rockstrongo
Retired Footballer
That's my main issue Slam,the defending on 19,I hate it!I am playing both, the latest months. PES 2019 is like an eye-candy. It looks beautiful, it feels beautiful the first minutes of the match, the feel of control , the ball weight, the body-mass, but when the TopPlayer difficulty machine kicks-in, it becomes the most one-dimensional PES i have played. It just forces you to play a tap-in/one-touch contest, where you just spam thebutton, until you get inside the penalty area to press
and score in an almost empty net. As i think @Madmac79 said, "it is more like a handball game". Any other gameplay approach just fails, the referee is supreme-biased, the CPU can make you a fatality and you are charged as offensive foul, your fellow teammates will crash on you, the most slow CB will catch-up your Mbappe. It has anything that can make you want to throw a controller on your TV screen (DESPITE ALL THESE, i still playing as a stubborn bi@tch, even if i don't enjoy it as much as i want, i still hope to win something from all this!). The biggest issue is that no matter your OPR and your TS, it seems as you never progress. I can tell you now in my current save i am Livingston in SPL, i have a 5-win streak , and i barely enjoyed one or two of my wins.
PES 2018 is what it is. A good control game, with super smooth transitions animations and much varied AI. It still has its flaws, like Haribo-candy bodies in collisions, extremely accurate passes and backheels, a little bit faster tempo, more cartoonish lighting. But at least if you can by-pass its flaws, it feels better for a ML run, i cheats less than 19 and it has a feeling of progress. It also allows you more playstyle mentalities than only tap-in, tap-in, tap-in. I can say that in my second season in my ML save here, i really enjoy my team, no matter i lose or i win.
To be honest, the only reasons i have not abandoned completely 19 for 18, is that i spent much more hours editing in 19, i almost have build my OF from scratch by my-self, except some kits i download from acknowledged OF community creators, and the more teams, more squad capacity limit (max 40 players), which helps my creativity and allows me arrange better the Free Agents. On 2018 most of my clubs are suffering as i have already filled them with 32 players, the old cap.
Finally for some damn unknown reason, despite 2019 is 200% more physical than 2018, and more fouls happen in matches, i find defending in 2018 more reliable than 2019! Can't explain this, but as your only weapon in 2018 to defend is either block a passing path or get yourself between opponent and ball with super-cancel, it seems to work better than 2019, where you can push with your body, or shield the ball. Although 2019 has more physical possibilities is seems that when the CPU wants you dead, none of these random events will happens, shielding, body checking etc.
2019 seems to have all the good elements in its core, but in the same time they cannot function to produce a good gameplay experience. Something similar happened to 2018 vs 2017 , before 2018's last DataPack.
P.S.: Both games i am on PA1, 10 minutes, TopPLAYER. The common flaw that share 2018 with 2019 , is the Unplayable Superstar level in MasterLeague. You are not even close to playing against teams based on stats. On superstar on both games you are playing constantly a ruthless cheating machine, either it is SPAL or Manchester City.
If that was as smooth and good as 18s defending,I'd probably playboy more
Noted re Griffiths. 
Might try him on fun size mars bars.
He hasn't turned up yet.