I will concur that the thing that hurts PES the most is the simplicity of it. Simplicity itself isn't bad, but in the case of PES I already am tired of the demo. The fact that you need no finesse or thought when passing is so depressing for me personally, I don't get anything out of it. Simply aiming the stick in a general direction (of only 8) and pressing the pass button is as far from the real deal as you can come in my opinion.
I know I sound like a broken record, and I respect people who like PES for what it is. I am not trying to cheapen your PES experience, I have enjoyed it for many years myself.
I guess I am just depressed that PES hasn't taken the steps I want. FIFA are ont eh right path, but I tried the manual passing in FIFA, and it still felt like I had no control. I would aim where I wanted the ball to go, yet it wouldn't go there. The point of analog aiming is to have it very intuitive, where it is predictable (and it also needs to be high resolution, because over distances of 20m or more, even 32 directions has a big error margin (several meters). I have still the reference from ISS98, where I after not playing it for years could pick it up and strike perfect longpasses. Obviously the curl function helps since you can correct slight missaims by giving it a nice curled arch.
Right now I have no football game to enjoy.
My dream would be a game where I could get the ball just outside the penalty area, and choose to semi-chip it into the far corner, by myself judging the height needed, and the power needed, and round it off with a quick aftertouch curl (which would only be available a very short while after the ball leaves the boot so as to not be a function you can abuse to easily correct misaims).
But with PES right now we have the choice of a shot, or a lob. I want something in between, and there I am, not being able to do what can be done in real life.
Like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RGGnyL9adc
That is lower than a PES L1 chip, but more lofted and slower than a shot or controlled shot (it is sort of the same strike as a

longpass, but since those are 8 directions they are useless anyways unless you are standing perfectly so that you will hit the goal when aiming perfectly 45 degrees diagonally). If they gave us a chance to manually choose from a analog height range (for example by the tilt of the analog stick, where the tilt is started to measure from 50% tilt to 100% full tilt (angle) of the stick.
As always stats would prohibit mechanicaly perfect results all the time.
I just don't understand why a game cannot give me the same choices as in real life, where I can customize the power, height, direction and curl of the ball to get it where I want (if I am skilled with the stick and the player I control is skilled to execute what i want well enough).
In comparison PES is extremely arcade, because they scale down reality to 8 directions and a button press with only a general power bar.
Some (most?) people are satisfied, but I want the same logic and possibilities as in real football. It really depresses me that I need to go back to ISS98 to get somewhat that (though it lacks in the height control department somewhat, but far less than PES).