Just completed a decent session with the PES Netcode Test Edition
Most matches had short (less than a second) lag spikes but were completely fine for the most part, even with a 1/5 connection. Some matches had no issues at all.
Only one match failed to complete due to a disconnection, not sure if the other user quit or what happened.
Unless they are hiding control scheme options, they have removed quite a few of them in this edition. I am talking about the assists section, there are less tweaks than on PES2021. Also keep in mind that according to Konami this a Alpha build with many of the aspects still in development.
Gameplay
Coming from PES2021, gameplay felt cumbersome until I changed some of the aforementioned control schemes and assists to match PES 2021 more closely even though many are missing here.
It seems that they removed the right stick player switching which is currently present in PES2021, thus it results in me frantically pressing the L1 button until it switches to the correct player, and at times it never did.
L1 + Right Stick Flick toward your teammates to initate runs is also absent. A super useful tool in PES2021. Very confused about the removal of these control functions.
Goalkeeper saves far too many shots from close range ( 1-5 meters )
While it did not happen often, passes going to unintended recipients is pretty annoying. Only notice this because in PES2021, this was super rare.
Call second defender mechanic seems absent unless I missed it somewhere. Another useful tool that was crucial in PES2021, made defending an art.
L1 + X to your team mate from kick off, hold the ball until initial passer get to defensive line and press L1 + triangle for a long ball to attacker is still exploitable here. PES2021 suffers from this but you would just track the attacker with a defender manually and it would stop it, here it is a bit more annoying to defend.
Gameplay in terms of the match flow ,passing and shooting is good, but there are a lot little issues that make this closer to PES2016 than the excellent and near flawless PES2021.
Passing feels quite good again, shooting has gone backwards because the Goalkeeper cheapens every attempt with miracle saves.
Match flow is good and defence to attack transitions are fun but AI being a bit dumb makes it less enjoyable when you finally manage to break through and score thus also cheapining the goal itself.
Defensive AI just feel too helpless without human intervention and even then it feels like the attacker has more advantage. They had struck the perfect balance in PES2021, not sure why this was hard to maintain.
Graphics
Stadiums look good
Pitch has a certain fuzz to it that interferes with the clarity of the image, really wish they looked at what some PES2021 modders have come up with.
Player models look good, lots of variety in terms of body types, etc. Faces for some players look good while others are just ok.
Hair for the most part looks terrible on most players
Crowds are also underwhelming in terms of look and especially animations
Lighting engine during day time washes over kits and causes some difficulty in distinguishing kits
Shadows absent under players and ball at times, replays show strange shadow artifacts on most moving objects on the pitch
Replays also exhibit visible ghosting on ball and a wide variety of shadow trails and glitches
General presentation needs work as always, scoreboards, adboards, player ID etc
Performance
During the game, it runs very well.
During replays it runs okay, but when the camera shows a wide shot which includes pitch, fans and players the performance plummets
Menus
Overly simplistic tactics screen, PES2021 had sorted it out to some extent. But now you have a horizontal pitch with players squeezed into the graphic of the pitch, very stupid change. Checking player form and stats is cumbersome and laggy again.
Main Menus and in game menus still look bad.
Sound
No commentary to judge
Crowd reactions are good for goals and chants are pretty nice too
but the crowd 'ohh' and 'ahh' evertime an attacker runs past someone in the attacking half. Sounds stupid and unnatural.
On pitch sounds are fine
Refs
Fine, a bit happy to give yellow cards for clipping players on the heel but that should get balanced before release anyway.
why ?? NOBODY know.. nobody ask them to change it...
