Thought it would be good to have a thread with hints and tips all collected in one place. I hope these will focus on gameplay and general tips and not player recommendations, which would be more suitable in other threads.
I'm actually pretty bad at this game, but, for what its worth, here's my rather long list.
Gameplay:
1-2's are very useful. Either use L1 + pass or pass then press R2. Both make the initial passer run forward giving you more options in attack.
For full volleys or chip shots, you can, or probably should, power up the shot much more than usual, depending on distance even 100% power.
Don't mess around in defence. Dribbling is hard enough as it is, to do it with a CB is suicide. Also clear the ball quickly tapping 'shoot' button. Sometimes I try to be too clever with clearances, trying to power up a good long pass. This takes more time however and you can be closed down and get into trouble.
Get to know your players. Note who is left footed (easier to remember as most players will be right footed). Often there is no point shooting with their weaker foot, unless Weak foot accuracy is 6 or above. Look for who's good or bad at dribbling, long shots, short/long passes and play to their strengths.
Make sure to aim your crosses. A lot of people just push in the direction of the penalty area, this will always make the cross go to the far post, and often out of play on the far side. You can vary the direction of a cross with the directional buttons, so press away from the area for a near post cross. You can further vary crosses with double or tripple tap, R2 for more loft, L2 for manual or any combination of these.
To stop through balls, anticipate them early. Start bringing your keeper out before the ball is even played. Switch player early and drop off covering likely pass destinations. Use AI pressure button to try to intercept the ball or tackle the striker. If you switch once the ball has been played you're likely to encounter the player switch problem, giving the striker a clear path to goal.
On goal kicks or long freekicks press autocancel (R1 + R2 if I remember correctly) immediately to gain control of your player. Check your radar and screen to position him to win the header.
Tricks
Assign only 1 or maximum 2 tricks to each direction on the trick stick. Make the trick direction relevant. For example shooting left to right, L1 + up could do a roulette to players left, L1 + down a Ronaldo chop to players right, L1 + right a front flick and L1 + left a drag back.
I have 2 different preset trick assignments, one called left to right and one called right to left, depending on which way I'm shooting. The tricks remain the same, just the directions are opposite. For example L1 + up on my "left to right" assignment does a trick where player goes to his left or visually up on screen. But shooting the other way L1 + up would still make the player do his trick to the left but it would be visually down on screen, so its better to change to my "right to left" assignment, where pressing L1 + up will now make the player do a trick to his right, or visually up on screen. Not sure if that makes sense.
I find the running Matthews faint useful for getting a yard of space vs the COM. No shoulder buttons needed, just down on R3 followed by up on L3, or R3 up followed by L3 down.
Penalties and freekicks
There's plenty of guides on youtube on how to take these but I'm happy to explain if someone requests it.
A couple of not so well-known things though.
To dive as the keeper in a shootout, hold "shoot button" and press a direction.
Facing a freekick, press L1 + R3 to get control of your keeper, move him more towards the centre of goal and quickly change back to an outfield player with L1 + R3 again.
For very close freekicks it can be easier to score with the long pass button. I find pressing up and long pass to work well, practice this in training.
You can also practice penalties in training, choose freekick practice from training menu, then move the ball into the penalty area.
Don't forget to make your wall jump by pressing the shoot button.
In set piece settings, set your CBs to come forward if they are tall and good at jumping and heading.
Tactics
I think these are great but badly explained by Konami, watch the little animations and you'll understand each tactic better. I believe the following is a more accurate description.
Long ball: Counter attack. Defend, win the ball and break quickly with players running forward and ball being moved forward quickly. (Germany vs England World Cup 2010)
All out attack: Long ball. Strikers stay high up and defenders and midfielders play a lot of long high balls forward. (Stoke)
Quick counter: High pressure. Team will pressure high up the pitch. Forwards will be first line of defence, trying to win the ball back as quickly as possible. (Barca)
Possession (Off): quick short pass and move game. (Arsenal)
Possession (Def): Get men behind the ball. (Switzerland vs Spain)
Swap wings: Keeps your opposite winger wide rather than coming infield to join play. Easy then to switch wings with a long crossfield ball. (Tottenham)
CB overlap: just as it says on the tin.
In team management there is an auto trigger option. Turn auto sliding off or the COM will make some auto slide tackles which can give away penalties.
Also set your team offensive and defensive levels from here. Set as "off" you can change them yourself in-game using select + R1 or R2. No preference means a setup balanced between attack and defence.
Chasing a goal late on? Its no good just to set all out attack as a tactic. You also need to set players support to high to get more players moving forward and set your att/def level to offensive or super-offensive. Perhaps use CB overlap too, risky though.
