I told myself that I wasn't going to do it-- but I did it anyway; I bought Pro Evo 2017. Got it from Kinguin for less than 30 USD. And boy is it fabulous.

I played a couple of matches over lunch, and not only did they fix the goal keepers, but the referee awarded a couple of simple fouls, once even when two players were going up in the air! Both flaws from last year's game: fixed.

The other few noticeable changes: the animation is way more fluid this year; replays after goals zip along; they added another cool layer of tactical options, which can be activated via the dpad by holding left trigger-- and yes, they can be set per pre-set tactic; ball physics are vastly improved, the ball moves more naturally than ever, and feels more weighted; and the menus have been re-worked, making them feel more consistent (overview philosophy, then drill-down into details, across the board-- even at half time).

The PC version is still on the Xbox 360 Direct3D renderer, but I see that someone has a SweetFX mod available already; with a couple of very simple mods, my PC installation of PES 2016 looked better than the PS4 port, and I expect the same result for this year's iteration of the series. I'm going to try this 2017 SweetFX patch later today.

Now if someone would just release an American Football Pro Evo-equivalent! I need my gridiron fix, but I don't have a console, and I don't want to support EA. It wouldn't even need to have NFL teams or the NFL's related licenses-- just make it moddable. And give it an older engine to save budget, who cares-- people can just "fix" it with SweetFX and other tools, just like they have been doing with the PC Pro Evo releases.