Free kicks seem to be guaranteed goals, even with the best goalkeepers in the world. In attack you can score some very satisfying goals, though most come from either great shots, or due to easily abusing the defending AI. Players can still feel too slow to respond and lack urgency particularly on defense, there's not much you can do when your AI teammates refuse to intercept easy passes or close down attackers. The game still sticks to its own brand of soccer simulation, unwavering in its design philosophy, problems and all. On the pitch, PES 2021 plays like last year's game, though it seemingly didn’t benefit from a lot of patches or tweaks over the course of the year. A couple of new real life managers appear in the game now, namely Giggs and Lampard. In Become a Legend, you can control an individual player through their career no changes made here either, for a few years now. The interface can be awkward to navigate, some of the player transfer negotiations are unrealistic, and you can't tweak your transfer and salary budgets. It remains an engaging experience, but it's disappointing that the developers didn't make any minor tweaks at all over the course of last year and into this Season Update. There's the Master League, where you pick a team to guide to glory. PES 2021 does contain all of the same game modes and experiences as its predecessor.
The option remains to import fan-made license information to make the game more authentic. However, you lose AC Milan and FC Internazionale Milano as agreements with those teams has expired. To boot, players from 2020 will notice new changes to 2021 – AS Roma is now exclusively here, joining Juventus. Last year's UEFA EURO 2020 mode is still here, though not updated at all to reflect that the tournament has in fact been postponed. Major leagues like German Bundesliga are still absent, Spain's La Liga only has the Barcelona license, and most of the English Premier League is unlicensed. With a day one patch, you do get a lot of the summer transfers that have occurred this year, however many are still missing and underway – and those won't arrive until October, according to the developers. No review of PES is complete without discussing these issues, and 2021 is no different. Fans of this soccer simulation franchise will be very familiar with the fact that the series actually lacks a lot of club and league licensing compared to its competition although all the players are usually there. Given that the updated roster is the main value proposition for PES 2021, it makes for an extra tricky discussion. However, given that the experience is so nearly identical, it still feels a bit expensive to pay for what is literally a roster update.
To that end, fans who own last year's game can upgrade to 2021 for an even more reduced price. We won't go into extreme detail about the experience, since you are getting much the same experience as last year. It contains the same experience as PES 2020, including all gameplay modes and most of the content.
PES 2021 Season Update is priced at around half the usual cost of a full release.