Alexpant...Of course player passing ability and how you time your passing has a bearing on the execution of passes, but at the end of the day the fact is there are only 8 possible directions on the D-pad, and as Jake pointed out the analogue stick is also 8-directional. Because of this, unfortunately sometimes passes will not always go in the direction you had intended. Obviously this is not realistic, when for example you are playing as Arsenal; Henry is 'forced' to play it to Lungberg when he (you) meant it to go to Rosicky; this can be extremely frustrating and ultimately determines what happens in a match, so it's nothing to take lightly. In my opinion the 8-way restriction has always been the achilles heel of every PES game. I'm sure we've all been there when a pass/move doesn't come off even when you know for certain it wasn't anything to do with the ability of the players, OR anything to do with you, but had EVERYTHING to do with the directional restriction. In that case you are right to blame something else, and that is either Sony for the design of the pad, or Konami for not utilizing it in the best manner. PES as a football simulator should require degree by degree play if it is to compliment the passing of real football, at least it should be in the 180 degree range when a player has the ball, but it's not quite there yet. Instead you have a choice of 5 possible directions to play to in the 180 degree range, rather than having the choice of 180 directions you'd get in real life. It's an absolutely massive difference and I hope one day it will happen. If it does, then the PES series would move onto another level.
It's good enough with the 8-way, don't get me wrong, but there is no getting away from the 8-way restriction.
Toffee
