What a really, really bizarre future football games appear to have. EA's choosing not to renew the FIFA license and Konami's priorities shifted into a free-to-play model. So Pro Evolution Soccer was dead and, in its place, eFootball arrived with a horrific menu colour scheme and an Unreal Engine effort that just ... completely shat the bed at launch.
That was September and since then, path after patch has improved performance to the point where it's a thing you can play reliably. So, as a public service announcement, I thought I'd go through what's on the table and give my thoughts.
Fantasy Football
So just what is eFootball? In short, it's a free-to-play Ultimate Team equivalent. Real teams are part of the package but, for the most part, players are building their deck using three different types of currencies:
- GP - The free currency. You can use this to buy standard players and consumables. You gain it from event rewards, completing objectives and logging in every day.
- eFootball Points - The pink one. I guess this acts as the Premium free currency. 5000 of them gets you a player from a special selection. It can also be spent on consumables.
- eFootball Coins - The paid currency. At present, you can gain some at a trickle from logins. 100 coins get you a player from the Special Players menu. 100 coins cost 79p at the moment.
Consumables are exclusively tied to training players. Either they're ways to boost their physical stats or cram them into a particular playing style. Honestly, I've not touched them. They offer quick ways to get players at their peak but this can also be achieved naturally by playing matches.
Moneyball
So how far can free get you? Well, thanks to the apology world tour Konami is on, I began my journey with 1,200,000GP. What the hell does that mean?
To put this in perspective, Robert Lewandowski is the most expensive player GP can buy at ... 1,200,000. Not to fear, though. The drop-off in player value seems to be pretty drastic. I figured my best example would be to show how much my squad has cost.
You start with a bunch of fake players but the apology windfall did give me plenty of room to manoeuvre. In short, I have bought 12 players for a total of 389,000 GP. That's not a full squad but Konami's apologies don't stop there. I've had a handful of free players from things called Negotiation Contracts. It's a terribly worded thing but, unlike the fancy currency where you're in for a roulette wheel, you have a handful of players to pick from. These contracts are usually given out as event rewards so I gladly take them when I can. They're not all bangers but I've ended up with Beckham, Inzaghi, Declan Rice and a few others to round out the squad.
All that's left is to find a manager. I settled on Luis Enrique at 93,000GP. I should mention managers no longer have a formation tied to them so you can play in whatever formation you like. Restrictions like that were what usually hampered my enjoyment of MyTeam and Ultimate Team. Being able to set a side up how I want them is part of the fun. He also gives my midfielders bonus XP. So, what's the catch?
Contracts last a calendar year which, to me, sounds generous as hell. Maybe it's the apology train but having the bulk of my squad set for a year is nothing short of bliss. Once these contracts run out, you can renew them for only two month periods. That should sting but, given that most of them are regular players, can I not just buy them again from the Regular Player store? Even if I can't, that's next years problem. I can just buy another 12-16 players when the time comes or whatever.
At present, my GP balance is at 1,500,000 so I think I'm golden. I don't feel like I'm relying on a roulette wheel to get the team right and I can continue to hoard free money like it was my own.
Pitch Business
On the pitch was where the launch completely buckled. Chalk some of it up to the switch to Unreal Engine but it did not perform. At all. Textures looked blurry, movement was a scramble and it clearly wasn't a finished product.
Now, it's a much smoother ride. Framerate seems solid, I'm not bothered so much by player movement and I'm having a good time with it. It is, however, distinctly not Pro Evolution Soccer. I believe they used the mobile ports of MyTeam (the previous incarnation of Pro Evolution Soccer's Penultimate Team mode) as a base but it no longer feels obvious or compromised. It still feels kind of weird, though.
I'm about to get into the weeds of soccer philosophy here and how Pro Evolution Soccer's old identity can be hard to shake, but here we go. You see, Pro Evolution Soccer has always had a heavy emphasis on AI. It's how they are able to make individual players have a distinct feel. David Beckham's going to launch balls forward with precision, Inzaghi's going to be spend half of his life in offside positions. In those instances, the DNA has been carried over. In opposition, I find David De Gea and Manuel Neuer really tough to beat. The latter is off his line quick in his traditional sweeper keeper role. He just invites you to lob him.
That's the stuff I come to Konami for and they do hit their marks. Then there's the other stuff which feels strangely new for the series. Games can be really scrappy. I play mostly against the AI on Professional and the passes I've become accustomed to through years of PES aren't coming off. I need just a little more space and any medium range pass in the midfield seems to carry some risk.
