This football still lacks depth and variety of gameplay. You're right mate maybe in 6 months it will look better. But so far, in general, the gameplay of Pes 21 with mods still looks better.
To me, it all about the ball physics/flowing that makes the game so bad to play. I can handle the L2 ball protect, the lack of agressivity of R1 assistance.
I can tolerate so much stuff as the opponent is so bad since, to me, 7 years getting worst and worst (sorry for the 20 fan, to me it's the same stuff as i play vanilla.
A good game can be at least acceptable vanilla, Fifa isn't so i tried the sliders counter-nature... i was furious to had paid it instead of i don't remember if it was Nioh 2 or Samurai Shodown. PES is good vanilla, even more balanced than with mods / but with less remodeled animations... Even if some are fucking the ball pushing as i noticed on vids.
Back to EF, all the rest is improving since i played last time (i play always after 2 updates to see the difference) at least offline. I suppose with the DreamTeam system it could be a nightmare sometimes if you take in account the trolls community growing since PS3. Well i don't want to ear about it.
And since there's very bad ball physics, i'm not hurry to get some offline mode. It's called foot BALL and that's the biggest issue on the game.
Then, with another more realstic/rythmed/kicked ball : it may fuck up what's going well.
I understand your point of view about "best football game" so i'll finish with a good note (putting aside ball variation) : whatever if it's next-gen or not. It's ain't a seal of quality. A game can be average technically but better than everything on the market.
Is there something missing in the command? Just the analog dribbling/running even without ball is a game changer and offers a lot of variety we didn't saw since the introduction of 360 degree movement. Less, but we didn't see a so good change since FIFA 10 cames back with +- 32 directions.
PES 5 and 2008 PS2, i could even add PES 2011 after replaying many games (i didn't saw that game with the same eyes more than 10 years ago) are way better than tons of PS4 football games i won't mention and looks more varied > the ball physics is exceptionnal and completely unpredictable.
BUT i understand that people are shitting all over the game due to Konami behavior, choices in everything, you can't be objective if you're already take the game to check the flaws to destroy Konami and their Casino lookalike game and nothing else.