Well I try and try to like this game but playing for longer than a couple of hours leaves me feeling furious at the game almost every time. I just played as Germany vs Finland in a tournament game, it was terrible. Finland were like some kind of super charged muscle men defenders, the ref biased, it was ridiculous. Every time I attacked, three to four players swamped me in seconds. Unless I passed the ball backwards or sideways, they'd just run into you, 'shoulder charge' if that's what Konami call it, and knock you off your stride making you do that staggering animation that takes about ten years to complete. I'm not kidding, literally every time a Finland player so much as brushed my players, they'd stagger off the ball. It was pathetic.
To compound matters, half a dozen times I used R2 to control a simple pass only for the players to bizarrely miscontrol the ball, they get tackled, it bobbles out towards the touchline, then the AI, every single time, takes over, forces your player to sprint after the ball even though it's bobbling out of play and it'll be your throw in, and makes your player take control of the ball - except you can't stop him from moving in the direction he's running, so he runs it out of play and gives away the throw. Every. Single. Time. Oh, and the settings were made so that all player's form arrows were red, so form doesn't play any factor in this.
Seriously, can anyone dribble in this game? Using R2 doesn't make any difference to me, I shielded the ball, tried to dribble only with the likes of Ozil and Podolski, and yet the game simply made the Finland players run 'though' me every single time, thus activating the stagger animation while they walk off with the ball.
On another game, Theo Walcott took the ball into his stride, clear of the last man and through on goal on the halfway line. I did the move where you take a really heavy touch and knock the ball on, meaning he should have had a while to flat out sprint without needing to take extra touches of the ball. To my amazement, Richard Dunne of all people, RICHARD DUNNE, a notoriously slow defender for Villa, put on this sudden burst of speed over a 10 yard period, caught Walcott who was sprinting flat out and with a 5 yard head start in the first place, then yep, you guessed it, ran 'into' Walcott. Dunne made off with the ball, Walcott was on his own performing the stagger maneuver. Brilliant.
I don't ever feel in control of the players. I turn on the ball sometimes and they take an age to do so, but I know that it's not me getting tackled because of this, it's the awful response times of the game. I don't care if a full back isn't as skillful as Leo Messi, he should still be able to run properly.
Due to the total lack of ability for any players to use pace, to dribble past more than one player, you find yourself passing and moving purely because it's the only way to progress up the pitch instead of times where you could simply run with the ball. I no longer bother taking on players, you simply cannot run fast enough even with the quickest players in the game. There's just something totally unrealistic about this and just, well, 'not right' when the only way to beat a defender is to activate a through pass and confuse the AI into making him 'step up' to catch you offside. That's the only way you can bypass a defender, taking him on with a fast winger even rarely works for me, even with a head start and taking longer touches of the ball so they have more space to flat out sprint.
I'm also sick of the damn through ball. After falling 2-0 down inside 5 minutes to Finland, I claw my way back to 3-2 despite being run off the ball, closed down, fouled with no help from the ref (who coincidentally blew for a FK against me with almost every right stick challenge I made), the game then activates the AI's 'through pass' failsafe. Not just that, but a deflected one at that;
YouTube - Finland Through Pass Goal
Call me paranoid but the AI seems to make Lahm, and my centre back before him, move nicely out of the way of the ball here, before I have a chance to control them, and allows the deflected pass to make it's way all the way through to the Finland striker when in reality one of them would have read the flight of the ball and cut it out. This happens so many times, the game just allows the ball to reach the striker from a through pass. So, after being bullied all match by the AI, it then does this in the 90th minute and all my efforts went to waste because the game just 'decided so'.
And as for the ref, seriously, in the Arsenal game I played, and in that Germany game, the ref on both occasions would penalise me for barely touching an opponent, yet let them hack and push their way through my team. If this is the AI's way of simulating a 'harder' match experience then Konami can shove it. I mean, how can the ref give this decision against me - Arshavin takes control of the ball, a defender whacks him in the back of the leg, and the ref gives the defender the free kick. This one was particularly annoying because Arshavin turns and is through on goal;
YouTube - PES Foul Fail
Sorry about the massive rant, hope it doesn't sound like a whiny 'PES is shit' moan, there are times when the game plays an amazing game. But any more than a few matches in a row and it feels like the game just doesn't respond to my controller commands, has an AI that actually looks for cheap exploits, biased refereeing, and a totally unbalanced strength to combat dribbling or pace. If the only way that Theo Walcott can avoid being caught up by Richard Dunne in a sprint for the ball is for Walcott to have passed it first before running onto a through pass, then there's something drastically wrong here.
I thinks is because like most players, everyone always try to play like Barca, so defensive football makes a change 
