"I threw it all away" is not only a song by Dylan.
The game is crap – when you play alone in the single player mode – I've spent hundreds of hours with it, I changed all the names, changed a lot of faces and formations. Just to get more and more angry with it. I was a fan of the game – once in the early days.
Not that it would be extremely difficult to beat even the best teams in the world on the highest difficulty setting. The real problem is one of the most stupid AI-systems you ever experienced. Whenever the developers speak of improvement it's like a heavy threat – remember the improved referee in the predecessor?
The way the players cover rooms is horrible, the direction they run to is mindless.
Many times your team members bump right into you forcing you to lose the ball to the other team. Often your team members only move when the opponent moves – in such a way that it is impossible to give a pass – if you play a through pass you can be sure that the opponent gets the ball first. Because they are always faster no matter what the stats say.
The only tactic the opponent team knows is constant pressing from minute 1 to minute 90. There are always 2 opponents trying to chase you - and they are fast, they seem to have unlimited stamina and the same breakfast that Tony Montana has. In real life soccer the players would be dead in minute 10 if they play like this.
Many times your team members stumble across the field because they ran into each other. 30 % of the game consists of seeing players stumbling across the pitch like a bunch of drunken hobos.
Many times you find your left sideback in the right midfield, while your center forward has a chat with your own goalkeeper.
On paper it is said, that this should be a Soccer Sim – it is not. Especially in the Master League mode the CPU insists that in the end of a season the table should be tight – and that's the most annoying point and the main problem of the game. The developers think, that it is thrilling and exciting to decide the table only in the last few matches. So no matter what you do – in some matches you will find yourself unable to score or do other things that work in regular matches.
It's sad. But once PES had the opportunity to become the most lifelike soccer-sim in the world. But Konami decided to turn this into crap. It's really sad because they once had the recipe.