Konami decided to take their football franchise in a different direction and it seems like fans are not having any of it as the game's user review scores at launch became abyssmal.
Konami's annual football entry has changed its model to free to play with paid elements and what is now known as eFootball is not undergoing an easy change. It launched on September 30, 2021, and players on PC are giving it a proper thrashing as the game was sitting a only eight per cent positive reviews after 2,407 users left their opinion on it.
Granted, it's just the first day and these are probably just the preliminary fans venting their frustration but if you look into the reviews left on Steam, there are quite a few of those with genuine criticism. The new engine is not sitting well with players as the game feels sluggish and the bane of every PES fan is still there - scripting is ever present and completely blatant.
That said, Konami did note previously that the initial launch of eFootball 2022 will be free to play and will essentially serve as a demo. It remains to be seen whether they will manage to turn this around because many of the issues players brought up so far are fundamental problems that can't be changed with a simple hotfix.
The majority of PES, or rather eFootball, players are on consoles so we will have to wait a bit to see there impressions via Metacritic and other sites.
Konami
One of the players described eFootball 2022 as a psychological horror so at least Konami has that going for them since nothing ever became of P.T.
