In the world of football, more often than you can imagine, a club with a legendary past, such as Manchester United, can initiate a long and indestructible negative cycle, resisting a change of coaches. no obvious reason. players and managers. No matter how many champions you sign, these spirals of total revolution can embed themselves in your team’s DNA at all levels, sometimes infecting their mindset, so it’s always difficult to re-emerge from them. Embrace the ancient coat of arms.
For several years now, eFootball has gone from being one of the absolute heroes in the best sports video game race to occupy the last places in the standings, even touching a resounding relegation in the minor sports league on more than one occasion. Games that treat golf and ice hockey simulations with all possible respect.
Just like United, Konami It is desperately trying to get back to the top to get out of the swamp that ended after the transition to the free-to-play formula of 2021, and is releasing a series of updates that expand and improve the formula proposed by this episode. , but they also fail to revive their ambitions.
Last April it was the turn of patch 1.0.0, which could lay the first foundations for a complete football experience. Source of some news in terms of gameplay, as well as licenses. Willing to learn all the details of it update to eFootball 2023So, we put on our boots and once again descended onto the football fields of the Konami title to have a look at the state of things. Here, below, is what we discovered.
Game as first goal
You don’t have to be a dissenter of the game to admit that eFootball is still a project with no clear direction today, a huge open-air construction site far from the design drawings that preceded the work to begin. Adopting this kind of calm chaos, Konami obviously opted for an approach to progressive optimization. Gameplaybecause without retouching the formula of the first eFootball, there would be nothing to use as the basis for a believable football game.
After many interventions last April, patch 2.0.0 for eFootball 2023 concentrates its innovations across the four sides of the football field. avalanche of improvement aimed at making the gaming experience even more enjoyable, it has already been significantly improved with the latest updates. The aim of the team was, above all, to make the actions more fluid, to significantly increase the responsiveness of the players and their ability to control the ball. Fans of the Konami series have always loved the more restrained pace of Pro Evolution Soccer, but it’s good that the pace of action is now noticeably faster after the update. As we underlined in the special FIFA 23 vs eFootball 2023 match where the football game of the year will be chosen, it is the opposite way of competition.
Players are no longer dragged byinertia during changes of direction, they are significantly more responsive in all situations, and it is now easier to master offensive maneuvers with athletes guiding the ball without making sudden mistakes. Of course, the game is still characterized by a certain degree of unpredictability, but as we saw earlier on the occasion of the 1.0.0 update, there are more tools to manage the maneuver, now every step is faster and more precise. Interventions won’t revolutionize that feeling, but there’s no doubt that Konami is very slowly, gradually shaping the ultimate football experience for fans of the series, at least in terms of gameplay quality.
A free demo, but always a demo
We would pay any sum to turn us into a fly, infiltrate Konami offices, go to the floor where the eFootball team works, and find out why two years later there isn’t a shadow of content that still represents viable content. alternative to modality Dream Team. It’s disarming to see how good the gameplay is and how much potential it can have, only to see the Japanese company’s soccer team nailed to a banal status. demoalso somewhat ‘sparse.
We are not giving any news with the transition to eFootball 2023. game modeConfirmed to be only Dream Team and Authentic Match. In the latter, the teams available to players have been significantly increased (but we’ll get to that in the paragraph about licenses), Dream Team has seen some new packs presented as the only, real innovation whose sole purpose is to push. community to spend your money in the in-game shop. It’s clear that the studio has done everything to make this mod the only real reason to download eFootball, and in that sense we expected more, even if we had to admit that the formula works fine nonetheless.
As for modalities, eFootball 2023 has thus been endorsed as an excellent anachronistic experience, as evidenced by the fact that online matches between friends, a feature that should represent the foundation of any football, arrived in October, two years after the game’s release. for lovers offline gameThere is only endless sand and a few bales of straw to roll here and there. Master League, the historic PES mode that put us in a coach’s shoes, is still inexplicably on call, and while some rumors insist it’s coming soon, nothing indicates that this could actually be the case.
Timid progress on the undergraduate front
From a content standpoint, the eFootball 2023 update has coincided with the introduction of some, if the new version can’t really offer anything new to the fans’ audience. new licenses This will delight fans, at least those passionate about Latin football. From the 9 teams that were previously involved in the game, we moved on to 26 officially licensed lineups, most of them from the top stages of South American football. In Italy, Juventus hail Konami for embracing the exclusivity of FIFA 23, but instead joins the eFootball roster, in addition to Inter and Milan, Roma, Lazio, Atalanta, Napoli and Monza, the two interpreters of the Madonnina derby.
If we were to limit ourselves to only commenting on Serie A’s representation in eFootball 2023, it would be bad enough that many of our league’s other teams are not available for normal offline performances. But by turning our eyes international competitions, the situation is really dramatic: only Arsenal and Manchester United will be nominated in the Premier League, Barcelona alone in La Liga, and none other than Bayern Munich will be nominated for the Bundes. Too much, too little, for the 2022 football simulation, especially considering that leagues with unlicensed teams actually exist, but are only accessible for very short time periods throughout the season.
Addition of the most famous Argentine, Brazilian and Mexican teams, such as those of six new stadiums, including the historic Azteca, big gaps eFootball continues to show up relentlessly on the licensing front, where its reference rival is battling a surprising number of official teams. It is clear that the rivalry between FIFA and eFootball has not been played out over licenses, but this is by no means an issue that can be ignored in the analysis between the two products.
More and more refined
We spoke with you on the occasion of the latest update of the great breakthrough conquered by Konami. technical realization There is no special news in eFootball and despite the new season coming, the quality of the football show the game has to offer, we are glad to finally meet a game that is free of many of the flaws that have plagued it in the past. . Most of the work was brought home last April, but now the formula is even more refined, the animations a little more convincing, and the faces incredibly detailed, to the point where they appear in action, even if they’re still devoid of any expression. to deal with scary dummies.
L’online infrastructure It doesn’t expose itself to certain critical issues, finding a game is still a process that can take a few minutes, but once you get into the netcode, the game is excellent despite offering full cross-play across all platforms. Konami wanted to focus on fixing any and all technical flaws, and from that perspective, the incredible work done by the company that can turn a minor technical disaster into a workhorse from start to finish is acceptable.
What do you think of all the news about Konami’s football update to eFootball 2023? Will you try the game using its free-to-play formula?
Source: Multiplayer
