Hi Winston! It's true we have similar tastes anf often are critical about the same aspects of the game. I must tell you this post will be very controversial. And that's because I've totally changed my mind about this game.
When I posted earlier I had mainly played offline multiplayer. We also played some matches vs. cpu in semi-professional and professional, but sometimes we played together against cpu and sometimes were just messing with controls, management, etc... The usual thing with a new game. But after posting here, I went solo and played against CPU and tried online.
And the bad things are, in my humble opinion, that AI is almost as bad and half-cooked as in Fifa, resorting to dribbling-tackling-heading cheats all the time as the only way it has to build up play; and manual controls are horrible and have gotten even worse than in Fifa.
About controls: Manual passing is not really 360º analogue. All manual passes have a terrible scripted feel to them. Long balls and through balls sometimes feel like in rails. I don't understand why can't they just give us fully real 360º decision.
There's other annoyances regarding controls: when you play an horizontal through ball, sometimes the receiver isn't automatically chosen, as if the game didn't understand the ball is headed to him, and usually another player is driven there. There's some problems with switching players in certain situations (again!!!!) even on manual switch.
About the AI and solo modes: it's true that now there's more variety in terms of strategy. Weaker teams put men behind the ball and tend to clear the ball a lot. And depending on the result you really see the difference it makes. But all this comes to nothing when the CPU players can dribble like Maradona...AGAIN. They can be untackled, evade your players and all that. So the improvement made in other areas goes down the toilet the moment you find yourself playing the same game you played in Fifa. Because (and that's the other stupid part) the CPU generally needs one or two crosses to score. It doesn't matter much if you're playing liechtenstein or Germany. One or two crosses generally mean a goal. The thing is that liechtenstein will cross once or twice in a match and Germany about 6 or 7. But the inability to push cpu players from behind, the fact that CPU players only need to be near you to take possession, almost never missing a tackle...I've already had the typical 3 defenders hanging from the CPU player that simply by rotating could dribble them. The second defender pression button (square in PS3) it's almost useless now. It moves a player to press, but hardly or almost never will win the ball against CPU. That's clearly a bad thing, because helps unbalance the game towards the offensive side. All this is old, dull and boring. And at the end you get that old feeling we already had with pes, that you were playing against cheats, and that totally kills the magic for me. I'm that picky, you see. So, Single Player doesn't sounds convincing to me. At all. In my opinion very little has changed here overall.
About online: That was the bad part. Now for the worse. Online is a joke. The game has too many exploits. People simply run and there's no midfield. You can play slow, but your chances are near to zero if your opponent decides to run and play direct balls again and again. My first 5 online matches had an average of 5 goals. Never saw any of the contendants finishing the match without scoring. I don't know if it's the effect of lag or simply the game design, but the game is terribly and beyond salvation, totally unbalanced in my opinion. Of course I could be wrong, but I never experienced that in my hundreds of online FIFA matches... Online multiplayer is out for me. Yeah, I'm that picky again...
The good thing is offline multiplayer is amazing. In that mode, is the best football game I've played with my friend. We both agreed. And that's the point. Do you have enough friends to play offline multiplayer? If not, I really would reconsider renting the game before buying it. In my case, I will enjoy the game a lot, because we play together often. But it's been a big let down. Specially because this afternoon I was really amazed by the game and all I saw was impressive. But the moment I began playing against CPU everything changed. Nota that I mantain everything I said about the game regarding offline multiplayer, it's very very good.
Hope it helps. At least that's what I think now after hours and hours of play.
love it!
