Pro Evolution Soccer 2018 or PES 2018 is a game that at times you get pleasantly surprised with and at other times you get annoyed. It is not perfect, but it can take you to right to the pinnacle of the science of football.

Some might be offended by the bitter facts, because the truth always hurts, but objectively speaking PES is a series that is running behind in the genre of football simulation games and copies FIFA. Does that make PES inferior to the other series? Absolutely not. I mean, if you’re copying something from others, you can always improve or put your stamp on it. However, Konami never does anything unexpected, like a move that would leave EA Sports and their FIFA blindsided.

PES 2018 is slower than its predecessor and its competition; it gives you a chance to basically do “magic tricks” with a ball without making it look like an arcade game. When you do a trick, you get the feeling that you’re the one who really orchestrated it all, that your fingers typed up the vision of a game you had imagined. However, PES gives you the raw material you have to survive through to reach these magnificent ballroom moments on the green field.

I will be brutally honest and say that the gameplay in PES 2018 is not worth 59.99 euros. Its worth is exactly zero euros, because in six months Konami will release it for free in the so-called “Trial Edition” where you can play the myClub mode for free. The thing is that myClub is the only mode worth playing in PES. It is nice to have a prospect to outdo Mourinho in Master League and become the most relentless coach ever, but hear ye, hear ye – Master League is a dead mode.

The only real novelty in Master League is the main menu interface. It is more transparent and more practical than before, and therefore quite acceptable. But is there anything new there, anything that would have made it worthy of going through trials and tribulations to get to the top of the world football? Well, not really. What PES 2018 offers on this issue is the minimum of what you would expect. Everything is simplified, even at the Challenge difficulty setting. For example, you do not have to worry about the club looking for a player at an individual level at all. Although you can negotiate in detail, the game will do it for you automatically – when your club accepts the transfer, you automatically settle the salary negotiation with the player’s agent.

The issue here is that the Master League in PES 2018 does not draw a clear line between playing a manager simulation and a football simulation. On one hand it gives you the ability to organize practice for your team, and on the other hand it handles your transfer policy automatically.

The gameplay in PES is oriented towards sluggish movement and a slower response to controls, but anyone who has ever tried to play real football knows that such approach is closer to reality than the one we get in FIFA. In reality most football players are tired and only few are “flying” through the field like Ronaldo and Messi. In that respect, PES is realistic, so if you hear someone complain about how there is a time gap between giving commands to a football player and executing them, know that they know nothing about football. No player passes a ball to his teammate immediately; there is a time gap between the moment he sees him and when the ball moves.

Unfortunately, creating magic on the football field is the better half of what PES has to offer. The other half makes you want to cover your face and cry. The aforementioned myClub mode, the only viable game mode, is a bad copy of FIFA’s FUT mode that gravitates towards the mechanics of mobile games. Play every day to win prizes! We will reward you with extra money to encourage you to spend more! This is a pure bet on what players you will get and when you will get them. The common denominator of all the meetings in myClub was breaking the illusion of real football when every other opponent’s team had a Usain Bolt. Think about it – a football simulation that in its primary mode gives you a player who is not a football player at all.

I do not want to completely dismiss the fantasy element of PES 2018, as there are still some good sides to it. The useful Random Selection Match, that creates your team randomly, is re-inserted into the game, so, for example, Neymar can play in the Croatia national football team. This is a great thing for the fans who still play PES as a couch-multiplayer game, 1 on 1, because it breaks the predictability of the match, and the player trading option is still there if you decide to use it. The only disadvantage is that this mode exists only in the offline game mode, while it would be useful as an alternative to the FUT Draft in the myClub mode.

Random Selection Match is not the only mode that made its way back in PES 2018. There are cooperative 3v3 matches as an interesting addition to the often tedious solo play. Unfortunately, these matches reveal the biggest weakness of PES 2018, which is its network component. Before each matchmaking and upon entering each online mode, the game first tests your network connection and then reports Live Update for team rosters – although you have done all this before joining the game. The result is unnecessary loading time – from half a minute to a minute for nothing. Only after that the matchmaking comes and it is longer the more conditions you set. On average, waiting to be paired with online opponents takes longer than two minutes, which is too long. To make matters even worse, once you are connected with an opponent, blocking, pausing, and hocking ensues and all of that is a part of PES 2018 in an online environment. Not even in a single online match did I see the game freeze for a second! These things are not strange or new to the PES series, so it is incredible that Konami has had the guts to charge so much for their product.

Talking about the value of the product, let’s not forget the long-standing license issue. Someone will say – who cares, everything can be modified- but I’m not talking about jerseys and wrong club names. I’m talking about how PES 2018 does not have Bayern Munich or a bunch of other German clubs like Wolfsburg, Bayer or HSV. There’s a bunch of South American clubs, but who cares? There is no Turkish league, there is no Chinese, but there is the Champions League anthem with which Konami does not actually do anything. The Champions League and competitions license is definitely not inexpensive and it is sad to see how PES in no way profits from it. You cannot, for example, play qualifying rounds for UEFA competitions or play the same competitions with all the clubs that compete in it.

The sound is also mediocre. The soundtrack counts 12 songs that were probably chosen for their popularity and they will probably get on your nerves after an hour spent in the menus. The commentators seem stuck in time and repeat the phrases that were popular seven years ago or more, and the new sentences they use are just ridiculous.

Maybe this review of PES 2018 was written in a negative tone for the most part, but the tone was particularly highlighted by the fact that the game was alright – on the field. Everything else is below average, especially if you consider Konami asking 60 euros for something like this and then gives the best part of the game for free in a six-months-time.

In conclusion, Pro Evolution Soccer could really be something phenomenal, and for those who are ready to compromise, it already is, but in 2018 we should look for more than that. We have to admit that it is unacceptable for a game to have so many issues in its online components. These are the things that should not even be discussed in this day and age.