I got Master League fever lately, probably even cause all those new brilliant stories of the last weeks 🙂
Problem is that I have a lot going on.. mainly Pes 21 with Spezia and Pes 19 with Man U, but the more I read your recounts the more I want to start new ones, despite me still enjoying those and despite not really having the time to play all this stuff😅.. I guess I'll keep rotating them depending from mood.
Anyway, one future project would be on Pes 12, the vanilla game with only the official updates, I'd love to start from the second fake, classic division with defaults, a custom team and a custom stadium. But I guess it will have to wait a bit.
Instead, two days ago I started a ML on
Pes 2018, with the Pte Patch.. wanted to properly tackle the game for a while and
@abcdefg1 story with Racing further inspired me too.
Decided to go in Eredividisie and picked
Heerenveen, which is, togheter with Willem II, my favourite "small" team in Netherlands (already played more than a ML on past Pes with both teams.. love the shirts to death!). The fact they feature a young Ødegaard, one of the modern players I like the most, was another nice plus.
I went Superstar/classic/12 minutes.. and the start was of course catastrophic, with 3 losses in a row.. so, even if I generally don't do market on my first transfer window with a team, and even if we already have some very nice players like midfield veteran leader Schaars, right back Dumfries, winger Rojas and the already mentioned Ødegaard, decided to change something in the last days, selling the disastrous forward Ghoochannejhad and the second keeper, and bringing in game changer Maxi Gomez:
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who is a bit of an Icardi clone

, both physically and technically. And young, very promising midfielder Bazoer:
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while Bazoer needed some more time to adapt, I immediately launched Gomez as a starter, who repaid me by practically scoring at least a goal in every game he played😳, granting me, togheter with Odegaard and Schaars, my first victory with Zwolle, a nice and unexpected draw with Feyenoord (intersped with other losses with Roda and AZ ), a victory in the first national Cup leg against, again, Zwolle, and a last victory against Ado Den Haag. That's where I am at at the moment:
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It has been a good mix of frustration and fun until now. Game is way more on the attacking side, which is also nice for varying things a bit compared with 21 and (at times) 19. Years ago I found this game insufferable, maybe I'm more open minded today, but given the shortcomings (which are still there) it feels like I'm playing a different game compared with then (I also suspect final updates make it way better).. looking forward to the next session 🙂