I think the best things in this game are hard to miss. There's no denying that when everything clicks for a period of five in-game minutes or so, it can be breathtaking. The potential is huge (something we say pretty much every year).
But I think it's equally impossible to miss how unbalanced and wide-open every game is, to the point that (for me personally) it's
incredibly boring - the obsession with recreating incredible dribbles and stunning goals makes them worthless, because there's no achievement in it. (The irony... Being bored by something designed to be so exciting, with - IMO - no understanding of what makes football exciting.)
I worry that we're forgetting just how much joy there is in breaking through a midfield/defence that works together (because going back to the old games is jarring graphically) - rather than a midfield/defence that's totally nullified by the 1v1 shit (
@Matt10 articulated it beautifully above). For as long as this is the case, it's completely soulless for me - and why is it like this? Cos online players want lots of goals.
So it'll never change, and never get better as a result. It has zero basis in reality. Football is a team game. Therefore, it can't be fixed, for as long as the game is designed to be broken.
I'm regularly playing PES5 and PES6 online now - I almost feel forced into it, because honestly, the feeling of elation when you force a way through the midfield and create a chance is absolute heaven to me. I've tried every PC mod and fiddled with every slider, but this just doesn't happen for me in FIFA 23 (at least, not without breaking something else, e.g. giving the AI an acceleration level that makes their players dribble as if they're robo-Ronaldinho) - and it's so easy for you or the AI to just run all the way through on goal whenever you feel like it.
If EASFC has a 1v1 on/off switch for offline play (if it even has offline play) - or if they made a drastic decision to make a genuine football game and remove all the 1v1 shit, which I genuinely think everyone would love (including online players) because the difference in playing a much more realistic and challenging game would blow people's minds, just like FIFA did when it started beating PES in sales when they made a more PES-like game... It would almost definitely be the best football game ever.
...if not for the complete manipulation of ball physics too for the sake of keeping the game flowing (headers that fly like bullets the length of the pitch and directly onto a player's boot when the ball is carrying nowhere near enough momentum for a powerful header, ground passes that all zip perfectly on target and never miss the target even slightly, etc.).
...and the total lack of fouls (because of how far away all the players are from each other, and how difficult it is for defenders to get anywhere near an attacking player, because of how disadvantaged they are with a "press" that doesn't follow the player and half the speed of every attacker in the game).