No relegation please, we’re PESish
Towards the end of my second season on PES2009’s Become A Legend mode, I’ve become a bit of a regular in the first team at Portsmouth. I now get to start roughly 4 matches out of 5. And I play for about 60-80 minutes in most of them before being substituted. Which is fair enough really—my stamina levels are still a bit dodgy. Sometimes I’m allowed to stay on the pitch for the entire 90 minutes. I love that, and I’m still loving BaL. In the light of all my signature moaning later on in this post, that’s something worth bearing in mind.
My meagre Youth stats have started to bulk up a bit. In BaL you can select specific areas of your stats to work on. You can’t fine-tune them individually. You can only focus on umbrella categories like, say, ‘Kicking’, which presumably includes passing, shot power, shot technique, and any other kicking-related attributes. The same goes for categories like ‘Power’, ‘Speed’, etc.
All told, I’ve started having a palpable effect on matches. Over the closing stages of the season, Portsmouth put in their best performances since the start of it. We won two and drew two. I have to cast aside all modesty for a moment and take all the credit. I set up two goals. I defended tirelessly when required. I dragged the team up by its bootstraps. This increasing influence all bodes well for next season, my 3rd. A season that should be taking place, by all rights, down in Division 2. But it’s not. This is a very touchy subject…
The end of the season came along, and despite our good little run, we still finished second from bottom of the Division 1 table, and thus should—SHOULD—have been relegated to Division 2. Except… There is no Division 2. Not in Become A Legend.
You get to the end of the season down there in the ‘relegation zone’, and nothing happens. Nothing. It’s one of the most anti-climactic things I have ever (not) seen in PES. I’m at least thankful that I was forewarned in a comment on a previous post about there being no relegation—otherwise I’d have been puzzled, confused, and very likely incandescent with PES-related rage.
Grimly I went through the post-season negotiation weeks. I wanted to see if the game would even acknowledge that I had finished in the Division’s nominal relegation zone. It didn’t. The weeks just ticked over, and then it was the next season, and I was looking at my first fixture against Middlesbrough. Not happy.
In and of itself, it’s not a big deal. I can cope with it. My enjoyment of Become A Legend is largely unspoilt. What grates on me is that this is just another little cut in the ongoing death of a thousand cuts that the PES franchise seems to be suffering.
This non-relegation thing isn’t really a big issue for me in terms of BaL. In terms of next-gen PES, however, it is an issue. The slapdash attention to detail is symptomatic of the ills that have haunted the series ever since those first disturbing rumours of v-sync screen tearing, slowdown, and ‘arcade handling’ started to appear in the months leading up to PES2008.
I don’t know. PES2010 doesn’t have to be an unprecedentedly great game that will amaze us and confound us and send us weeping and shaking with awe to the joypad every day. But it wouldn’t hurt if it was…
I’m still looking forward to seeing out the rest of my BaL career. How will season 3 progress? Will I start slamming in goals from distance? Will Portsmouth prosper with me in the team?
The end of the season provides a natural break for me to pause the story and drop in on FIFA09 to see how that game feels for me right now. On Friday I’ll post about my recent Ultimate Team and—yes—Manager Mode adventures. Season 3 of BaL will resume on Monday.
Another enjoyable post. I’m delighted that the majority of posts are back on PES, as i feared that we’d never get another master league like story taking us through a career again.
Might be a good idea to put the end of season stats up every year. So this year would be played x, 1 goal, 2 assists. Then watch the improvement over time.
It is a real shame about the relegation, but at the same time, i wouldn’t want the likes of Boca juniors appearing in the english top flight. I guess that’s where they should be adding the championship.
Anyway, keep up the good work!
liam—glad you’re liking the BaL posts, I’m enjoying writing them too.
Good point about the stats, they would definitely add something and I should have realised myself. I’ll check the stats and get them up on Monday now (start of next season), and then at the end of every season subsequently (and sometimes during the seasons if I have a really good/bad run of form). Putting up stats was something I used to do regularly for my Master Leagues, and it just slipped my mind for BaL. For this season just finished the stats will be poor – 1 goal and about 6 assists – but my average match rating (if it’s there?) will be interesting to see.