I'm done with the game until the patch, it's a shocking package overall. Really, really poor. Don't get me wrong, the game in the middle of the park, when it's actually working properly, is a brilliant game and I love how they're going down the more 'simulation' route, for lack of a better word.
BUT.
The game is all over the place. One minute it's amazing, the next it's so awful it's embarrassing. I started a ML today with Intercational in the Brazilian league. What a shambles. I won my first game 3-1 and turned it off with little to no inclination to play it again. Why? Well, here goes.
Firstly, ML as a whole. There's NOTHING to do in it. It's like everything that is PES, everything that makes the series and makes ML in particular has been ripped out of it.
- It starts with large, horrible, clunky, slow menus.
- There is nothing to do.
- I saw my fixture list and noticed I had consecutive away games in a row for no reason.
- All you can do is play as in League Mode but make transfers. Transfers that you don't even handle yourself. You can't value your own players. You can decide how much to bid for players but there's no real sense of negotiation about any of it.
- I thought the in-game music was so awful that I switched it off. I then realised I'm playing this utterly bare bones shambles of a game mode, with a buggy match experience, that's now so bare bones it's in complete silence during the menus because I can't even stand the dire music. I feel like I'm playing a beta version.
No in-game music, nothing to do, what tiny amounts of things there are to do, half of them are wrong in some way or another, menus are slow, everything pretty much sucks about this mode. There's zero immersion whatsoever. Then I took to the pitch, on Superstar level. Just like others, my first league match, I was under a bit of pressure, then the AI just seemingly gave up and I scored three of the most pathetic goals I've ever witnessed in PES. The game just stopped trying and let me score three times. I also saw all the things that annoy me.
Goal number one - I head towards goal from a corner, straight at the COM keeper, who just palms it into his own side-netting for 1-0. Rubbish goal.
Goal number two - in any other PES this would be a wonder goal for me, but instead I sat there open-mouthed at how the COM was letting my left-back stroll from the halfway line, unnopposed, into their six yard box before chipping their keeper. Four players ran at me during his 50-yard run, all of them got to within a yard of me then didn't challenge and let me run in on goal. Their keeper just stayed on his line and I borderline walked the ball into the net. 2-0.
The COM then scored, to make it 2-1, when their player hit a really, really weak shot from 25 yards STRAIGHT at my keeper. He could have chested the ball down, it was so weak, but no, he fell to the ground for no reason and let the ball hit the top of his outstretched arm and deflected it into the net. I mean he didn't need an outstretched arm in the first place if he hadn't MOVED OUT OF THE WAY OF THE BALL in the first place. Ridiculous.
Finally, 3-1, I go up the other end and play a chipped through pass. My forward is surrounded by two defenders on the edge of the box, both close in on him, then decide to run in the opposite direction and stop running entirely, leaving me one v one with the keeper, who again stays on his line. 3-1.
The rest of the game, the COM returns to normal and closes me down as usual, but all three goals left me feeling empty about scoring the goal and annoyed that the COM had just let me score them. On top of that, the COM's consolation goal was from atrocious goalkeeping too.
I then go back to the ML menus, with no sound, no music, and nothing to do. I turned the game off at that point and thought I'd go play some GTA V instead.
I've been a PES fan since the ISS days back on the SNES but this is the last straw. There game is buggy, the modes bare (I mean playing a ML or League Mode kind of sucks when there's such a tiny amount of stadiums, I end up playing several away games in a row in the same ones time after time), and I STILL can't download the Data Pack 1 allowing online play as my computer is out of action so no community fix, and it still won't download.
How they've managed to ruin the defensive, competitive side of the offline game, I'll never know. Keepers no longer leave their goal line to cut down angles like a proper keeper should, nor do they come to meet a striker when he's running in on goal. The game veers from the COM being nicely competitive in closing down and tackling, to randomly letting you walk through them. I just don't get it. PES2013 and before all had their problems, but the thing that kept me coming back to them was the sense of achievement in scoring a goal, something completely removed from this game.
The lack of pretty much anything resembling a game package can be forgiven if the gameplay is great, and when it works, it is, but, seriously, you can't even get a consistent gameplay experience from game mode to game mode here. It's all over the place. And for that, I'm out. I can only hope that FIFA14 on next-gen can provide some gameplay approaching anywhere near good. At least it'll provide a comprehensive package.