Started a new ML as Spurs on Superstar level. Bear in mind, I play Pro Evo mostly when I'm tired at the end of the day. First game against Leicester, I go defensive, mark their best 4 players, deep defensive line and play Vorm (81, red arrow & stats edited) in goal instead of Lloris (88, purple arrow & stats edited). The ten outfield players are my preferred players and all green-to-red arrow. Fifteen minute matches, all manual controls. Leicester City's sniper-like attack cut through my defence regardless of my efforts to go 2-0 up within 10 minutes with
those kind of goals. I played on, defending like mad. Didn't make a difference, they were 5-0 up by half time. Game finished 7-1, they were noticably coming down off the coke around 5 minutes from the end. One of the most bizarre Pro Evo matches I've had. All 7 goals were the same kind.
Loaded up my save again from right before the Leicester match. Went down to Top Player difficulty and thought, "surely those edits will actually do something now". Was worried that it might be a tad easy to score when in on goal, as my initial ML career had a few anticlimactic moments when scoring, on Superstar - mainly powerful shots from ~18 yards going in too often. Anyway, 10 game minutes in to the first match here and I was 2-0 down again, to very similar goals as before. I got myself in on goal and had a low shot well saved by their keeper. Ended up 4-0 down by half time. One thing absolutely parallel on Superstar and now Top Player level was the amount of 'telescopic leg' interceptions, sneaky barging me off the ball and unpunished fouls for the AI. Therefore it felt, in this mode at least, that there was little difference between the top two difficulty levels. Shot accuracy was above 80% in both. Passing accuracy by Leicester was 92% in both matches. Compare that to
this.
Time to try Professional. Loaded it back up, same tactics, same players. Not tried this difficulty at all this year. The sneaky barges and other snide behaviour from the AI was still present, but with more context, i.e. when I was in their final third or when it was the last five minutes of a half or when they'd gone a goal down. When this occurs I can read what they'll try a lot of the time and get people in the right spots to block it happening. It doesn't always work - but the difference in playing on Pro was that I wasn't having to resert to extreme defensive techniques for 90 minutes. It was only here and there. The AI's attacks in general seemed more varied and their first 3 shots were a low shot from outside a packed box, and two medium-height shots from within the box. Up the other end of the field, I had 8 attempts on goal, 5 of which went wide (manual noob) and 3 that were on target and very well saved. Sweet spot attempts, to test out the edited stats on this difficulty.
Less ref bias. They committed 3 fouls against me and I cropped a couple of their bastards in response. Two yellows each. I drew the match 1-1. Their goal was a header from a cross bang on half time. Accuracy was similar for both teams, around 70-75% for passing, around 50% for shots.
I went on to lose 3-1 against Manchester City and then won 1-0 in the following match, forgot who it was against. Each match seemed realistic in terms of stats and choices made by the AI enemy. Man City had 85% passing and 7 out of 10 shots on target against a now red-arrowed Lloris who saved some low shots.
