Usually developers try to add to a game rather than take things away from it...
I f you were expecting a good football game, this surely isn't it. Gone are the skills to practise in the training mode. No more International Cup (essentially World Cup in previous edition), it's just a boring group stage+playoff now. The cup competitions pretty much suck. Only a handful of stadiums are there. Hardly any licensed teams... hmmm. Still looking for a decent option file, but they should emerge soon.
If only the game play made up for these things. You can guess where I'm going. It doesn't. Although the ref isn't quite as strict as PES 6, it still frustrating. Sliding tackles are a no-no (unless you feel like reducing the number of players on your team) and you have to run what seems like half the pitch alongside the opposition player to take the ball away from him. It's the only game where passes seem to produce freekicks, which is well annoying.
The most notable change is the sheer speed of the game. It is much more fluid than PES 6 and resembles frankly FIFA. Passing is random and you can pretty much forget doing crosses as they will hardly ever go where you want them to. So the game is reduced to running with the ball. It's far to easy to take a defender and score or get at least a corner than attempt intricate passing even with the best teams. The goalie catches fewer balls and to me seems more realistic (rather than picking out ball heading for the corner of the goal like in PES 6), but fails to get anything on the ball all to often when you hit it right at him. Own goals from the computer are far too common. Fortunately the freekicks are slightly easier to take compared to previous version, but you'll be very lucky to get a freekick in the first place.
In all it's pretty disappointing. I'll be very sceptical before buying the next instalment of this franchise. Unless you're a hardcore PES fan, I'd advise to avoid this altogether.