This review is entirely based on my single player experience, since I have not played online versus and I have no intention to. So, if you're a guy who wants to play this game for the single player, here's my review.
This game can be fun at times, with the special combos and plays, the animations playing and fast paced arcade futball, but sadly, I cannot recommend this game, because it is more frustrating than fun.
You might say it's a skill issue, and I do admit that I'm not the best player ever, but, some issues do not arise from skill at all, but faulty game mechanics.
For example, when the enemy team has the ball and is passing around, the game auto-switches between your players to one that is best positioned to defend against the current enemy player with the ball. This on paper sounds like a good mechanic, but it is very faulty. Many many times I have a player that is just about the reach the enemy player, but since it's from behind, the game decides to then auto-switch to another player way farther ahead, giving valueble ground and space to the enemy player.
You can, however, manually switch between players, that sounds like it could solve it, right? No. The manual switch is also faulty, many times I had a player so close to the enemy player with the ball and when I tried to switch to the player, the game kept switching between two other players that are so far from the enemy player.
Then there's the slide tackle bug. Oh boy this one has made me get so angry so many times. Sometimes, the slide tackle just doesn't want to work. You'll either phase through the other player or, your character will be pushed to the side of the player you're trying to tackle. My guess is because for some reason the game can't initiate the slide tackle animation (or dribble animation), thus it makes the other player invincible.
I've even encounter issues where my players (the ones I am no controlling), forget what position they where in and wonder somewhere else, for example, I was playing with a left MF, going down the left side, I was going to pass to my right MF, but then I noticed that for some reason, he was running next to me. I guess he felt lonely and wanted to chat.
And then... my biggest gripe with this game... The damn NEW HERO story mode. Holy crap what a let down.
In this story mode you can created your own custom character, editing appearence and field position and add it to a japanese school futball team of your chosing. At first it's exciting, you get to be a new rising hero in the world of Captain Tsubasa! You can form friendships with other players, learn their skills and moves to make your own dream player in the world of Captain Tsubasa, with your favourite moves! You, a new prodigy, rising through the ranks to become the best player in the world!...
Yeah, no.
Even though the story mode is called "NEW HERO", even though the player that shows is a custom character, even though Tsubasa has his own story mode, the moment you finish the initial part and go to the world stage, your character becomes completely irrelevant. And I do mean it. Some times someone will say that you have potential, but no one actually thinks you're a prodigy or anything. The story becomes completely about Tsubasa. I am not joking, your custom character does not matter at all, if it was removed from the story there would be no changes at all, the story is all about Tsubasa and how amazing he is.
What. A. Let. Down.
I've seen people defend this, I do not understand why. Tsubasa already has his own story mode, why make the story mode called "NEW HERO", where you can make a custom character and make him grow, all about Tsubasa? FFS, the moment you go to the world stage, Tsubasa becomes the captain and gets locked into that position, you can't even make your own character the captain.
Overall it does have it's fun moments, but the amount of frustation the issues with the game and the letdown that is the custom character story mode makes this game very hard to recommend, much less at full price.
Thanks for reading.
