Playing this demo is driving me crackers. I'm absolutely in love with half of it - the dribbling (which I'm still getting used to), the AI (most of the time), the unpredictable ball physics. It's got that "one more game" feel.
Even defensive positioning has been worked on, something I talk to
@Matt10 about in an upcoming podcast. I tried to score past a desperately defending River Plate and they had ten men in the box, deflecting 4-5 shots one after the other. It was immensely satisfying. Well done to them for working on the tactical side of the game.
But the other half of it - well, as someone else has already done, put your reserve GKs in midfield and your pass accuracy doesn't suffer, so what the hell are the attributes doing? They only seem to matter in 10% of situations (when a player is off-balance for example).
Once a game (to be VERY generous) there'll be an incident where the collision engine does something stupid that stands out like a sore thumb, and this is the game-breaker for me - e.g. a player will win possession of the ball (my player or the AI's, it's not a "cheat", it's just the collision engine) and then stand and watch the dead ball in-front of him as an opponent just runs across him and takes it back again. It goes from feeling super-fluid to super-stiff
in a heartbeat and it's not occasionally, it's
every game. And these are five minute games, so what's a ten minute game going to be like?!
It's not just one recurring issue - I've seen the goalkeeper look the other way while a goal goes in, I've seen the keeper run past the striker and stop, leaving an open goal, I've seen the ball go through the keeper's body, an outfield player's body...
Most annoyingly, I've seen defenders hit an invisible wall to stop them intercepting a pass / tackling a dribbler - and that for me is something where I just can't look the other way and say "it's fine". It's not fine.
I won't go on about the fouls - sick of talking about it, and honestly, it's not the biggest issue I have - but it's definitely worth pointing out that 90% of free kicks closer than 30yds go in the back of the net too (again, human or AI).
I'll never pre-order a PES (or any game) - but I'm hoping the final build has worked on all of this stuff. It will probably be the best modern PES regardless and I know that's enough for some (as long as the AI provides as much of a challenge as 2019 - another worry, I find the big teams are WAY too easy to play against in this demo, on Superstar - they should scare me, and they don't).