eFootball 2023: all the news of Konami’s football simulation update

In the world of football, more often than you can imagine, it can happen that a club with a legendary past, one for example like Manchester United, starts a long-lasting and indestructible negative cycle, capable of resisting the turnover of coaches, for no apparent reason. players and managers. No matter how many champions you manage to sign, these sports spirals of total involution manage to insinuate themselves into the DNA of your team at every level, sometimes infecting their mentality, which is why it is always difficult to get out of them to re-embrace their ancient blazon.

eFootball, for several years now, has gone from being one of the absolute protagonists in the race for the best sports video game to occupy the last positions of the ranking, even touching on more than one occasion a resounding relegation to the minor league of sports games , the one that usually welcomes, with all possible respect, simulations of golf and ice hockey.

Just like United, the production of Konami is desperately trying to get back on top to re-emerge from the swamp it ended up in following the transition to the free-to-play formula of 2021, rolling out a series of updates that are expanding and improving the formula proposed by this chapter, but that at the at the same time they are not successful in reviving its ambitions.

Last April it was the turn of the 1.0.0 patch, capable of laying the very first foundations of a complete football experience, while in the summer the game updated to the new season with a patch capable of applying a wide range of interventions to the gameplay, as well as the source of some news in terms of licenses. Eager to find out all the details of this update to eFootball 2023, we put on our boots and went down once again on the football fields of the Konami title, just to have a look around on the state of work. Here, below, what we discovered.

Gameplay as the first goal

You don’t necessarily have to be a detractor of the game to admit that eFootball is still today a project without a clear direction, a gigantic open-air construction site very far from the design drawings that had anticipated the start of the works. By embracing this sort of calm chaos, Konami has evidently chosen to favor an approach oriented towards progressive optimization of the gameplayalso because without retouching what was the formula of the very first eFootball there would have been nothing to use as a foundation for the construction of a convincing football game.

After the many interventions of last April, the patch 2.0.0 for eFootball 2023 concentrates its innovations between the four sides of the football field, applying a avalanche of improvements oriented to make the gaming experience even more enjoyable, already significantly enhanced with the latest updates. The goal of the team was first of all to make the actions more fluid, significantly increasing the reactivity of the players and their ability to control the ball. Fans of the Konami series have always enjoyed the more measured pace of Pro Evolution Soccer, but it’s good that the speed of the action is now, after the update, noticeably faster. An opposite path to that of the competition, as we underlined in the special FIFA 23 vs eFootball 2023, the match to elect the football game of the year.

The players are no longer dragged by theinertia during changes of direction, they are significantly more responsive in any situation, and it is now easy to tackle attacking maneuvers with athletes steering the ball without indulging in sudden inaccuracies. Of course, the gameplay is still characterized by a certain degree of unpredictability, but as we had already seen on the occasion of the 1.0.0 update, there are more tools to manage the maneuver, now that each step is faster and more precise. The interventions will not have revolutionized the feeling, but there is no doubt that, very slowly, Konami is gradually shaping the definitive football experience for fans of the series, at least in terms of the quality of the game.

A free demo, but always a demo

We would pay any sum to be able to turn us into a fly, infiltrate the Konami offices, head to the floor where the eFootball team works and find out why, after two years, there is still no shadow of a content that represents a valid alternative to the modality. Dream Team. It is disarming to see how much better the gameplay and how much potential it can have, only to see the Japanese company’s football team nailed to the state of a banal demoin addition also a bit ‘sparse.

With the transition to eFootball 2023, we do not report any news whatsoever in terms of game mode, which are confirmed to be only Dream Team and Authentic Match. In the latter, the teams available to players have been significantly increased (but we will get to it in the paragraph dedicated to licenses), where Dream Team has seen some new packages introduced as the only, real novelty that have the sole purpose of pushing the community to spend your money in the in-game shop. It is evident that the studio does everything to make this mode the only real reason to download eFootball, and in this sense we expected something more, even if we must admit that despite everything its formula works properly.

As for the modalities, eFootball 2023 is therefore confirmed as an exquisitely anachronistic experience, as evidenced by the fact that online matches between friends, a feature that should represent the basis of any football, will arrive only in October two years after title release. For those who love the offline game, there are only endless stretches of sand and a few bales of hay to roll here and there. The Master League, the historic PES mode that put us in the shoes of a coach, is still inexplicably absent from the call and, although some rumors insist on his imminent arrival, nothing suggests that it could really be like this.

Timid progress on the licensing front

If from the point of view of contents the new version fails to offer anything really new to the audience of its fans, the update to eFootball 2023 coincided with the introduction of some new licenses that will delight fans, at least those passionate about Latin football. From the 9 teams previously included in the game, we have passed to 26 officially licensed formations, most of them coming from the most important South American football stages. In Italy Juventus greets Konami to embrace the exclusivity of FIFA 23, but in his place the two interpreters of the Madonnina derby, Inter and Milan, join the roster of eFootball, in addition to Rome, Lazio, Atalanta, Naples and Monza.

If we were to limit ourselves to commenting only on the representation of Serie A in eFootball 2023, it would be bad enough not to have the many other teams of our league available for normal offline performances. But it is by turning our eyes to international competitions, that the situation is really dramatic: the Premier League will only nominate Arsenal and Manchester United, La Liga only Barcelona, ​​the Bundes none other than Bayern Munich. Too much, too little for a 2022 football simulation, especially when we consider that leagues with unlicensed teams are actually present, but only accessible during very short time windows throughout the season.

The addition of the most renowned Argentine, Brazilian and Mexican teams, such as that of six new stadiums including the historic Azteca, does not mitigate the huge gaps that eFootball continues to show undeterred on the licensing front, where its reference competitor fielded a staggering number of official teams. It is clear that the competition between FIFA and eFootball is not played on the issue of licenses, but this is not an aspect that can in no way be ignored, in the analysis between the two products.

More and more refined

We talked to you on the occasion of the latest update of the huge leap forward conquered by Konami from the point of view of technical realization of eFootball and even with the arrival of the new season there are no particular news on the subject of the quality of the football show offered by the game, we were pleased to meet a gameplay finally purified from the many imperfections that plagued it in the past. Much of the work had already been brought home last April, but now the formula is even more refined, the animations are slightly more convincing, and the faces incredibly detailed, even if still lacking any expressiveness, to the point that in motion it seems to dealing with scary mannequins.

L’online infrastructure it does not expose itself to particular critical issues, finding a game is still a process that can take a few minutes, but once inside the netcode it is excellent, despite the game offering total cross-play across all platforms. Konami wanted to concentrate on smoothing out technical imperfections of any nature, and from this point of view one can only admit the incredible work done by the company, capable of transforming a small technical disaster into a working title from start to finish. end.

What do you think of all the news of Konami’s football update to eFootball 2023? Will you try the game, taking advantage of its free-to-play formula?