eFootball Kick-Off!

The online component is admittedly secondary: there are only Quick Match, Ranked, and Friendly Match modes, and the game's status as an exclusive significantly limits the pool of potential opponents. Matters are made worse by the usual shortcomings of Konami's infrastructure—including clunky menus and questionable matchmaking logic—resulting in extremely long wait times and forcing players to make certain choices after being matched rather than before, which further drags out the breaks between games. Anyone buying eFootball Kick-Off! should do so knowing that the main course is, and remains, the offline experience.

Unfortunately, Konami’s new football-focused project fails to impress. In the name of extreme accessibility, eFootball Kick-Off! leaves behind many of the elements that made the old PES series successful and that could still have made the game more engaging today. While the arcade-style gameplay is decent, it is also heavily simplified and cannot carry on its own a package that feels thin and offers very little variety. The single-player content is limited, featuring a World Cup mode (without an official license), friendly matches, a stripped-down Master League, and a couple of minigames. Multiplayer provides more reasons to keep playing, but even there players will encounter technical limitations and a lack of variety. The idea of having a PES experience both at home and on the go is certainly appealing, but it feels as though Konami approached the project on a tight budget. The game’s accessibility and very low price point are welcome, yet it is hard not to feel that a few additional features and modes could have been included. eFootball Kick-Off! struggles to maintain interest over the long term, but it may still be the right choice for those looking for a few quick matches, whether relaxing on the couch or playing under a beach umbrella. Perhaps this time, Italy might not only qualify for the World Cup—but actually win it.

What makes the final verdict on eFootball Kick-Off! interesting is precisely the balance between ambition and execution. Many games are judged based on promises they fail to keep; here, the opposite is largely true. Konami presents a project that is relatively modest in scope and pretension, yet executes it with a consistency that deserves recognition. Konami’s debut on Nintendo Switch 2 proves there is still room for titles that place gameplay at the heart of the experience. Despite its limitations and inevitable compromises, *eFootball Kick-Off!* proves to be an honest title—one that is self-aware regarding its identity and surprisingly effective in achieving its goals. While there is still a long way to go, this initial step toward a major comeback has been far from a failure, even as it confirms some of the flaws that have plagued the *eFootball* series for years. With the hope that the franchise will finally abandon a model that clearly hasn't worked well enough, Konami must now find the right formula to revitalize a brand that never deserved to be transformed into something it was never meant to be.

Sadly, despite the pricing being on point and Konami having laid a solid foundation with eFootball Kick-Off! by dropping the gacha nonsense of the main game and making the minute-to-minute gameplay feel really good, they have managed to score an own goal by making the package as bare-bones as possible.

eFootball Kick-Off isn’t the perfect comeback for the PES series, but it does prove to be an enjoyable game that’s ideal for a quick kickabout whenever and wherever you like. The important thing is that there are no loot boxes or in-app purchases here, just football.

eFootball Kick-Off! marks the long-awaited return of Konami football to Nintendo shores after more than a decade of absence, offering an unusual yet appreciated offline, premium formula that breaks away from the live-service model. However, despite a consistently enjoyable core gameplay and a budget-friendly entry price, the content offering proves to be too weak; between bare-bones customization and a World Tour mode that loses its bite as soon as you max out your team, the title struggles to keep players hooked for more than ten hours. Ultimately, it ends up feeling more like a prolonged tutorial for newcomers rather than a true standalone single-player football game.

eFootball Kick-Off! is an arcadey but good first go for Konami on Nintendo’s latest hardware, but old hangovers remain.

Ultimately, you could do a lot worse than eFootball if you’re looking for an offline, single-player (or co-op) football game. Its World Tour mode is relatively light but it’s fun enough, and the game’s budget price point matches its ambition. With any luck, this will only be the starting point for eFootball’s presence on Switch 2, and Konami will hopefully follow this up with a more fully-featured game, or a straight crossplay-enabled port of the main free-to-play live service title. Judged on its own merits, though, as it stands, only EA Sports FC offers better (albeit less smooth) football gameplay on Switch 2.