There are some like myself who think assist level 1 should be less assisted, and who think FIFA's passing is much better because it introduces passes that aren't hit along a perfect path all the time (whether they're intercepted or not).
But an argument against this exists that goes "then you'll be hitting Sunday League passes with world class players".
Some (not all) of those people also say that playing on manual is the best way to play PES - which introduces even more pass error, and means you hit even worse passes in PES with the same world class players.
So it doesn't make sense, to me.
Like I've said before, I'd give zero passing assistance a good go in PES, but the AI, for all intents and purposes, "plays with assists" (its passing is so fast and the paths so perfect). I'd rather it was a fair game, and that I wasn't having to play really simple football because any kind of a difficult pass was intercepted due to it being off-course, which would never happen to the CPU.
First off, I don't play much against COM, but it's probably impossible to ask COM to give you a fair game on manual. It's difficult to expect COM to make human mistakes. Most of my games are human v human, both manual.
I think it depends on the beginning point of thought.
There are a couple of things at work here.
1. Game assistance/correction.
2. User control proficiency level (call it stick skills, I guess)
Some questions to ask:
A. Do you want the basic game to be reliant on the user's ability to measure a pass
Or
B. Do you want the basic game to give parity to different user "stick skills"?
B.sub2. How much parity, would be the question.
It really depends.
But before we get into that, I don't think I ever felt I'm "passing like Sunday league" on manual. That sounds like someone who has poorly managed "stick skills" in manual. If you give it some time, you kinda know how to properly weight the pass, and measure the angles.
About A, I've already outlined my thoughts on how it should be implemented:
http://www.evo-web.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?p=3156624
Right now, to me, PES only does B. Even in manual, it does B. Because there is still ball path correction that the game imposed on you. Tho it seems to be answering B.sub2 pretty well, in manual.
P.S. I don't play FIFA. It's probably not fair to compare manual in PES, to manual in FIFA, and paint it the same. They most likely have different mechanism, so it can be a little out of context.
Sorry it it sounds confusing. But I feel just within one comment like yours, there's quite a lot of things that we are commenting on, from different games, different pass settings. I mean, it does highlight the general feeling you get from playing manual/assisted, but it's helpful to be specific about what exactly you think causes the problem.
Peace and love. Just discussing.