Skyfireblaze
Member
First of all a disclaimer, please do not make this a PES vs. FIFA war thread, I bought both games in the past and enjoyed both for different reasons but I haven't bought either of them since FIFA 2014 or 2015 so and feel somewhat of an itch to play a football (soccer) game again and would like a bit of a heads-up which game might be better suited for me. I'm in no rush though, I told myself I wouldn't buy any game till October till Intel announces when and for how much the Coffee Lake CPUs will really be available here as my PC's 3570k is in need of an upgrade and I want to plan my budget accordingly. And I know aside from the demo FIFA 18 isn't out for another two weeks.
Let me give a bit of a background what I want out of a football game. I should say that I don't really care for the professional side of the sport at all or the players or the clubs but I still very much like the sport and game in itself as weird as it may sound. As far as real-life football goes I only watch the World Cup and Europe Championship and then cheer for Germany and all the other countries my friends are from but that's it really so I don't really care too much about PES's lack of licenses but I would still get myself an OF for the sake of consistency.
As far as actual football video-games go I started with a SNES football game my brother bought (it wasn't International Super Star Soccer
) but I can't really remember the name anymore, then as a kid I moved on playing FIFA 98, 99 and 2000 on PSX and then finally International Super Star Soccer 2000 which I still remember fondly as one of my GOAT games in my childhood because of the amazing story mode in vein of a visual-novel. Making a character, picking a club and then basically playing a story out visual-novel style was a ton of fun. Building character-relations, influencing the story and having mini-games to raise your stats was something new that I enjoyed. After that I stuck with FIFA till FIFA 2004 or so and liked the WC 2002 game on the GameCube for its sheer ridiculousness. At one point FIFA became too predictable and "on-rails" for me though so I stopped playing them and thanks to a friend at school I discovered Pro Evolution Soccer 3 and wow that game was something else.
It might have only had made up teams and everything but back then on the PS2 the game was really fun and played great, it had so much freedom compared to how FIFA played at the time that and PES 3 and 4 had amazing intros I still watch from time to time today:
PES 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccUzpymxa2A
PES 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPtzg6c3ojo
Every time I booted the games up I let these intros plays, they always got me so hyped up to play and still had this video-gamey charm about them. My friends and me kept playing PES till PES 6 and one of them bought a Japanese copy of some Winning Eleven game in a pawn-shop where you could play in the Japanese J-League and while we of course couldn't read anything it was kind of fun to play football in a totally different league we never heard of before as kids. We also always wanted to have Winning Eleven 9 Liveware Evolution since we heard of it on the internet since it was supposed to be the best PS2 engine version with gameplay tweaks. For those that don't know, Pro Evolution Soccer and Winning Eleven were essentially the same game with the latter being the Japanese/Asia version which might or might not have some differences compared to PES depending on which numbered entry it was.
As the next-gen PS3/360 transition happened I sort of had a fall-out with PES and didn't really like how it played anymore so eventually with new friends I bit the bullet and bought FIFA 2010. I was surprised because since FIFA 2004 it made really big leaps and while I still didn't enjoy the gameplay as much as the PS2-era PES's it was a fun game to play with friends, especially on full manual. We also mostly limited ourselves to three-star teams or less as we found that the game simply played better and slower with them. That one online mode where every player was controlling just one player on the field was also amazingly fun and the first time I won a game like this with two other friends felt like a great achievement.
Some other thing I enjoyed about past FIFAs I played was that you could create your own character and the game dropped you in a 1v1 arena versus the keeper and you could do different things to unlock achievements and raise stats. Online, especially against randoms also always felt better to me in FIFA versus PES the few times I tried. Ultimate Team was something I enjoyed too, I never hyped it as much as some people do and would never put any money for it but it was kinda fun to get better cards and make a somewhat competent team out of it along with getting better kits, balls and stadiums.
My FIFA time went on for me till the last FIFA for PS3 before the first PS4 FIFA appeared so I think the last I played was actually FIFA 15 I think but ever since then I haven't bothered, life moved on and I wasn't playing much football games with my football-game liking friends anymore and the first PS4 FIFA was also way too expensive for me back then.
So far I tried the demos of both PES 18 and FIFA 18 and in a pure gameplay vacuum I like PES 18 much much better, it reminds me actually how much fun I had with the PS2 PES's but I don't like the presentation of the game too much, especially the pitch UI and everything feels so sterile and stylized in the menus. FIFA on the other hand feels much more lively and like the better all-around package though even on full manual the gameplay isn't that much for me, especially since I play mostly alone nowadays. From the FIFA 17 and 18 demo The Journey is nothing for me though, for me the story seems to be way too much focused on professional drama and happenings, plus I can't create my own character which is a thing that put me off too even though I see why it simply wouldn't be possible with how they have done the mode.
Overall I get that football with its licenses and all is a big deal for many people who are into the professional side of things but I who just likes the game itself and watched alot of Captain Tsubasa and Kickers! as a kid would just like to make a character and play in a random backwater fantasy town club against other fantasy town clubs. I guess from this aspect PES should appeal more to me but I'm not sure, it still has this Be A Legend mode too right? I just miss all the (Japanese) video-gamey feel to it. I just don't care for the Ronaldos, Barcelonas and Real Madrids of the world
And since I wrote much more than I thought I would here's a tl;dr:
I'm a lapsed PES and FIFA fan who would like to buy one of the games again but does not care for the professional side of football at all. I enjoy PES 2018's gameplay much more though FIFA 18 feels like the better overall (single-player) package to me. So far I lean towards PES but help me decide I would also buy either on PC, specs aren't an issue at all.
