PES 2019 Demo Available Now - Post Your Impressions Here

[iaxy]

Played some more... it really is a mixed bag. It does a lot of things right (and there are a lots of improvements), but the legacy issues rear their familiar ugly heads.

Specifically:

- The manual passing is broken. 50% of the manual passes are "not registered" by the intended recipient. It's a sort of glitch, which makes the recipient turn awkwardly, freeze or just watch the ball sail past.

- The game is kind of repetitive. It feels "channeled". The only way to play in attack is with give-and-go passes. That exploits a bad mechanic, which puts the defender always at a disadvantage.

- The sprint animation is lame and monotonous. Players should be running at different speed and this should be reflected in different animations, body angle, head angle, longer leg strides, etc. This really should be revisited.

- The dribbles are still robotic and slow. I can't believe Konami is still insisting on this clunky system. It destroys all the fluidity of the build up.

- My biggest gripe is this. The feeling of helplessness when trying to contain or close a passing lane is really frustrating. The CPU has a tendency to lob passes to the wingers with pinpoint accuracy. Even if you anticipate the pass with your full back and start running before the passe is made, the CPU's winger will still gets to the ball first - every time. This makes it pointless playing defense. You are basically relying on the AI "deciding that the CPU should make a mistake". Your ability as a defender in closing spaces or putting pressure on the ball has zero influence as the CPU's pass accuracy is unaffected by my pressuring on the ball. Their ability to find a man (even with long one time passes) is ridiculous.

[Chrisx]

I would advice people who didn't like 18 and are cautious with 19 to keep hitting the rematch button again and again. 5 minute matches against the AI seems ridiculously short but I think konami are fully aware that the less the playtime against the AI the better.

On pc you can unlock this and even try 15 or 20 minute matches which I recommend you do once or twice to see exactly why this is too much, lol. It's just tiring, the AI will just execute the same 2-3 attack patterns that it's programmed to do over and over and over and over and over ...

THERE ARE CERTAINLY IMPROVEMENTS. There are more fouls (but they've overdone the pressure, it's like pes17 in that regard, but this is based on a Milan - Inter matchup so rival mechanics could be to blame), and there are more errors programmed into the game. But my god. Passing on PA1 feels terrible. Probably one of my biggest problems. It's so assisted I feel like it doesn't matter if I use the left stick to aim or not at times. In fact the game will often ignore my input just to deliver a perfectly weighted pass directly to whoever the game (certainly not me) picked out.

There is no way pass stats mean anything in this game. And the AI will still one touch it everywhere in the same style and use backheels just like in 18. The AI has scored with perfect one touch string of passes (including perfect backheels) on top player difficulty, so if defending seems better, does it really matter?

Yeah it looks great, and it feels great on the ball as always, and it will probably be good fun against friends using manual passing, but that's it. A step in the right direction, but a baby step as far as I'm concerned.

[bxphenom7]

Guys, if you’re not playing on Superstar difficulty (or even Top Player), you’re doing it wrong lol*

[Ac3way]

I like this a lot, it back to more realistic football and its again fun to play without the ball (aka Defending).

For me Manual Passing has seen lot of improvment, very rarely players dosent understand ball and i like to pass lot of to open space and not always directly to player feet. So that usually means lot of situations when players dosent understand pass, but not in this years version. It's not always perfect, but 99% of times it is and that is something what no other previous football games to come close to that.

Gameplay seems very good, but too bad gamemodes are going to be awful (or more the same as previous, which is disappointing) for offline players.

[Altimus]

Played on Xbox One X and some weird visual bugs... every 10 seconds or so the game would switch from high resolution to a lower one and then back up/down again. Anyone else see this?

[dubcity]

I'm really loving the heightened physicality, more realistic shooting, and just generally less robotic gameplay.

I'm sure when we get the full game we will figure out more of the formula, and we will start to see more of the flaws in there, but hopefully not for a while.

[Spora]

A couple thoughts on the demo. I didn't get 2018 so I'm comparing demo to 2017.

+ Dribbling, passing etc. more fluid
+ AI positioning is better. CPU puts pressure higher up the field. Difference between AMF, CMF and DMF positions in build up is clearer. Also SBs move higher in build up. Still some things they didn't fix like CDs not moving above midline.
+ AI isn't spamming long balls when it's set to play long passes
+- CPU starts games with different A/D levels and changes them more frequently during matches. Can't tell if this is good or bad before seeing how it works in ML.
- AI has some flaws (loose man marking inside the penalty area, dribbling out of bounds, players not picking up loose balls). I would think things like these will be fixed with patches.

[CujoMatty]

I just want one persons impressions to contain the words cpu commited a penalty and then I’m all in.*