PES '09 has a great game at its core, but a few glaring flaws let it down in a big way.
It's quite frustrating because this is a game with AI, graphics and certain aspects of gameplay that blow EA's FIFA series well out of the water (and unlike with FIFA, the soundtrack isn't unlistenable, it's quite good in fact), but a lot of things just aren't executed as well as they could be.
The passing system is the main thing I'm talk about. The manual states that pressing 'A' and pushing in the direction of the player you want to pass to will send a pass in their direction, and holding down the button for longer will send it to a more distant player, but they can't even get this right. Often your player will pass to someone in a completely different direction, or tap it slowly ahead to be picked up by an opposing player. As you can imagine, when this happens when you have the ball in your own end, it's kinda disastrous. This wasn't a problem in either of the previous Konami soccer titles I played, and it's quite a letdown.
Long passes are even worse. When you change controller options to play long passes manually (ie without the computer assisting the ball and guiding it to a teammate), it's virtually impossible because the ball never goes in the direction you tell it to. Konami don't seem to have taken advantage of the 360 degree capability of the analog stick, or at least haven't done so correctly. I think part of the reason for this may be because PES is still kind of stuck back in the days of PS1, when people still controlled players with the D-pad, and hence, they still allow players to play with the d-pad. There's probably a couple dozen people who still use the d-pad, it's ridiculously outdated, I can't believe they haven't moved past that when every other game has.
Players also don't control the ball well enough, particularly around the touchlines, which is where you'd think they'd concentrate on keeping the ball in.
Shooting is also quite awkward; the power-up meter fills up too quickly preventing you from sliding the ball along the ground, and the option to side-foot a shot for placement over power is very difficult to get to work. Unlike in previous editions, you now have to hit the 'RB' button while the shot is powering up, as opposed to holding it down while you shoot, which is much more difficult to pull off.
It's quite a shame, because this game has the potential to be near-perfect. When you watch two computer teams play against each other it's like watching a real match, that's how good the AI, graphics and physics are.
The graphics are stunning, I can't overstate this. Unlike in FIFA, the artists for which always strike me as being very lazy and not paying attention to detail, players look scarily like their real-life counterparts, and the kits are exactly like their real-life counterparts, right down to the different lettering on the back of shirts for different manufacturers (so far I've noticed distinct lettering for Lotto, adidas, Nike and Puma kits, as well as the unique FA Premier League font for all English clubs) and even accurate socks. Every year Konami manage, on a lower budget, to make a better-looking game than EA.
It's just very tough to play, and it's a bummer, because it should have been much better.
Probably the best thing about this game is that it forces you to play realistically. In FIFA, for instance, you can grab any player on the pitch and make him run around out of position, and the opposition will never exploit the weakness created by your stupidity, because the AI is so bad. What EA do is add a bunch of new features every year and make the game easy to pick up and play, so you don't notice the hugely flawed game underneath until you've played it for a few months. In PES, if you take your right back and make him chase the ball down the left, you will get scored on- especially by the better teams in the game- when the left winger spots the open space and switches play over to the right side and you have nobody there to stop the attack.
As I said, the AI in PES is outstanding, and always has been. Sadly, International Superstar Soccer 64 (the distant predecessor to PES) probably has a better game at its core than FIFA 09 (in which the old FIFA '97 strategy of making a huge run down the wing and then cutting in at the 18 still works). If not for the difficulties in getting players to actually do what you want them to, PES 09 would be amazing.