I found myself having to wait for the ball to arrive before I could do anything meaningful. My biggest issue is the AI of the players, which all too often leaves them wandering randomly around or not moving towards the ball until it lands at their colourful Nike boot. The first few games I was conceding numerous goals, but after some practice and relearning the nuances of PES I was back to controlling the game.Ī big downside with this Season Update mantra is that gameplay issues from PES 2020 haven’t been fixed. Whereas in FIFA defending can be infuriating, here it’s far more a case of being patient and timing things correctly.

All in all it’s mostly a pleasure to play whether you’re on the attack or hunkering down at the back. Movement feels a bit more fluid, passes and through balls seem to feel better and I still love being able to manually move players off the ball. If you played hours upon hours of PES 2020 you’ll likely notice some of the small gameplay improvements.

The general animations are excellent and every touch, knick from a defender or shot just about feels unique. The ball physics remain excellent and the slightly slower speed at which matches happen not only feels more realistic, but it lets you actually create nice build-up tactics rather than just bombing down the wing with Jadon Sancho. If you played PES 2020 then the gameplay is 99% the same here. Your decisions make a difference in PES 2021 and there’s a feeling of satisfaction when you join multiple passes together and see the ball fly into the top corner that is absent elsewhere. PES is the king when it comes to gameplay, with a far more realistic and rewarding game that doesn’t feel like a number of canned animations sewn together. For the £25 asking price, and especially if you didn’t pick up PES 2020, this is a surprisingly good deal.Įven if, like me, you’re a die-hard FIFA fan, I doubt you could say with a straight face that EA’s offering gives a better semblance of the beautiful game than PES. There’s also the very limited Euro 2020 mode that launched as free DLC for PES 2020 and some minor gameplay tweaks that actually make this a better game of football than its predecessor. You’ve got updated squads, new kits for the small selection of licensed clubs, a smattering a new boots and some updated player and manager faces. So, while it works on a true next-gen version of PES for next year that’s exactly what we get here. Releasing a yearly update with the new teams, players and a few graphical changes has been a request from many yearly football sim players for what seems like forever, with many claiming the usual releases are little more than that anyway. PES 2021 isn’t a new game, in fact, Konami is very open to the fact this is simply a ‘Season Update’,

Pes 2020 vs fifa soccer mobile