I admire your defence of the game but I still feel the CPU screws you over when it wants to. Take tonight, I conceded 2 goals from blatant CPU offside positions. In fact for one of the goals 3 CPU players were offside! When these things happen you start to lose faith in the game pretty quickly.
Another thing I hate is how the CPU can carve you open with consummate ease. You try to breach the "park the bus" 9 player defence when the ball rebounds or a clearance is made to one of the 2 CPU players upfield. Who then can somehow cause havoc for 4 defenders and a defensive midfielder.
Don't get me wrong I still can get some good games against the CPU but it very few and far between. I would say I have around 4 positive game experiences for every 10 I play, the rest I feel I've being cheated or a victim of a script.
The biggest disappointment for me is the defensive aspect. Konami have seemed to forgone it this year in favour of attacking. I've noticed other teams in my ML like Juventus, AC Milan etc conceding a ridiculous amount of goals over a season which wouldn't be reflected in reality.
I took a lot of pride in the previous games with my defensive capabilities but I can't get to grips with it this year at all. Despite my 2 CB's having a rating of 92 and 93 and my team with a defensive rating of 98 I still concede a lot of goals to mediocre forwards. Maybe that's partly my fault but it's also the fault of scripting and cheating.
I haven't used the sliding button in conjunction with the R2 button mainly because I've being afraid of red and yellow cards but it's definitely something I'll try in the future.
Despite all of my moaning I have to say the game is an immense challenge this year. I've played as Inter for almost 6 seasons in the ML and I've only won the Europa cup in that time. I've only finished in the CL positions in my last 2 seasons and my highest finish is third. Usually by now I'd have a full trophy cabinet and my team would be rated No 1. Instead I have 1 trophy and I'm rated 12th.
Wow, three players in offside? Now that's cheating of the finest, lol! Fortunately that never happened to me.
Evil, I was just like you a few weeks back, I played the game and fought more against the gamemechanics and supposed cheating than enjoying the game until I realised what I did wrong:
I played it like a videogame instead of a real football match. In reallife I play regularly football in a hobby-team and in real life football there are certain things you don't do but in the game I did it because I didn't really think about what I was doing, being trained to do so by numerous versions of PES- and Fifa-games.
What I did was to use the running-button a lot. In reallife football when you are running towards an attacker, the attacker easily outmaneuvered you because he uses the speed of yourself against you, inertia and momentum does the rest. And when you have the ball and you run with it, while opponent players surround you, you would easily lose the ball (unless you are Messi), because running makes you lose close control of the ball and you become an easy target of those trying to tackle you.
Even though I don't make these mistakes in real football in the game I did it and the experience was awful and frustrating. It took a leap of faith to let go of the old videogame-mechanics that I was so used to and to embrace the fact that in PES 2012 football works like real football.
So what I then did beginning with patch 1.06 was to let completely go of the run-button, to not use it once for a whole match or two and lo and behold the whole gameplay was completely different and way better:
1. The defense works way better without running, because your players keep their balance and can better block passes and shots and better stop dribblers with R2.
2. Dribbling works way better while jogging instead of running, you can shield the ball, gain time, make better passes, your teammembers move better around... it's a whole other game.
3. When in the last third of the pitch, not using the run-button allows your players to better receive passes and to shoot better.
I conceded though two goals in those matches because an opponent got through and I didn't use the run-button to catch up with him, so completely without running would be also wrong. But running should be used very scarcely for specific situations:
a) to catch up to a running attacker. If the attacker is running it's ok if you run, too. But as soon as he stops his running and is jogging again, you should quickly do the same, cause otherwise he will easily skin you.
b) when there is acres of space, you can and should of course run, like in counter-attacks or when not being covered, but as soon as the space is gone again, it's jogging-time again.
c) scarcely running can be used in short bursts to gain that extra-meter while dribbling, but it should be carefully chosen when, where and how.
Together with gamespeed -2, manual, L2-passing in the offense (in combination with R2 for trapping the ball on the receiving end) and R2 for stealing the ball from dribblers, this should provide for interesting, enjoyable gameplay on superstar-difficulty.
P.S.: Some additional tips for defending:
1. When there is a cornerball given to the CPU, the best way to defend against the headers of the CPU is to trust the cursor-switching and automatic movement of your defenders and then to merely press the button for shooting (or highball) at the right moment. The defender will jump and try to get to the ball, disturbing the attackers trying to head the ball.
2. Using compact-level of 9 or lower helps your defense to keep their shape and to help each other out.
3. To not activate the automatic offside-trap, this costed me some goals.
Defending against freekicks is right now my biggest weakness.