I haven't had time to watch the whole thing, but I watched the sections on defending and tactical movement. I think the "realism" in your title renders it something of a misnomer.
Re tactical movement – about 95% of this section is focused just on attacking AI, and so you barely analyse the defensive AI. That's a glaring omission if realism is your emphasis and interest. I’ve pointed this out so many times to so many people who blather on with sentiments like “PeS iS a SiM fIfA iS aRcAdE” – the defensive AI in PES has been woeful for years, and all talk about it being a decent simulation of football is tosh when you bring into view the way the midfield is utterly absent in the game, and how defensive team ID is practically no longer a thing. If you really want to brand yourself the realism guy, it would benefit you to actually look at this stuff and talk about it. And when you or anyone else does that, there’s no way this game (or any other recent PES) gets a glowing “yup, realistic tactics!!” star.
You can see it in the clips you're showing of the game, but you're just not highlighting it: this game is a terrible representation of the tactical side of football. Football is about more than offensive movement, but football gaming fans have been conditioned to appraise football games almost entirely based on how good they feel when they have the ball and are attacking. It's a crying shame, really.
Re match-up – first a terminological issue. You variously used the phrases "motion matching", "motion match-up", and "match-up". Just a note then: from my limited understanding, these are really not synonyms. "Match-up" is the buzzword Konami have chosen for their rejigged jockey system; "motion matching" is the name of a specific and economical
animation technique, which (yes) Konami said they were using in promotional materials advertising the game, but to what extent or how well it's implemented is probably up in the air (as well as just
where it's implemented – it's certainly not "when I press L2 (or whatever the command is), the animation technique changes to motion matching" lol). I appreciate that's probably a linguistic slip that has now formed into a habit for you, but, well, it's worth pointing out because it does make the command sound fancier than it actually is.
On the topic of that command, then, I think you mentioned a concern I have, but only as an occasional thing – for me, it’s really rather constant: i.e., with match-up engaged, players trigger animations
all the time to intercept in ways that frequently stumble them instead of doing basic interceptions. That bears some emphasis, because it's laughable and incredibly unrealistic (oops) when it happens several times in quick succession. It's a poor implementation of an idea than in conception maybe isn't so bad; I've brought up this before too.
Lastly, you mentioned the auto-slides as a match-up problem, but that really understates the more general issue, which is that defending in this game is near fully automated. Not just match-up, but in fact all the defending options, or even just being
near the ball carrier, initiate auto-tackles that you cannot switch off. It's shocking, and in my view it dumbs down the task of defending significantly.
(Haven't caught up on the thread yet btw, so I apologise if I'm repeating anything somebody else pointed out already.)
