eFootball Review

For two decades this series was the connoisseur's choice, a football game that modelled weight and momentum better than its far richer rival and was forgiven its missing licences because the ball behaved correctly. Retiring that name for a free to play platform was defensible in principle. The execution was not. The 2021 launch shipped with distorted player faces, animations that snapped between poses, a handful of teams, no career mode and no offline structure worth the name, and it was withdrawn from sale in effect while Konami rebuilt it in public.

Years of updates have made it a functioning football game again, and the on pitch physics still show flashes of the old understanding, particularly in first touch and body contact. What has not returned is the offering around it. The mode list remains thin, progression is built around card packs and player contracts, and the console version is a port of a mobile design rather than the reverse. A sad chapter for a series that deserved better.