a long time, especially last year’s where it felt like all the players were puppets connected by string. This time passing & dribbling do feel nice and individual players off the ball actually move around in a more realistic way, unlike any other Fifa or PES I’ve seen, which seemed robotic when you look at them from a distance. If you don’t believe me check out the demo & play it for yourself.

I have yet to get into all the different modes but from what I’ve seen from FUT it is nice and let me tell you the licenses, presentation & feeling of real life connectedness with sport globally do not hurt, especially after all these years of PES. If I come across any tragic gamebreaking circumstances I will come back and change this review, but until then I’m leaving a 10 because all these 0’s, 1’s & 2’s are a joke and need some balancing out. My only real concern at this point is that I haven’t exactly found the right difficulty setting, though I’ve settled on Pro for now (1 higher than the default Semi-Pro) and it generally feels right.

Reading: FIFA 18

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