GOALS Review: The Soccer Game PES 06 Faithful Didn’t Know They Were Waiting For

GOALS has pulled off in a few hours of playtime what no football game has managed in fifteen years. Bringing back the raw, demanding, and deeply satisfying sensations that Pro Evolution Soccer 6 delivered to players on PlayStation 2 and Xbox 360 back in 2006.

The comparison isn’t some throwaway nostalgia bait. Everything that made PES 06 magical is recognizable in GOALS from the very first action, namely the instant responsiveness of the controls, the total freedom of movement without nanny-state assistance, and the feeling that every action on the pitch hangs entirely on the player’s mastery.

The Swedish studio Goals AB, founded in 2021 and based out of Stockholm, spent five years building its project under the lead of Andreas Thorstensson, a former world-class Counter-Strike pro, with Frans Perers handling design and Torbjörn Söderman running the technical direction. The team built its proprietary game engine on top of Unreal Engine 5 along with its SENTEC network technology, and the payoff hits home from the very first pass. The input is instant. The ball reacts to every button press without the slightest delay.

Responsiveness is the pillar that carries the whole GOALS experience and justifies the time investment all by itself. Where EA Sports FC stacks layer after layer of scripted animations and automatic transitions between actions, GOALS bets everything on the player’s direct control. Every cut, every feint, every burst of acceleration fires off frame-perfect with zero artificial dead time.

The dribbling is probably the best out there right now thanks to the overall fluidity of the gameplay, with technical moves expanded during the beta through update 0.63.00 which added the Heel to Heel, Spin & Go, Elástico, and Body Feints. Threading through tight spaces between close-marking defenders delivers a sense of mastery the genre hasn’t seen since the back end of the PES era.

Finesse shots and low driven finishes remain the most reliable ways to put the ball in the back of the net, which lines up with how modern football actually plays out. The passing is solid overall but still rough around the edges, with moments where accuracy drops off for no obvious reason on transmissions that should be routine. This particular point is probably the biggest job site Goals AB will need to revisit in upcoming patches.

This is probably the most important win GOALS scores over the competition. The skill gap is real, measurable, and deeply satisfying. When you lose a match in GOALS, you lose because you got outplayed tactically and technically, not because some invisible script decided it was the opponent’s turn. When you win, you have the immediate conviction that you earned it.

The defending illustrates this philosophy perfectly. Everything is manual without nanny-state assistance, which demands a real learning curve before you become competent. Positioning, tackle timing, and jockeying all reward the players who put in the work on the defensive side. Bad decisions get punished instantly through exploitable counter-attacks. On the flip side, a well-placed sprint into open space rewards anticipation and reading the game, two qualities that modern football games had largely scrubbed out in favor of automated spectacle.

The presentation in GOALS is deliberately stripped down and pours all of its energy into the gameplay experience rather than cinematic dressing. There’s no match commentary, no pre-match cutscenes, barely any flashy effects between actions. This radical call may throw off players used to the annual blockbusters at first, but it quickly becomes an asset. The absence of visual and audio noise sharpens the focus on the game itself.

The art direction is the other real win sitting alongside the gameplay. The visual style Goals AB picked gives the game an immediately recognizable identity that sets it radically apart from the photo-realistic gloss of EA Sports FC. Players sport distinct procedurally generated looks, stadiums carry real architectural character, and small touches like flares in the crowd help build atmosphere during commentary-free matches. It’s a coherent artistic stance that channels the competitive aesthetic of Rocket League applied to football.

The other major innovation in GOALS is its system of procedurally generated unique players that belong exclusively to your club. Unlike EA Sports FC, UFL, or eFootball where players carry fixed ratings that barely shift from one season to the next, the footballers in GOALS evolve over time. They level up, improve their attributes, hit a peak in form and performance, then decline progressively before retiring. This mechanic transforms the player’s relationship to the squad and creates an emotional attachment that’s rare in the genre.

The studio pushes the idea even further with the Originals system, real personalities folded into the roster with avatars faithful to their actual likeness. Content creator and entrepreneur KSI opens the show as the first Original playable at launch, and these avatars will evolve differently depending on each player’s playstyle so that no two Originals ever turn out the same. Goals AB has also hinted that crossovers with other universes like Fortnite could expand the cosmetic catalog over the long haul.

Getting cards in GOALS picks up the core principles that made the Ultimate Team mode a hit at EA Sports FC while stripping out the worst pitfalls. The points that buy packs come from playing matches, clearing daily and weekly challenges, performing in Ranked mode (through Reward Points), Tournaments and Knockout, or simply selling unwanted cards directly back to the game. Seven rarity tiers structure the climb toward the best signings, from Common cards rolling into rotation quickly all the way up to Mythic reserved for the most dedicated players.

The Swaps system extends this logic intelligently by letting you fuse multiple cards into better ones, exactly the way Squad Building Challenges worked in FUT but without leaning on a transfer market between players. That absence of a speculative market is precisely what sets GOALS radically apart from the competition, cutting out the rot that ended up plaguing Ultimate Team at EA Sports FC with its artificially inflated prices, its reseller bots, and its players locked away from non-paying users. Progression in GOALS hinges purely on performance and time invested.

Not everything is perfect in GOALS and a few points deserve quick patches to keep the experience healthy long-term. Player attributes have surprisingly little impact on actual gameplay compared to what they should bring. A Mythic player doesn’t pull ahead enough from a Rare during matches, which devalues the long-term squad-building grind.

The content available at launch is also a sticking point that could turn off some players. The game ships with a 1v1 mode only, with the 2v2 and 5v5 modes lined up post-launch on the Goals AB roadmap. This compact structure stays true to the project’s competitive philosophy but inevitably caps the possibilities for players hunting for an instant collective experience.

The Unforgiving stance owned by Goals AB cuts both ways and may scare off casual players used to the permanent assistance mechanics of EA Sports FC. The learning curve sits deliberately steeper than elsewhere, and the absence of commentary also makes itself felt during the final stages of tournaments where a voiceover would usefully frame the stakes of the match.