You might be right but I haven't really played/test much PES17.
I need to correct my image on the "manual" snap zone. It should be manual snap zone of PES18.
I don't have much more to add at the moment. Maybe also consider the fact that L2 is considered more free than standard PA0. It seems to ignore the snap zones and ball path is more true to input.
The reason might be because FIFA doesn't "lock" the direction until the ball is kicked, according to someone.
In PES, it "locks" the moment power bar stops.
There still lots of position changes happening during the "lock" and the exact moment the ball kicked.
I don't play FIFA so I can't speak from experience. On PES, I'm accustomed to power up a pass only if I'm sure it is in the direction I want. I think after PES15, they have restricted last minute direct changes to passes? I don't remember how I adapted at the time, but I know after that year, it has influenced me to be more sure of deciding my passes before I play them. So basically, I've learn to accept my fate, if in the time between I image a pass in my head and the situation changes before my pass is sent, but I'm already done powering up...then, so be it. I read the play wrong.
Or, I super cancel my pass, I do that a lot actually.
So when I mean ball paths surprising myself, it's not really about the last minute corrections/adjustments. Those I accept, fully.
haha

I have not played PA1 since PES2016. In those times, assist zone in "normal pass" isn't as big as it is today.
I haven't tested PA1 19demo but this what I think.
Purple circle= Assist zone(AS). This "Assist Zone" might be a lot bigger than this.
Length of arrow-=Power applied to a pass.
Any pass that is caught in the AS, will be a pass that goes directly to a Teammate(Tm) that owns that AS.
Pass 1= If you're pointing in the direction of Tm1 but the power applied is for TM2's Assist zone, TM2 is picked as target.
Pass 3= If your pass direction and power applied is caught between 2 "Assist Zones", the game might pick any of the 2 Tms as target.
What if your is caught in between 2 "Assist zones" but slightly more towards the other AS, then the game will pick the player your direction is slightly pointing.
This is tricky, specially if they are really closer to each other. We should also consider the direction the TMs are facing or their speed, maybe.
But I really don't know

.
To perform pass 1 here is wonky in PES. This is one type of pass that may be easier to do in PA1 or above? But I don't know for sure
In PA0, pass 1 would very likely be intercepted by TM1, even if it's a very powerful pass. This has been true for many, many years of PES (on manual at least). It's very hard to evade the green dot on TM1. You basically to play in the direction between 3 and 4 o'clock, to escape the TM1 pink snap zone, in order for TM2 to understand the pass is for him. This is a bit like what I meant, to purposefully pass outside of the snap zone, to get a different outcome.
Powering up the pass stronger, was not enough to make TM1 ignore the ball, or to get TM2 interested in the ball. TM1 kinda just intercepts the powerful pass on his own.
This was true for previous years. PES19 I have no idea.
Now, an interesting thing that is little talked about...you can actually reach TM2 easier, with L2 held down.
This is because of the nature of L2, it tends to ignore snap zones (like mentioned above earlier).
Still, L2 would get intercepted by TM1 sometimes. Snap zones are hard to escape, that's why I tend to purposefully pass around them sometimes.
Anyway, for years it has felt to me that the snap (or their vision of how it should work) has restricted any organic moments. If I go down that list of PES from 12-19, almost 80% of the games in that time span felt too rigid to have organic moments.