Long time reader, first time poster. I've decided that my first post should be something semi useful. So here's a little review by my self of the game.
I got the game through a traveling friend who has a friend who knows Japanese and happens to like the game. Long story short, my copy is patched and is partially translated into English. I'll try to focus on things that haven't been mentioned yet or much.
The layout:
The main menu is a top-down style menu consisting of the following choices:
- Exhibition: (friendly match)
Nothing really new here. Same ole same ole.
-Master League:
I haven't dug too deep into this yet but i'll share what I found out so far. When you start a new ML, you choose your settings through a series of questions each on a screen of its own.
The first screen asks you to choose the level of match difficulty. The second screen asks you to choose the league difficulty. Now what the latter means exactly is beyond me. But the first one is what we're used to which is the AI level in any given match.
The 3rd screen asks you if you'd like the ML original players (you know, Miranda and gang), the match mode lineup or a custom team that you create. Nothing new here.
The 4th screen asks you you about player growth options. Now keep in mind that the translation I have is no where near perfect. I get two options as a response: A) You raise player B) You don't raise. My guess is that you can cancel player growth and have the player stats remain static if you want to.
The 5th and last screen asks you to choose a level for the transfer market. You get a choice of one, two or three stars for this one. I'm not quite sure what this affects exactly, but it's either the level of difficulty of getting a deal done in the transfer market, or the frequency of transfers in the league overall. I say this because at later screens, it's referred to as "Transfer Freq".
Anyway, you then get a screen that asks you to verify your choices, then another screen similar to the one you get before matches/tournaments where you can choose time, weather options and so on.
Once you get through to the ML screen with all the options. Nothing looks much different really. Mostly the usual. One thing new that i've noticed is that you can now regulate conditions of players individsually. You can just check a tick box next to each player to regulate or not. Very nice feature in my opinion since I often lost a good condition of certain players when I had to regulate the whole team. The data screen contains more information now about the mail you get weekly and the basic info you get at the beginning of the season.
-League Mode
You get a choice of the following leagues: English, Italian, Spanish,French, German, Holland and an International league which is basically a custom league where you choose which teams contest.
-Cup Mode
Mostly the same. There is no regional competition that includes the USA. I found that odd. But as I checked my WE9 version, it's the same way. Never noticed that before. I doubt anyone cares anyway.
-Training Mode
You get a menu of three choices: Step up training, Free training and Controls. Step up training is a series of excercises in different areas of gameplay that gets relatively more challenging as you progress.
-Editing
I haven't looked much into this. But to whom ever it concerns, there are 9 choices for boots
I can answer specific questions if I can.
-Options
I'm just going to comment on the WE shop content: (unlockables)
You can unlock the usual classic teams and classic/hidden players. Those players are not translated yet so I have a hard time figuring out whose who. They can be viewed before you buy, but you cannot see their gameplay stats.
You can unlock three additional stadiums: Club House, Nigata "Big Swan Stadium" and Seoul World Cup Stadium. Keep in mind, these are translations so accuracy needs to be checked. They can be viewed before you buy.
You can unlock four new graphical headers for certain tournaments in the game. Basically a graphical highlight of the windows with a unique color. They can be viewed before you buy.
You can unlock three new costumes for teams. These are basically comic relief. An Ostrich costume, a Dino costume and a Penguin costume. They can be viewed before you buy.
You can unlock 11 new hairstyles. All of which are animal masks. (you know, dogs and stuff) They can be viewed before you buy.
You can unlock 3 new goal celebrations. They can be viewed before you buy.
You can unlock two new camera types: Sky and Player. They can be viewed before you buy.
You can unlock two BGM players.
You can unlock View stadiums (at the museum)/ Double Speed and six star difficulty.
You can unlock two ML options: Starting budget and custom leagues (nothing new here).
-Japan's Nippon Challenge (Lead Japan into the World Cup Finals)
Same ole same ole. Again, you play against teams here that you cannot play with or against in Friendly match mode or any other mode. Mostly Middle Eastern countries. One thing new about this is that you can now preview your formation of the Japanese team in a graphical format where you can actually see the players' faces on the field each in their position. Looks pretty cool. Wish it was applied to all the teams.