Let me give a bit of a background what I want out of a football game. I should say that I don't really care for the professional side of the sport at all or the players or the clubs but I still very much like the sport and game in itself as weird as it may sound. As far as real-life football goes I only watch the World Cup and Europe Championship and then cheer for Germany and all the other countries my friends are from but that's it really so I don't really care too much about PES's lack of licenses but I would still get myself an OF for the sake of consistency.
As far as actual football video-games go I started with a SNES football game my brother bought (it wasn't International Super Star Soccer
) but I can't really remember the name anymore, then as a kid I moved on playing FIFA 98, 99 and 2000 on PSX and then finally International Super Star Soccer 2000 which I still remember fondly as one of my GOAT games in my childhood because of the amazing story mode in vein of a visual-novel. Making a character, picking a club and then basically playing a story out visual-novel style was a ton of fun. Building character-relations, influencing the story and having mini-games to raise your stats was something new that I enjoyed. After that I stuck with FIFA till FIFA 2004 or so and liked the WC 2002 game on the GameCube for its sheer ridiculousness. At one point FIFA became too predictable and "on-rails" for me though so I stopped playing them and thanks to a friend at school I discovered Pro Evolution Soccer 3 and wow that game was something else.It might have only had made up teams and everything but back then on the PS2 the game was really fun and played great, it had so much freedom compared to how FIFA played at the time that and PES 3 and 4 had amazing intros I still watch from time to time today:
PES 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccUzpymxa2A
PES 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPtzg6c3ojo
Every time I booted the games up I let these intros plays, they always got me so hyped up to play and still had this video-gamey charm about them. My friends and me kept playing PES till PES 6 and one of them bought a Japanese copy of some Winning Eleven game in a pawn-shop where you could play in the Japanese J-League and while we of course couldn't read anything it was kind of fun to play football in a totally different league we never heard of before as kids. We also always wanted to have Winning Eleven 9 Liveware Evolution since we heard of it on the internet since it was supposed to be the best PS2 engine version with gameplay tweaks. For those that don't know, Pro Evolution Soccer and Winning Eleven were essentially the same game with the latter being the Japanese/Asia version which might or might not have some differences compared to PES depending on which numbered entry it was.
As the next-gen PS3/360 transition happened I sort of had a fall-out with PES and didn't really like how it played anymore so eventually with new friends I bit the bullet and bought FIFA 2010. I was surprised because since FIFA 2004 it made really big leaps and while I still didn't enjoy the gameplay as much as the PS2-era PES's it was a fun game to play with friends, especially on full manual. We also mostly limited ourselves to three-star teams or less as we found that the game simply played better and slower with them. That one online mode where every player was controlling just one player on the field was also amazingly fun and the first time I won a game like this with two other friends felt like a great achievement.
Some other thing I enjoyed about past FIFAs I played was that you could create your own character and the game dropped you in a 1v1 arena versus the keeper and you could do different things to unlock achievements and raise stats. Online, especially against randoms also always felt better to me in FIFA versus PES the few times I tried. Ultimate Team was something I enjoyed too, I never hyped it as much as some people do and would never put any money for it but it was kinda fun to get better cards and make a somewhat competent team out of it along with getting better kits, balls and stadiums.
My FIFA time went on for me till the last FIFA for PS3 before the first PS4 FIFA appeared so I think the last I played was actually FIFA 15 I think but ever since then I haven't bothered, life moved on and I wasn't playing much football games with my football-game liking friends anymore and the first PS4 FIFA was also way too expensive for me back then.
So far I tried the demos of both PES 18 and FIFA 18 and in a pure gameplay vacuum I like PES 18 much much better, it reminds me actually how much fun I had with the PS2 PES's but I don't like the presentation of the game too much, especially the pitch UI and everything feels so sterile and stylized in the menus. FIFA on the other hand feels much more lively and like the better all-around package though even on full manual the gameplay isn't that much for me, especially since I play mostly alone nowadays. From the FIFA 17 and 18 demo The Journey is nothing for me though, for me the story seems to be way too much focused on professional drama and happenings, plus I can't create my own character which is a thing that put me off too even though I see why it simply wouldn't be possible with how they have done the mode.
Overall I get that football with its licenses and all is a big deal for many people who are into the professional side of things but I who just likes the game itself and watched alot of Captain Tsubasa and Kickers! as a kid would just like to make a character and play in a random backwater fantasy town club against other fantasy town clubs. I guess from this aspect PES should appeal more to me but I'm not sure, it still has this Be A Legend mode too right? I just miss all the (Japanese) video-gamey feel to it. I just don't care for the Ronaldos, Barcelonas and Real Madrids of the world
And since I wrote much more than I thought I would here's a tl;dr:
I'm a lapsed PES and FIFA fan who would like to buy one of the games again but does not care for the professional side of football at all. I enjoy PES 2018's gameplay much more though FIFA 18 feels like the better overall (single-player) package to me. So far I lean towards PES but help me decide
I would also buy either on PC, specs aren't an issue at all.
