➤ Wins but does not convince - the Pro Evolution Soccer 2018 Mobile review 🎮

Released last May, Pro Evolution Soccer 2017 Mobile marked the return for the Konami series on iOS and Android devices with an episode full of interesting news, especially in terms of touch controls. After a few months, the Japanese publisher has decided to update that same product to the 2018 edition, thus maintaining the same bases and the basic setting, but by updating the roses and applying some finishing touches in order to diversify the offer. But let's proceed in order. In its mobile reduction, the Konami football game boasts very well thought out mechanisms, which offer two possible solutions regarding the controls: a traditional system with large buttons on the screen or one that puts in place a series of simple gestures that activate various actions : normal passes, crosses, throughs, pressing, slips and of course shots on goal.

Net of some uncertainties here and there, the new setting reveals itself in a few minutes very effective and intuitive, guaranteeing a fluid and pleasant experience, also made up of many beautiful strategic implications. The problem lies in the structure, which does not feature traditional leagues and even less a reproduction of the Master League, but falls back on a purely freemium vision that puts us in front of teams managed by other users, in the perspective of an asynchronous multiplayer, spurring us to grow our team win after win. A path that unfortunately turns out to be long and very boring at first, when the degree of challenge of the matches translates into a string of 10-0 in which it is possible to score even starting from one's own penalty area, ball and chain, bypassing the entire opposing team and coming to a conclusion that the goalkeeper will not even dream of trying to intercept.

Weight additions?

Pro Evolution Soccer 2018 Mobile realizes the ideas recently expressed by Electronic Arts, that is transforms the experience into a service to be updated every year rather than redesigned. The concept naturally has its own why, given that in this specific case we are talking about a product with a very solid and fun base, but you have to go and see how many and what changes are introduced. On the single player front, unfortunately, the setting has remained the same: no championships, only matches in asynchronous multiplayer that during the first hours are really boring due to the very low difficulty, assisted by a set of events (including the one entitled to David Beckham) that add a minimum of variety to the offer but do not distort it, where instead it would have been necessary to insert at least tournaments.

Similarly, on the competitive online front we have not appreciated substantial steps forward: the fluidity of the experience is not constant, the matches are full of small clicks that ruin the rhythm and undermine the precision of the commands, while the netcode shows the side of a number of uncertainties (wrong steps, unresponsive artificial intelligence) exponentially higher than what is seen during single-player gameplay. The commentary in Spanish, which can be downloaded separately, has also been updated only with regard to the names of the new teams of the 2017/2018 championship, while the vast majority of the sentences have remained identical. The most obvious renewal, absurdly, is the one that probably interests users least, with new songs for the signed soundtrack.

Comment

Tested version iPhone (2.0.0) Digital Delivery App Store, Google Play Price Free Resources4Gaming.com

6.5

Readers (5)

7.1

Your vote

With a very solid base in terms of gameplay and touch control system, Pro Evolution Soccer tries the path of the update for the 2018 edition, but the news are less than what one might have expected. The developers have in fact left the freemium setting intact, with many matches that are too easy during the first hours and a sense of constant boredom after yet another tennis score, without introducing traditional tournaments or championships and without even improving the online sector, subject to too many technical uncertainties. In short, it plays well and the controls work, but on the structural front PES 2018 Mobile still leaves a lot to be desired.