Pro Evolution Soccer 2018 PlayStation 4 Review

Football (a.k.a soccer) is undoubtedly the most widespread sport around the globe. The popularity of the English Premier League, Spanish, French, United Soccer Leagues and others is increasing every season. Due to such popularity fans of this sport have a neverending hunger. After the release of PES2017 fans of this genre felt something even better coming in the following year and Pro Evolution Soccer 2018 doesn’t disappoint. If PES2018 is compared visually or presentation-wise with its immediate prequel, there might not be any major findings. Whereas, when playing the game you can feel the difference in the pace of gameplay and movements of the footballers. The gameplay feels more natural and accurate, very close to how it is being played in real life.

PES2018 is packed with enough content to keep you busy. Its gameplay section is segmented in three different parts: Match, Competition and Football Life. The Match section offers five modes to start a match: Play Match, Quick Match, Online Divisions, Friendly Match Lobby, and Team Play Lobby. Play Match is the very first and easiest way to start a single match to play against friends or the Computer (COM), and so is the Quick Match. The only difference is that Quick Match doesn’t keep any win/loss records. The Online Divisions mode is where gamers play against human opponents and climb/promote through twelve divisions. The higher the division gets, the higher the requirement for points to get promoted. Newcomers will find Online Divisions to be most challenging, while it’s also the most interesting section of PES2018 due to its high competitiveness. In Friendly Match Lobby and Team Play Lobby players get to control only one footballer being part of a team of eleven. Those who enjoy playing Become A Legend (we’ll talk about this feature later), will find Team Play Lobby a nice place to spend time, simply because instead of 21 CPU players, you find yourself among human teammates or opponents.

Competition also offers loads of activities. This section is packed with different league competitions such as UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League, AFC Champion League, English, Italian, Spanish, Portugal, Campeonato Brasileiro, Argentine, Chilean leagues and more. Sadly, however, Konami failed to include Bundesliga which was deeply demanded by the fans.  Besides the league cups, there are international cups too. Gamers can pick any national teams and play through several cup competitions. The best, and my personal favorite, part of this section is the Online Competitions. There are always tournaments ongoing and winners can bag a good amount of Game Points (GP) after each competition. GP, later on, can be used in the myClub section.

Football Life is, undoubtedly, the fan favorite section for any PES gamer. This section has three major modes i.e. Master League, Become A Legend and myClub. All these sections can get highly tedious because gamers can keep on playing series after series and establish their stand as either as a Manager or a Player. In Master League, gamers take the role of a Manager of any preferred club and lead his team to maximum glory by becoming the number one club of the world. Unless you start with an already top club, such as Real Madrid or Barcelona, it’s not so easy to become number one. Patience is required to win trophies several years in a series to snatch that glory. In Master League, gamers pretty much do everything a manager does in real life: setting up a team’s formation, tactics, signing new players, selling or loaning them, recruiting players from youth academies, managing scouts, players training, contract renewal, and pretty much everything else. If press conferences would be held after, or before, important matches that would bring something new to the plate. Anyway, other ways to break the monotony are by targeting different achievement levels. In Master League both manager and players are given titles by the fans after achieving certain level. The mechanism of this achievement is a bit tricky and not laid out clearly enough by Konami. Then again, probably due to its uncertainty, it’s more fun when rewarded with such charming titles.

Become A Legend (BAL) is one of the most striking modes of PES2018. In it, gamers control a single footballer; either an existing player from the current leagues or someone newly created. Newly created footballers are easier to develop compared to existing ones, while being more time consuming. I, personally, stick to playing as a new footballer and developing him in different leagues and competitions. There isn’t much to do for players other than being in the field. Gamers can choose to be in any position from CF to GK. Depending on the position of a player, he needs to perform certain jobs to earn his manager’s trust. The higher the trust level, the more frequently he gets selected for the starting lineup. For instance if you’re playing as a CF or SS, your job is quite simple, score goals and keep getting selected for the next match. Usually a CF or SS gets substituted within 65 minutes if they haven’t scored any goals. If playing as a MF player you must provide assists and conduct good passing. Playing as DF or GK is pretty boring since you don’t really have much to do other than clearing the ball, although a handful gamers would still enjoy to do so. In terms of gameplay, if you’re playing with the Player Camera angle, you might find PES2018 very similar to PES2017. The only difference that I’ve noticed is the inclusion of small animated clips before important matches. Then again if you want to feel the difference in controlling the player, trying different camera angles might be a good idea. Other than that, the usual features such as player’s skill training, transfers, stayed the same as before.