Defensively, the AI does love to play out from the back. It really encourages me to pressure them into mistakes and I've definitely benefited from some tremendously big gambles. I'm still deciding whether that's a deficiency of the AI or if it's merely taking into account that's how most sides like to play these days. I'm not overstating that, either. I watched Gateshead do that all last season. Just launch a hopeful ball forward, lads. I guess this is also compounded by how few teams you'll come up against. Pro Evolution Soccer's AI wasn't just good at an individual level. It would throw up teams that had something close to an identity. David Moyes' West Ham would play like a David Moyes team. Man City and Liverpool would pass to hell and back. How effective Chelsea were going to be depended on whether Werner was looking in the right direction. It mimicked reality in some interesting ways. It's hard to tell with eFootball if that path is still going to be followed.
Players carry a lot more momentum and I think there's some analogue control on your sprint. I can't be certain but I've ran the ball out for needless throw-ins too many times and need something to blame. The pitch also seems bigger. The space I have between my players seems fairly huge and I do wonder if I should tinker with some formation settings.
One thing's for sure, the changes have made for some interesting online matches. I consider myself shockingly poor at Pro Evolution Soccer online. As with many games, once the meta is figured out, you either adapt or die. I tend to die. I've only had a few matches but I have managed to string a couple of wins together. Both were rage quits which I can sort of understand. It's a shock to the system when the old way of thinking, the old muscle memory doesn't quite apply any more. Plus one of the goals I scored was exceptionally bullshit.
I got a good example of this watching a stream (Konami were offering 500 pink points or whatever for watching it) and it was marvellous seeing two eSport pros cancel each other out. A turgid 0-0 draw ended in penalties but each burst forward seemed to be ruined by one pass too many. A generation of football fans have been brought up on tiki-taka but the new engine throws their bearings out of whack. It's kind of a wonderful chaos as players bump into each other and opportunities self-destruct because who's playing is conditioned to walk the ball over the line. In the end they just started launching long balls forward like they were peak Stoke. How far we've come.
Any Problems?
Yeah, the menus still seem gaudy with the blue and yellow colour scheme. It takes a few too many clicks to get a match started. I don't need to see a tunnel intro, a stadium shot and then the players walking out. I want to advance straight to kick-off. Fatigue's in a weird state, too. If I wanted to, I could've kept some of the cheap guys on the subs bench because my players easily last 90 minutes.
Above all, though, it's a narrow representation of a much bigger sport. I don't want to see the same clubs turn up in events. Unfortunately, with Konami having partnerships with a handful of clubs and competitions, I don't see this improving. Maybe the return of the European season will kick things into gear. More events would be nice, too. So far there's four on but I've beaten three of them.
Failing that, blow the Authentic Match tab wide open. This is where the real teams are supposed to live but it currently houses a glorified demo. I don't see them adding leagues and cups to this but it would make it feel more like a traditional package. Then again, that's not the game Konami set out to make. Oh, and some training drills. Give me some of those. I swear the two free-kicks I've scored have felt like accidents.
Whilst I'm here, let's talk about duplicate players. A longstanding issue with Pro Evolution Soccer is how players will be duplicated depending on license agreements and what have you. An easy way to explain this is Matty Ryan. He's a goalkeeper for Australia. He also plays for Burnley. There are two Matty Ryans. I have one of them. Could I theoretically buy the other to warm the bench for himself?
So What Next?
That's the crucial question. I'm happy playing against AI and completing my dailies/weeklies. Objectives are starting to run a little thin but my squad is largely sorted for the next 11 months. By the time it comes to purge and renew the team, I'll have plenty of free currency to cross that bridge. By the looks of things, the initial roadmap (the one unveiled at launch) has been fulfilled. Whether there's plans for a Master League expansion, I can't say. An edit mode would be nice so I can ditch these basic kits. Stat tracking would also be nice. I've heard commentary mention Inzaghi's past 50 goals for the club so it must be in there somewhere.
There's a good game here and I'm happy Konami persisted with it. eFootball's managed to finally get me onboard with an Ultimate Team clone and it won't cost me a penny. All those twats in FIFA threads that talk exclusively about player cards? I'm one of them now. Oh, God.
I do wonder if this will stick, though. With the squad settled and most of my objectives (and trophies) polished off, is playing eFootball for a drip feed of recognition reward in itself? I already miss the wider scope of a traditional sports game release and, whilst I do have PES 2021 in my library, it's no longer available to purchase.
Above all, that horrific first impression is one that will travel. It's the thing people will find when they google eFootball or look at the metacritic scores. In amongst all the release reviews there is one from April that, whilst still mixed is broadly on the up. I don't know how you really turn that public opinion around. Judging by the steam player numbers, word's getting out there.
Log in to comment