Ok, I've played 2 multiplayer tournaments and some ML sessions already, and I'mn ready to point out this game is a mix of crap and wonderful things. The problem is that the crappy things are more annoying than ever, and the problem is that WE series is getting LESS fun to play.
SINGLE PLAYER
Cheating is CRAP and worse than ever. Not worthy at all and there's a big lack of features. I won't pay again for the single player. Konami is lying people with the single player mode. NOT FUN at ALL. The way the cheats interfere with the control and responsiveness of the players is so blatant... I would like to kill the programmer who did the scripts regarding that your better plays go to the post again and again (2 to 3 posts per game... WOW, how realistic is it, Seabass!) and the script regarding that on 1 vs 1 against COM keeper, it DOESN'T MATTER at all where you aim, the shot goes where the COM decides. This is utterly CRAP.
GENERAL GAMEPLAY ISSUES
1)
issues:
- If I choose MANUAL, give me MANUAL. Selecting players is worse than before. Sometimes the game just changes the selected defender ignoring you completely. That is very sad.
- In corners, you CAN'T defend properly because even if you selected a player that is in the best position to clear the ball, in the mid-air the game changes the cursor to a farther defender, thus giving clear way to you opponent to score.
- Most of the times, when defending, if you press
(and no matter if you aren't pressing any other button) the selected defender does some steps forward, thus making the way for the opponent that the it's not possible to be caught by you.
- Sometimes if you press
and want to select again the previous man, it doesn't matter if he's near or not, you have to cycle through irrelevent players until controlling your man.
2) TACTICS: That ANNOYS me a LOT.
- Sidebacks just aren't there most of the times!!!! Just like in WE8. They just disappear. It's time they solve this!!!
- It's so sad that we can't choose in corners and free kicks who is going to attack. I play barcelona and the idiot CPU always put Giuly in corners in the first post! I can't have Larsson there!!!!
- There's a lot of tactics issues that affect the whole gameplay, like the players packing in the box everytime and never coming out of it and so...
I know it's impossible to have all things right, but it's 3 years without decent sidebacks (don't tell me I have tu put him on man mark. I want a sideback that plays as sideback BY DEFAULT.
3) RESPONSIVENESS:
-Again, the game suffers big problems of unresponsiveness, now being worse than ever because of the automatic sidesteps animations that are so slow and prevent you from doing things quickly (specially playing analogue)
- Impossible to do a first time
+
because pressing
before having the ball just changes selection. Aaaaargh.
- I'm still unable to do first time shoots in the area most of the times when the ball comes from a deflection, even if I pressed the button way before. The player tries to control and waste the chance.
4) PASSING: One of the key FLAWS of the game. Being a slower game and being a game based on accuracy and passing, one should expect some decency and accuracy in the passing system. It's not like that.
- As other people have mentioned, LOTS of passes go to the wrong direction. It's not a matter of accuracy, but direction!!!! That totally kills my experience, as I'm a big passer in the game.
- Besides, it's so stupid and unbalanced that you can pass straight to the feet of your striker who is 30 meters away but you can't pass properly to a 5 meters away player and you won't know why.
- Passes backwards have been totally messed up. That is a key thing in real football. Knowing when to pass backwards to a player that is running upwards. In WE9 90% of backward passes are wrong, no matter what you do. Pathetic.
- Aerial Through passes are futile. Enough said.
- There's another thing that fustrates me a lot. It's ages since they say that double taping
makes a lower cross to the first post and only tapping
makes a farther cross. That's a LIE. You NEVER know where the cross is going and have almost no control over it 80% of the times. You see one player in the first post totally unmarked, you double press
and it goes to the second post!!!! I really don't understand how it works, really, only seems to work sometimes. Against CPU, it always go to the head of a defender, it's totally "scripted".
All in all a poor mark of the game in one of the most important areas. You never know the direction of the pass, and if I had a third hand, I would use it to cross fingers and hope the direction of the next pass is correct.
5) SHOOTING:
- In 1 vs 1 situations, sometimes your shot goes the wrong direction and they should have balanced better the shoots relative to the position and balance of the player. It's highly unrealistic having those 90º shots that go in, it' almost impossible in real life to shoot like that without breaking your hip.
- Headers are still too high most of the times, even if you pressed R2 to position and so.
Concluding, they talk about more control BUT the result is,to me, a LESS
controllable game, where it doesn't matter much the realism at all if you decide to play straight passes forward. You can still cross all the field with two stupid straight passes. I have a friend that plays a 4 2 4 tactic, being the 2 midfielders close to defenders and attackers respectively, so as if it was a 5 - 0 - 5. When he gains possession in defense he just passes straight forward without even watching radar and knows that 30 meters away a player receives the pass. They should have reduced considerably the ACCURACY of long ground passes because as it is right now you only need to pass straight and the game is not rewarding slow playmaking but fast counterattacks only (it doesn't matter really if your player is unballanced or not, the pass just goes to the feet of your target when passing straight forward).
That's all. I know it's been sooooooo long to read, but I felt like I had to put all that properly here in order to show how the game is being stalled because of scripting movements and events.It's still the best footy game ever, but the main flaws are NOT solved from one year to the next, and that's a worrying sign.
Why do they bother with the transfer system if you can just go to transfer market and get a team full of really good classic players for free? It takes the fun out of it totally and makes the game unreallistic. Ok, the Master League isn't a reallistic format anyway, but it was fine before they introducd this feature. 