My personal favorite, myClub, has lot to offer in PES2018. Obviously no one should expect too many changes in such a massive mode. Even the interface stayed similar to PES2017, while the newly introduced agent auction feature is much more polished now compared to last year. You can keep track of your favorite agents and bid for them whenever available. While bidding, the auction system notifies you if others have also bid for the agent. Those who are still getting used to this system must keep a note that agents acquired through bids won’t recruit you a star footballer unless you combine two more agents to find someone specific.

Anyway, for those who are new to the myClub, it’s a mode where you manage your very own club. The game starts with a set of underrated players and you make your way to building a five star team. After each match, players earn GP and with 10000 GP they can purchase a special agent to sign high ranked footballer. Footballers are categorized by their rating and represented with different colors of balls. Black ball players are the best in business, following by golden, silver, copper and white. Note that unless you have a high ranked manager, you won’t be able to accommodate too many black ball players. Managers must have the appropriate skill levels to hire many black ball players in the main squad. myClub has its own Divisions leagues on both COM and VS Players. In Division COM you only select your team and the match simulates on its own, where in regular Division you play against human opponent. Both Division sections are very competitive, especially when you’re playing against top level opponents. myClub mode is deep enough to be recognized as a separate game. And, since 2016, Konami has introduced myClub as a Free-to-Play game for all platforms.

Another fun feature of PES series is its Edit section. In there you can pretty much edit everything you want from players to stadiums. Even though Komani failed to have the license to register most of the major league teams, you can edit and mod any team to have its original logo and jersey. Though these mods are provided by third-party sources. Many complain about PES being very difficult, and that’s probably because they ignore the Training section. Training is conducted in Basic, Intermediate, Advanced and Expert modes with each mode having several tasks to complete. Anyone putting a little effort in the training can easily have a solid start with the game. From dribbling, long/short pass, through-ball, tackles, corners to penalty shots everything is covered there. Even for veterans, training mode always provides a plus specially for practicing the skill moves.

This year Konami has included a shortcut Co-Op button in all the menu screens. No matter which mode you’re in, you can always jump into the Co-Op room and play against a human opponent. The server issues that had been the most annoying thing over the past many years have been largely addressed. Now you can play Co-Op quite smoothly and sudden drops of frame rate hardly occur. However, there are some irritations during the Co-Op matches when some opponents aren’t playing according to how football should be traditionally played. Some gamers exploit the ability to change the team format freely. How do you play against someone who has six players as forwards or nine players in the defense area? Speaking of gameplay, as mentioned in the first paragraph, it now feels improved. The pace is certainly slower than before, and the players’ movement feels more humanly. Sadly however, it’s a bit disappointing that the AI hasn’t improved much if compared to PES2017. Even during a very intense match your GK stands with the ball, AI opposition will take ages to attack the GK. Players who like quick passes might enjoy PES2018 more, because your AI teammates now response better by making runs in the right directions. Besides that players likeliness to their real selves are more polished this year, both graphically and movement-wise, including their celebrations. Even some of the expression are surprisingly real, such as Antoine Griezmann or Cristiano Ronaldo’s goal celebration, or even when they express frustration after missing a scoring opportunity.

Over the past many years PES series has improved vastly. Then again, there’s no end when it comes to improvements. There are areas where PES can improve in the coming years, specially improving the AI and addition off game elements to break the monotony. There’s no point of talking about the club licensing issue anymore, since we all know that this is something Konami can’t do overnight. But I’d like to see additional elements to the major gameplay modes such as BAL, Master League and myClub such as press conferences, or in-game fan events. Some of these simple inclusion can make a huge difference. Because other than improvement of gameplay there hasn’t been any major change in PES for a very long time. Obviously the gameplay matters most for a football simulation and Konami seems to be in the right direction. Anyway, let’s hope for another good year ahead with PES2018 and I’m hoping to see you in the field.

Sarwar Ron, NoobFeed
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