I'm glad to see the game is playing well again, for the first time in my opinion since PES5.
Being th hypocrite I am, I am going to call that 'speculative and highly subjective'.
For me master league is about the technical/strategic exercise of building a club and winning matches and trophies. PES 4/5 had a sporting purity that this version has lost, pandering to the tabloid world of Football Manager.
I've personally never been a sucker for ML ever since BAL got introduced, but I usually play a few seasons each release... I fail to see what has declined with this game mode?
Updated impressions:
Things that are starting to annoy me:
> Keepers are beyond hopeless yet again: If they're not tipping the ball into their own net, shots are going straight through them from 25 yards. Not as bad as 2011 but still annoying. Lloris is completely useless in 2013.
I don't really see the big difference between PES and FIFA in this area, and they're both a bit off. It's been a never ending story with keepers being unrealistically good or bad ever since the dawn of both series. Since patch 1.03 I generally think the keepers in PES are OK though.
> Players always take just enough touches to allow AI defenders to get into perfect position. Obviously a cheat but a sign of how week the programming has been for the last 8 years.
Actually, if you watch a live football match this is what happens there as well.
> Master League has been more or less ruined by Konami. There is a good game in there waiting to get out, hidden under annoying cut-scenes and abysmal menu design.
If cut-scenes and menu design is the biggest bungle then I have no pity for you. I personally think that the main issue is with Form Arrows and all that follows in its wake. Tenacity for example, which I will elaborate some further down.
> Tactics setup is as bad as ever for this generation. Why they don't just bring back the tactics setup from PES 5 is beyond me. Also lack of tactical options (4?!) is also fairly week for this day and age.
You have tactical options in abundance to be fair. If you want a defensively minded midfielder you pick someone like Parker, and if you want an offensive one you pick something else.
I don't know how much you've been working with real life individuals, but if you ask an offensive minded dribbler to do the job of a water carrier he will generally do it poorly if at all. Football players in general react like men in general, they won't really change because their wife or coach tell them to and expecting it of them is just cruel and insensitive.
So it's quite simple, you have to use your tactical spectre by picking the right player for the right job rather than putting any player on the field and pick the right settings for him to do as you wish.
Personally I want back the system from PES2011.
> Lack of lower leagues. If Konami wanted to make Master League truely great, a good place to start would be adding lower leagues. Even if they are full of fake teams like some of the current leagues, being able to start from D3/4 and work your way up would be highly addictive. And this is not something difficult to implement in the game at all. I would even settle for 3 leagues of fake teams like they are now.
I'd like a bunch of leagues and divisions myself, doesn't even need to be licensed in my opinion. In fact, the fewer licenses this game got the better.
> Player movement is next to non-existent and quite bad when it does happen. Players in PES of this generation have no awareness what is going on around them and are prisoners of a poorly made animation system. Better/some movement would be a good improvement for next year.
The problem is that the coding in this area is just fine but it gets destroyed along the way when they failed to understand how their own abilities system works.
Tenacity is explained within the game how much a player can withstand fatigue both in a game and during successive games. The problem is that this ability's main feature is that it directly affects the
work rate. A player with lower than green Tenacity (including form arrows) will be useless and unresponsive to its environments.
The quick fix is opening the DB in an editor with Global Editing capabilities and halve everybody's Tenacity (-50%) then bump it up by +45. That means that everyone above ~90 will get a slight nerf and everybody below ~90 will get a boost. Most players will end up around 80 though.
I could go on about this for several pages, but it simply shakes the game loose and unleashes the games potential. Try it!
> Defending: Although useable the defensive system this year is badly conceived. Making a player put a leg out is more difficult than it should be.
I don't find it particularly difficult to double press the 'standing tackle' button. Holding it will pressure and holding it with 'Special Controls' will contain the player in possession.
> AI speed cheat: Lugano is not faster than Bale. End of.
Supercancel makes the 'mud' your fast players run in occasionally just disappear. In general it is the most important 'move' in PES ever and it has many uses. I believe it's there to let 'skilled' players 'override' the game's inherent wish to make all human vs human games a draw.
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Conclusion: PES2013 is the best game of this generation (which is like saying TB is the best diseases). But considering Konami have been making this game since PES7 this is a pretty poor return. Although it is playable, it is not better than PES4/5 which are about nine years old now. Pretty poor performance, all things considered.
I'm not sure what to say... I'm not ecstatic about the game but I think the fix is much simpler than most people make it to be. There are highlights in this game and it's not only the best of this generation but the best ever. That being said, there has never been released a truly good football game ever before, and it still hasn't at the time I write this.
PS. PES5 used to be my favorite and was for years but I hadn't actually played it since forever... I fired it up sometime this year and honestly, it sucks. It was good back then because we hadn't played anything better but it doesn't change the fact that it sucks in every possible way. Considering that I don't even care about the dated graphics at all. PES2011 and 2013 has been positives for me so unless they fuck something up royally (like PES2010 and 2012) the next version will also be an improvement.
PPS. The best way to destroy a game is to go on a board like this and read everything everyone else hates about the game.