Its quite insane, the whole Pes-Konami thing is beyond me.
I did the same. Installed fresh OF, updated everythang and started new ML on pes18.
Pes18 has a whole different feeling to it. Our player seems to be more aware of the ball. It doesnt feel like you are fighting controller to wake the muppets up and retrieve the ball. Its very responsive (bit too fast but hey) and most importantly - you dont know what AI will do. Its tougher, because you won't "crack" AI after a while and you won't be able to predict 98% of their moves.
But
Game is too clean. Few fouls here and there but nowhere near reality. No injuries.
And now the most annoying thing (had to play many matches to refresh it in my memory). High through balls are OP to bits.
Every now and again AI just sends an insane high ball and out of nowhere there is one striker few yards from our keeper not marked by anyone. And he scores. You cant defend it. You cant track AI players as you cant even see them. Out of nowhere there is this crazy long high ball and he is just there.
To summarise - im beginning to think its being done on purpose. They give us few things and plant some stinker in every version, so when the next comes out we are hoping that everything is fixed (coz it was just one or two stinkers, right? How hard is to fix this?). But next one has some other stinker lock and loaded, ready to annoy the shit out of us. And so we are buying it every year. Shiiiiiit...