Want to play ultra defensive? use possession (def) tactic, set player support to low and att/off level to defensive or super defensive.
Master League
I love Master League but haven't started a proper one yet because I need everything to be accurate first, for example no fake players in the database. If you're like me, here's a few things to think about.
If you've edited a team name, emblem, strip etc in order to play with them in ML, they will start with far too much money and staff and youth team levels will be very high. To keep them at default levels follow the advice here
http://forums.evo-web.co.uk/showpost.php?p=2106001&postcount=234
Go through your team and assign correct injury settings. Too many players have injury type A and will pretty much never get injured. The default should be injury type B with only rare individuals getting an A. Quite a few players should get C too. It will make your ML much more fun and challenging when you have injuries to deal with. If you have time, do it for as much of the database as you can.
There are plenty of other mistakes in the Konami database, involving player stats, positions, side etc. Stats take a while to fix but position and side can be corrected easily. I hate playing vs the com and seeing them with some weird line-up. Played vs Man U and they had Fabio at right mid and scholes pushed up really high as an AM, because in the DB it says they can play these roles. I'd much rather face the difficult challenge of Valencia or Nani on the right and Scholes playing in his natural CM role dictating play from deeper.
If you're not sure what positions a player can and cant play or what injury type they should have, check pesstatsdatabase.
Set transfer activity to low. There are far too many transfers on normal. You'll get a more realistic amount on low.
Players in national teams who dont play for a club side represented in game cannot be purchased in ML.
You could base copy them into created players or over some classic players but they would become free transfers which also isn't that realistic. There are a few national team players who really are without a contract right now though, for example Guillermo Franco, Jay DeMerit, Laszlo Bodnar, so I like to base copy them and make them available in ML. I'll probably provide a full list later.
Overwrite a fake team with CSKA Moscow. You can the easily transfer the following national team players to this team and make them available in ML:
Akinfeev, Berezutski brothers, Dzagoev, Ignasevich, Honda, Vagner Love, Doumbia, Mark Gonzalez, Odiah, Tosic, Rahimic, Necid.
Any other suggestions for missing teams which have a large number of players already in game? Best I've found so far is Steaua Bucharest with 6 players.
That's about it. Sorry for the long read. There must be plenty still to add though, because as I said, even knowing all of the above, I'm still not very good at this game. Hope people will add plenty of great tips, amongst other things I'm really hoping for some good dribbling advice. Thanks
I'm actually pretty bad at this game, but, for what its worth, here's my rather long list.
Gameplay:
1-2's are very useful. Either use L1 + pass or pass then press R2. Both make the initial passer run forward giving you more options in attack.
For full volleys or chip shots, you can, or probably should, power up the shot much more than usual, depending on distance even 100% power.
Don't mess around in defence. Dribbling is hard enough as it is, to do it with a CB is suicide. Also clear the ball quickly tapping 'shoot' button. Sometimes I try to be too clever with clearances, trying to power up a good long pass. This takes more time however and you can be closed down and get into trouble.
Get to know your players. Note who is left footed (easier to remember as most players will be right footed). Often there is no point shooting with their weaker foot, unless Weak foot accuracy is 6 or above. Look for who's good or bad at dribbling, long shots, short/long passes and play to their strengths.
Make sure to aim your crosses. A lot of people just push in the direction of the penalty area, this will always make the cross go to the far post, and often out of play on the far side. You can vary the direction of a cross with the directional buttons, so press away from the area for a near post cross. You can further vary crosses with double or tripple tap, R2 for more loft, L2 for manual or any combination of these.
To stop through balls, anticipate them early. Start bringing your keeper out before the ball is even played. Switch player early and drop off covering likely pass destinations. Use AI pressure button to try to intercept the ball or tackle the striker. If you switch once the ball has been played you're likely to encounter the player switch problem, giving the striker a clear path to goal.
On goal kicks or long freekicks press autocancel (R1 + R2 if I remember correctly) immediately to gain control of your player. Check your radar and screen to position him to win the header.
Tricks
Assign only 1 or maximum 2 tricks to each direction on the trick stick. Make the trick direction relevant. For example shooting left to right, L1 + up could do a roulette to players left, L1 + down a Ronaldo chop to players right, L1 + right a front flick and L1 + left a drag back.
I have 2 different preset trick assignments, one called left to right and one called right to left, depending on which way I'm shooting. The tricks remain the same, just the directions are opposite. For example L1 + up on my "left to right" assignment does a trick where player goes to his left or visually up on screen. But shooting the other way L1 + up would still make the player do his trick to the left but it would be visually down on screen, so its better to change to my "right to left" assignment, where pressing L1 + up will now make the player do a trick to his right, or visually up on screen. Not sure if that makes sense.
