Really enjoying it so far.. Have only played online matches.. First one was me as River Plate Vs Man Utd... I soaked up an inordinate amount of pressure and then managed to sneak a goal late on to win it 1-0.. Must have played 6 or 7 so far changing teams each time. Very much liked playing as Man Utd, Pogba actually feels like a beast, he can burst forward and unleash a long range shot and it feels right...
Pros and Cons
Pros: The weight, reminds me of PES 2014 which I absolutely adored.. The fact that players try to get their feet settled and setup, the fact if you try to rush a pass it can be misplaced (playing PA1) and watching all manner of passes go wild because opponents were trying to ping pong it about.. That is just glorious.. The coin kiddies will hate it, they will call it lag, actually its just realistic for a change. Love it, will be gutted if this gets changed (but I assume it will before final release unfortunately, its gonna be too much for their target audience).
Speed of the game feels right, its nice and slow but fast players stand out which is as it should be. Really nice flow to the game and building up from the back feels really good.
Shooting, I have really enjoyed, seems to have a similar thing to passing in that if you are off balance or not setup right its got a good chance of going wrong.. Would love it if this stays exactly as is!
Defending, actually feels good this year.. I like that my defenders seem to have a variety of moves to block a ball, it doesn't seem to favour the attacker on crosses every time and it feels like you can get to most passes and crosses if you are good at the game.. Unlike 2019 where it picked who was gonna get the ball (the attacker) as soon as the cross was made..
Keepers seem good too, they just seem to react and I watched Neuer and De Gea come tearing off their lines to close down and win the ball on a few occasions where as last year I would have had to bring them out myself, very happy with that.. Wish they would stop punching so often though when they have a free jump to the ball!
Graphics, not sure why people are moaning about this, looked fine on my TV. Might be a bit dark but I would assume thats nothing a bit of tweaking in game wont be able to fix. Shadows dont strain my eyes which is nice as well!
Cons:
Cursor change still sucks, its probably better than last year but too often the team defending won't get the cursor change needed when going for a rebound or a loose ball where as the attacking team will change immediately to the closest player.. This needs sorting out as it is a killer.. Also still seems to pick a player for the pass and even if its wrong the game will keep you with that player despite hitting L1 or right stick.. Only way to get away is super cancel and by that time you have lost the ball.. Cursor change needs more intelligence and not get stuck!
Pass assist, not sure whether I was just unlucky but I played a guy who was Juventus and he was nailing back heels and first time passes way too often.. I would assume he was on PA3 but he didn't get the same level of error I did thats for sure... He misplaced passes of course, but not to the same degree as someone on PA1 would do. I keep hoping they remove PA3 entirely but they won't, but if they allow it online its going to cause even more issues competitively if they don't add some more error to it.. PA1 feels really nice though.
Dribbling, I don't like it.. I don't like how auto feint occasionally works or it switches to close control because I mistimed my input minutely. Don't see why they decided to change these controls as it hasn't really brought anything else to the game. Would rather they kept close control on R2 with the improvements they have made to it. I assume I will get the hang of it but I always liked the tricks and context sensitive auto feint as it felt natural to do, now that feels like its going to be a complete pain and I don't want to learn button combos like its Street Fighter..
Overall, really like it, will get round to some offline games later on I am sure but online feels really nice.. I do wish they had thrown a few more lower tier teams in and allowed us to filter the top tier ones out but alas my dream of Online Divisions with a star rating filter will probably have to wait another few years and I will spend the season playing Barcelona, PSG and Liverpool yet again.
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