-World Cup Challenge (Lead any National Team in the game into the World Cup Finals)
Same as above except you can actually choose your team.
-Random Match
This is one of my favorite features in WE10. I really like this one. You can challenge a friend or the AI to a match of two teams consisting of random players. You can select your teams origin to be of a certain region (continent) or out of up to four teams in the game. The game will then choose a random lineup of that region. So if you choose Europe for example, your striker could be Henry and your CB can be say Vidic or whatever. You never know who you'll get so lots of fun in that. But you can always reselect and come up with a new lineup.
One of the new features in the game is the AI match advisor. This is like your own coach or Assistant manager. During any moment of any match you're playing, you can check what the coach thinks you should be doing based on what's going on in the field. The suggestions can be anything from choosing a certain team strategy (Side Attack, Attacking style, Defensive style.. etc) to changing the whole formation and even placing which player at which position. Once I was losing 1-0 during a match and only 15 minutes were left. I decided to submit to the coach completely. He changed the formation to a heavy attack one and switched a few players around and even used one substitute. I ended up winning 2-1 and if there was more time, I would have probably scored more. I thought it was pretty cool.
Gameplay:
I'm usually conservative about throwing my opinions around about the gameplay since a lot of people don't like hearing anything negative about the game. But i'll try to keep it subtle. Let's start with the good stuff.
Passing in this game strikes me as the best iteration of the passing system ever in the WE series. The accuracy has been tweaked and for the better. The through pass is back to being a killer depending on the timing. At the same time, it is not a cake walk to simply press Triangle and end up scoring. You have to think and time it right. Overall, this is the best mechanic in WE10 right now in my opinion.
Crossing has been improved in terms of accuracy and direction. Without L1 you can actually cross to the center. Accuracy depends on who is crossing but the general direction is the center not the opposite wing. With L1, it aims to a certain player in the box or right outside it. This is tricky of course based on how that target player is positioned.
Dribbling is smoother now. You can actually run through several players now if you are accurate enough. But I can see how some people might find it a bit too easy now.
The nets react beautifully to shots and goals now. Lovely stuff.
Some negative points:
I'm still not sure about the shooting system. But it seems harder now to place a shot even inside the box. Many supposedly easy shots went way high above the bar to my surprise. It seems that the game now is even more sensetive to what your fingers are doing on the directional pad while shooting. On a happy note, the R2 shot is alive and well. I placed a nice screamer from outside the box with the R2 shot and it translated like a dream.
The keepers do indeed drop almost every single shot.
The refs have been improved and the fouling system is for the better causing the game play to be much smoother. But there are still a lot of those moments where you get fouled without knowing what you did exactly to deserve it.
The AI is still hard as a rock defensively and dumb and helpless offensively. Some people said that there are some improvements to this. I honestly don't seem them. Maybe theyre' too minor to make a difference?
The AI still seems unrealistecly hard defensively with super reflexes that intercepts passes like a flash. It seems sometimes that the AI player teleports to the path of the ball so fast and steals it. I always felt that this game is far from realistic in that regard, but it still doesn't help the AI to win most of the time simply because it's offensive abilities does not match.
And yes it still feels sometimes a bit scripted. I was playing a match once on 5 stars and it was going back and forth fine til I scored a goal and the AI went insane. It was GO TIME for him as he turned invincible and my players were being literally driven into the ground. Two of my players were sent off for no clear reason after being beaten up. He ended up scoring a goal to which I scored a second goal during the last couple of minutes and I felt that he could have stopped it if he really wanted to. I do admit that I ran into less of that than I did with WE9. At least so far.
The AI's attitude of throwing 3-4 players at your player at the same time like bullets is still there instead of a real world soccer man to man defensive style.
Overall impression:
I definitely like WE10 more than WE9. This game has less problems and I suspect a happier ride. That is not to say that it is perfect. It simply is relatively better on an overall level. But still, all of this review is more or less first impression rather than a deep solid review.
One final note: playing friendly matches or ML matches is hardly a measurement of how hard or easy the game is. Try playing cup or league tournaments and feel the heat as you advance.
