Okay here are my initial thoughts on playing Football Life 23 with 6 games in.
For people who are confused if it is a new game or not. It is PES 2021. For people who were expecting too much thinking that it will be a new game and stuff. Yeah I agree with you they kind of marketed it that way which was wrong from them, but I never expected a new game at all. Keep your expectations low and you'll never be disappointed eh
On the gameplay front, this feels totally different. I mean it's a breath of fresh air. You have to feel this. I just downloaded the base game of 15 GB hoping there will be some minor changes in gameplay but oh boy I was wrong.
Many things are different, for example, without sprint, your player will slowly jog whereas, in the original PES, it was a kind of medium-speed jog.
The thing which I appreciate is that even as a PA player (not FUMA), I am able to score bottom shots, and not every power shot is going in the air.
The ball might feel sticky to the player but not that much.
Through Balls are more reachable when delivering them in front of the attack but are kind of sluggish when directing anywhere else. Kind of neutralizes the OPness a bit but is alright.
I am seeing new animations in terms of first-touch passing or maybe it's the kind of animations that are triggered rarely but are now triggering a bit more, but it's good.
The gameplay overall might 'feel' a bit arcadish but it's fun.
They're using eFootball 2023 commentary. Peter says many lines that are brand new if you haven't played eFootball 2023. The songs inside the stadiums are also different from the base PES 2021. Not a bad addition, but it's hard to notice. It improves a little bit of experience.
One thing I didn't like was the replacement of the Swiss league with the Serbian League. This may be a personal preference, but I prefer the Swiss League over the Serbian League. Another thing that I didn't like is self-marketing. They watermarked almost everything within the game with the Smoke logo, be it in stadium ads or replay wipes, but it is not much of a deal breaker.
Overall, if you want to try out new gameplay and a larger database in a small package, start with the base game. For the time being, ignore the faces; they can be easily added later. I'm going to switch back to Smoke from VirtuaRed because I saw VR's release timelines for last year compared to Smoke's and it was much slower and couldn't keep up with the real world. I understand there are personal issues, a lack of developers on the team, and so on, but which patch does not? Smoke even admitted at one point that due to time constraints, they cannot keep up with patching their older games.
This patch has a long way to go but the first step is in the right direction.
I will post more if I find something. Cheers