I've only played seasons (I'm using this thread instead of the one I made where I talk to hisself) but it's significantly better. There's less reliance on ping pong shit in the box for goals. Pubers primary offense is still to sprint right into you but it's just less effective. Pace matters again, but cross spamming isn't very effective so you can't just run David James by people the whole game and hoof bullshit in and score 2-3 times. Crossing is effective but you have to have intent. It's effective if you have 2 guys in the box and cross it fairly early and try to pick your target. It simply doesn't work as a "well I'm at the byline, fuck" bailout offensive tactic anymore. