PES 2022 review

With eFootball, Konami’s intent was to launch an ongoing platform that it would be shaping up over the years. Last year’s release was a failure, both technically, and content-wise. Gameplay was poor and unrefined, while club licenses and single-player limitations felt illogical. Overall, it was too little to keep players engaged for more than a week or so. Is the much anticipated v1.0 update enough to turn things around for eFootball 2022? Let’s find out.

Last September’s complicated debut definitely cast a shadow over the entire eFootball initiative, with the umpteenth PES rebranding that was immediately out to catch up with the bigger than ever FIFA 22. Anyway, it’s worth mentioning that, despite being quite late to the party, the first few patches helped the game improve a lot since release. At that point, the game only needed some final touches, and some of the promised features that were nowhere to be seen at launch.

Despite all those issues, there’s one thing that has never stopped working properly – the online servers, something you’d really never expect from eFootball 2022, based on how it started, and on the series’ troubled past. The only downside is matchmaking, still putting together experienced players and newbies, which creates frustrating experiences for both sides.

Konami knew it needed to do something more to keep players engaged, and this is why update 1.0 comes with the so-called Dream Team mode. It’s basically a PES-style reinvention of FIFA Ultimate Team, this time without all those cerebral steps you used to see in myClub whenever you tried to purchase a new forward.

The result here is a much more straightforward and streamlined mode, which still feels a bit basic, as it often plays around license and playlist limitations, but is capable of succeeding where the original eFootball 2022 resoundingly failed – creating a compelling loop for players to come and return to the game every single day, which is a staple for a free-to-play title.

Don’t expect the depth of a FIFA game, or a $70 title, but some of the innovations here are promising. Players have to gauge a Chemistry-like mechanic when shaping up their team, which is not dictated by nationality nor league, but by their coach’s playing style – whether it’s Guardiola’s tiki-taka, where you constantly want to keep control over the ball, or fast counterattacks. The biggest difference with FUT is Dream Team’s RPG component: you’re not just buying a card and replacing it when you can buy a better one, but also leveling it up via experience points you accrue by playing. With cards not being single-use items anymore, this is an incentive to make your own team better and better, rather than just go and look into stronger cards on the market every time you have some spare coins. You’ll be surprised how much of a connection you find yourself building with your players, once you develop them into the next Cristiano Ronaldo or Leo Messi.

Compared to update 1.0’s day one, when you only had quick games that didn’t even deliver experience points nor coins, the situation is now much better, with offline and online events to choose among. This has especially fixed the ability of the game to distribute XP for your players, even though rewards are still a bit disappointing – once you complete an event, it only delivers 100 GP, no matter how many matches it takes you to complete it. Right now, it reminds me of Halo Ifinite’s early days, when 343 Industries’ battle pass was a frustrating grind. 

With this being a free-to-play title, it was easy to predict eFootball would’ve featured some kind of grinding. However, even Konami knows it needs to work on some structural adjustments for the future, and until then, it’s providing early adopters with login bonus, and more rewards for recurring and veteran players.

This content injection comes alongside gameplay refinements, and new gameplay mechanics that had been promised from the get-go. eFootball 2022’s biggest new feature is the Stunning Shot, which serves as a good answer to the original game’s weak shot. Players will be tasked with timely pressing the right trigger before kicking the ball, and this will grant them access to a much more powerful and precise shot. Differently from FIFA’s finesse shot, this doesn’t mean you’ll (almost) always kick it to the back of the net, though, and it also takes a bit of time before you’re actually able to execute it. So, there’s a strategic layer to it, deciding whether you have all the time to kick the ball at the best of your possibility, or just go for a standard kick, and hope it’s enough to score a goal. This will be something you’ll often find yourself thinking about when in front of the goalkeeper.

Passing is much more responsive now, too, and that allows the pleasure of taking possession and slowly finding the space for a goal opportunity to return from the last few PES games. There are still some uncertainties with both AI and player-controlled athletes, and players on the pitch have widely varying degrees of ability with the ball between their feet, to the point it often feels like an entirely different game when you’re playing a defender or a midfielder – which makes starting an action from the defense something quite risky all the time. 

With the new, more reliable pass, the pace of matches is now more sustained, and it feels like you really have the chance to change that pace. There are times when you see confusion across the pitch, due to long balls or furious FIFA-like constant counterattacks – and it’s in these times that you can just restore some order and get back to the basics, with a few passes to your defenders and midfielders, before jumping on the attack again.

With matches being faster now, for the most gifted players (not too much: we’re talking about 80-ish rated players) it’s possible to go for dribbling – both with the double tap on the right trigger, or simply using the left analog stick – thanks to animations that no longer seem to fight your efforts or put you against gravity.

When it comes to the defense, Konami decided to cut the L2 option, which allowed you to catch up with opponents and take the ball with any decent defender. While that was too powerful of a defending tool, eFootball 2022 has got back to a PES-style pressing prompted by the A button, and has introduced a new shoulder mechanic. This rewards your player’s right positioning, and makes for some tense 1v1 challenges as it’s not always capable of pushing back the opponent’s efforts. These fighting game-like unpredictable duels are something the Japanese developer has gone for since day one, and with v1.0.0 might have been finally able to achieve.

As for the defense, double-teaming is a very important dynamic, if mastered. Whether it works or not, it really depends on your positioning, this time not just as an individual, but as a unit. The closer defenders and midfielders are, the better you can use them in order not to force your defender to engage those 1v1 duels, and leave their position uncovered. At times, double-teaming doesn’t totally understand who you want to pick up as a second defender, and that feels a bit because of a cheap AI, a bit the outcome of Konami’s effort not to turn this into yet another overpowered mechanic.

Referees are still a weak point in eFootball 2022, despite getting improved since launch. If you happen to even slightly touch someone in your box, even if the action has moved on, rest assured it’ll be a penalty kick. Expect to take some missteps when it comes to judging slide tackles. Weirdly enough, there are seemingly inconsistencies between matches, and between different points in the same action, like they’re handled by different referees rather than the same AI.

Also, you’ll still notice missing animations, which is why certain movements or collisions don’t act out as you’d expect, if you’re a football fan or player. This happens way less than v0.9 now, partially thanks to a faster pace on the pitch, but you’ll keep watching players not caring about balls passing by or opponents coming their way, as if they’re rigidly connected to their scripts and/or how much you pressed your controller’s A button for that pass.

Overall, eFootball 2022’s update v1.0 is transformative, if you think about where Konami was eight months ago. Players can now master their defense, keeping the line together and asking for help from a nearby midfielder, or risk a 1v1 if they prefer so, and go for fast ball exchanges at a smooth pace that looked near impossible at launch.

There’s clearly still a lot of work to be done on modes, the in-game economy, and on the pitch, and it’s not 100% clear how Konami wants to approach that (one day they speak about free updates and playlists, the other Master League, edits, and more options are hinted at as paid DLC). Whatever happens in the future, though, eFootball is now a much more solid foundation. 

Written by Paolo Sirio on behalf of GLHF.

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