I have been playing PES 5 for roughly the last year and just finished with my ML team on monday night after winning everything. So with PES 5 still fresh in my head I say that this feels like a natural progression from that. It has the same fluid feel as PES 5, a feeling I think has not been there since that game, until now. The ball is free and bounce's off you player with poor touches and with the poorer players you can feel that they have a harder time controlling the ball in some instances. The big advantage it has over PES5 is the close control, I felt that PES5 had too loose control and it made the game a bit too fast at times, this is much better and leads to a much more varied tempo, you can get stupid with the sprint button and run around like a headless chicken or play very slow and ccontrolled.
It is obviously less restricted in movement to PES5, I think the best way I cant describe the game is a cross between the best of PES and the best of FIFA. It feels to me very much like when I first played FIFA 10 on full manual, you have a a real feeling of freedom in passing and player movement, in that way it does not feel very PES. The good thing is that along with this freedom there is still the individuality of pes.
I have only played an hour or so but I am confident that I can retire the PS2 to the loft this year, PES2011 does seem a little rough around the edges at times but it still seems to play an excellent game of football.