[Azamien]

My impressions after a couple of hours. Forgive me for listing anything that already existed in last year's next gen version since I play on PC so didn't have the next gen engine last year:

+ I love the new free/corner kick system. Much more realistic than the old post-kick stick manipulation system.

= That said, I'm not sure about the new penalty kick system because I'm not sure exactly how it works, because they didn't include any sort of in-game tutorial, unlike most other things.

+ Looks really good, but...

- Poor optimization on PC.

+ Gameplay is so much better on the next gen engine. I'm kind of glad I didn't know what I was missing last year.

+ There's a referee strictness setting! I'm seeing fouls!

-? Turning the gameplay to slow seems to still have the defender strafing problem, but I'm putting a question mark because I'm not 100% sure.

+ Lots of new training scenarios, and some of them are pretty fun.

+ Glad we can finally play as some real-life managers.

- Still max 7 bench players. How has this still not been changed?

+ A lot of good animations, and despite them focusing on it very little in the run-up to release, a lot of them make defending better. I've already pulled off some really nice tackles that don't seem to have been possible before.

+ Some nice new presentations.

+ Heading, particularly on defence, feels a lot better this year.

+ No more separate game launcher that I had to re-disable via a command line after every patch in previous years.

So far I'm impressed, but I'm approaching it cautiously because I've been fooled in the early days before.