I find the running Matthews faint useful for getting a yard of space vs the COM. No shoulder buttons needed, just down on R3 followed by up on L3, or R3 up followed by L3 down.
Penalties and freekicks
There's plenty of guides on youtube on how to take these but I'm happy to explain if someone requests it.
A couple of not so well-known things though.
To dive as the keeper in a shootout, hold "shoot button" and press a direction.
Facing a freekick, press L1 + R3 to get control of your keeper, move him more towards the centre of goal and quickly change back to an outfield player with L1 + R3 again.
For very close freekicks it can be easier to score with the long pass button. I find pressing up and long pass to work well, practice this in training.
You can also practice penalties in training, choose freekick practice from training menu, then move the ball into the penalty area.
Don't forget to make your wall jump by pressing the shoot button.
In set piece settings, set your CBs to come forward if they are tall and good at jumping and heading.
Tactics
I think these are great but badly explained by Konami, watch the little animations and you'll understand each tactic better. I believe the following is a more accurate description.
Long ball: Counter attack. Defend, win the ball and break quickly with players running forward and ball being moved forward quickly. (Germany vs England World Cup 2010)
All out attack: Long ball. Strikers stay high up and defenders and midfielders play a lot of long high balls forward. (Stoke)
Quick counter: High pressure. Team will pressure high up the pitch. Forwards will be first line of defence, trying to win the ball back as quickly as possible. (Barca)
Possession (Off): quick short pass and move game. (Arsenal)
Possession (Def): Get men behind the ball. (Switzerland vs Spain)
Swap wings: Keeps your opposite winger wide rather than coming infield to join play. Easy then to switch wings with a long crossfield ball. (Tottenham)
CB overlap: just as it says on the tin.
In team management there is an auto trigger option. Turn auto sliding off or the COM will make some auto slide tackles which can give away penalties.
Also set your team offensive and defensive levels from here. Set as "off" you can change them yourself in-game using select + R1 or R2. No preference means a setup balanced between attack and defence.
Chasing a goal late on? Its no good just to set all out attack as a tactic. You also need to set players support to high to get more players moving forward and set your att/def level to offensive or super-offensive. Perhaps use CB overlap too, risky though.
Want to play ultra defensive? use possession (def) tactic, set player support to low and att/off level to defensive or super defensive.
Master League
I love Master League but haven't started a proper one yet because I need everything to be accurate first, for example no fake players in the database. If you're like me, here's a few things to think about.
If you've edited a team name, emblem, strip etc in order to play with them in ML, they will start with far too much money and staff and youth team levels will be very high. To keep them at default levels follow the advice here
http://forums.evo-web.co.uk/showpost.php?p=2106001&postcount=234
Go through your team and assign correct injury settings. Too many players have injury type A and will pretty much never get injured. The default should be injury type B with only rare individuals getting an A. Quite a few players should get C too. It will make your ML much more fun and challenging when you have injuries to deal with. If you have time, do it for as much of the database as you can.
There are plenty of other mistakes in the Konami database, involving player stats, positions, side etc. Stats take a while to fix but position and side can be corrected easily. I hate playing vs the com and seeing them with some weird line-up. Played vs Man U and they had Fabio at right mid and scholes pushed up really high as an AM, because in the DB it says they can play these roles. I'd much rather face the difficult challenge of Valencia or Nani on the right and Scholes playing in his natural CM role dictating play from deeper.
If you're not sure what positions a player can and cant play or what injury type they should have, check pesstatsdatabase.
Set transfer activity to low. There are far too many transfers on normal. You'll get a more realistic amount on low.
Players in national teams who dont play for a club side represented in game cannot be purchased in ML.
You could base copy them into created players or over some classic players but they would become free transfers which also isn't that realistic. There are a few national team players who really are without a contract right now though, for example Guillermo Franco, Jay DeMerit, Laszlo Bodnar, so I like to base copy them and make them available in ML. I'll probably provide a full list later.
Overwrite a fake team with CSKA Moscow. You can the easily transfer the following national team players to this team and make them available in ML:
Akinfeev, Berezutski brothers, Dzagoev, Ignasevich, Honda, Vagner Love, Doumbia, Mark Gonzalez, Odiah, Tosic, Rahimic, Necid.
Any other suggestions for missing teams which have a large number of players already in game? Best I've found so far is Steaua Bucharest with 6 players.
That's about it. Sorry for the long read. There must be plenty still to add though, because as I said, even knowing all of the above, I'm still not very good at this game. Hope people will add plenty of great tips, amongst other things I'm really hoping for some good dribbling advice. Thanks
