Someone above mentioned about pes 5 foul system and its pragmatic approach to defending and how it was a pinnacle of its series, and i fully agree. Even if you play pes 6, you tend to mindlessly span square and x anyway because of its leniency with fouls and yet, its still superb in portraying fouls in a game, even injuries. Even in modern fifa, you have to be very wary of spamming the tug button from behind.
But modern pes eliminates the fact that anyone can easily come from behind and nick the ball. Its true and can happen in real life, but not as often as in modern pes definition. The only frequent foul ive seen if you barge into someone. This lack of sophistication is why i guess some brand modern pes as, almost to an indie title. But i have to give credit where due, apart from physicality, ball roll physics and goalie urgency, the gameplay looks pretty decent.
From this, I take it that you don't play online. The ball can be nicked all the time by someone coming from behind, happens quite a lot, probably too much even. I think it's just that in the offline games, COM gives you the luxury of not pressing you with X and [] all game long.
PES14 had the most sophisticated physical duel. It was on the R-stick, part of M.A.S.S. system
In addition to X, X+X, O, R1+X, super cancel, R2...R-stick had something else no other PES game had before and after:
- R-stick flick once, in the direction to nudge
- R-stick flick twice, in direction to body barge/elbow (foul, possible yellow)
- R-stick tilt AND hold, in direction to lean (pressure, push etc.). So basically, when X was not enough, you have to get close and use the R-stick to decide what you want to do.
On the other hand, as the ball carrier, you can also use R-stick to fight back, but doing so you lose agility on the ball (becomes physical). You can body block it a little and then sprint away when you feel the timing is right.
Like many other things that was in the game that year, there were a lot of advanced ideas, but that's an old topic anyway.
P.S. for anyone who has a hard time visualizing what the R-stick controls were about in 14, here's a pic that would help (R-stick = upper body tilt, L-stick = lower body walk/direction):