Pro Evolution Soccer is at a crossroads. PES 2016 was a stark improvement over anything the series had delivered since its PlayStation 2 heyday, with critics widely declaring that it outperformed FIFA 16—at least in raw action, if not shiny extras. Konami's challenge with PES 2017 is to continue the upward trend, and give FIFA diehards a truly compelling reason to switch.

Smartly, the advances and tweaks seen in PES 2017 do not revolve around what the competition is doing. PES 2016 took the series away from the showy theatrics and power fantasies of FIFA 16, edging it ever closer to realism. PES 2017 continues that approach. This is a game that knows exactly what digital football should look and feel like. As in real life, you might witness the occasional 30-yard bullet here and there, but the long-term rewards revolve around how diligent you are in understanding and practising the core strategies that underpin the world's most successful and respected teams.

Mechanics as simple as how players pass and caress the ball have been perceptibly altered. Even the shortest of passes feels important thanks to the authority with which players execute them. Almost completely gone is the pinball sensation that has plagued football games of the past, replaced by clever physics that make the ball its own individual entity. It no longer feels as though the ball has some form of magnetic attraction to a player's body—get a pass wrong, through poor timing or power, and you pay for it.

Players subtly, yet visibly move their feet to receive a pass in such a way so as to shield it from nearby opponents. This can be difficult to discern if the incoming pass is an accurate one, but if it's off target, the repositioning is clear to see. This might sound like a small point of improvement until you see just how much these small delays in rhythm affect the fluidity of build up play. If you've set your players up to retain possession and patiently work openings through the opposing defence, then this lack of magnetism can be fatal if you're not picking passes properly.

If it sounds less forgiving, that's because it is. I failed to score a single goal in my first three matches, even when using the newly mighty France and their frightening attacking options in the form of Antoine Griezmann, Anthony Martial, and Paul Pogba. Goals are to be cultivated and appreciated, not expected and forgotten. This is even more apparent given that goalkeepers are now far superior to their PES 2016 counterparts, not least when it comes to closing attackers down and getting back to their feet following a diving save.

As in previous PES seasons you can instruct your team to adopt a defensive or attacking mentality across five tiers, but you're now able to layer specific strategies on top of that too. For instance, you may want to tell your players to adopt an all-out attacking approach, while also defending from the front by having your forwards close down your opponent's defenders. This makes it harder for foes to pass their way out from the back, but you run the risk of getting caught short in defence if they manage it.

Alternatively, if you find yourself trailing with just minutes to go, then it might be a good idea to have your players simply pump the ball forward towards your tallest player and hope they can bring it down in a dangerous area. It often worked for Marouane Fellaini and Manchester United this past season, so there's nothing to say it can't work here.

The latter option might not be the most attractive interpretation of the beautiful game, but it's a tactic that can bring success in the right hands. Again, that's the point: if it can work it real life, PES 2017 wants you to be able to make it work on the virtual pitch.

Those tactical approaches are but two examples of a much larger number that can be mixed and matched. It could be that you want to press high up the pitch when your opponent has the ball, but also seek out a player via a long pass when you're deep in your own half.

Similar instructions can be assigned to set-pieces, too. During corners, for instance, you can have your entire team (including the goalkeeper) flood the box, or take the opposite approach and have multiple players hover on the edge of the box to find a rebounded or fumbled ball. Coming up with unpredictable strategies, and combinations of strategies, is going to be integral to victory against human opponents, online or offline.

Even for the single player crowd, though, a greater appreciation of these footballing principles is required to overcome an AI that is being built to learn how you interact with it. I've not played enough games to feel comfortable commenting on the quality of PES 2017's so-called "adaptive" AI, but supposedly the teams you play against are able to recognise how you play, and alter their strategies accordingly. If your attackers put pressure on a defence, for example, then that defence could well decide that the best course of action is to hit the ball long towards an attacker of their own, removing much of your threat and potentially leaving you without cover at the back.

Each football season is also set to be influenced by what happens in real life. PES 2016's failure to intelligently update player statistics as last season played out resulted in the likes of Leicester City and West Ham possessing far less quality than they were showing in the Premier League, creating a dissonance that undermined the game's attempts at realism. In addition to a day-one patch that will update squads to take into account recent transfer dealings, Konami is promising to update PES 2017's player stats on a weekly basis.

While the bulk of changes in PES 2017 surround the pace of action on the pitch, there are also some neat visual updates. Weather effects have been taken up a notch, with water kicked up from the pitch on rainy days as players run and slide across it, and the ball causing spray to ping from wet nets on contact. Cold days see players' breath condense in the air, while the quantity of player animations has been increased, and facial modelling greatly improved to reduce the feeling that you're playing with a set of plastic mannequins.

Presently, there's little word on what's happening in terms of game mode additions and the like. PES has never matched the seemingly endless modes of FIFA, and it's unlikely to do so this year. But it's a smart move to be so focused at this point. Recent seasons have seen FIFA adopt a more attack-focused sensibility that lets players score spectacular goals. The result is a game that's fun to play, but moves further away from the fundamentals of the sport.

If PES can deliver a simulation that continues to be engaging after 100 games or more, that continues to provide new things to see and experiment with on the pitch, then it will have achieved something that no football game has genuinely managed to do. No number of modes, official licences, or overpaid cover stars will ever be able to compete with that—at least for true football fans.

Read our review of Pro Evolution Soccer 2017, which is out now on PS4, Xbox One, PC, PS3, and Xbox 360.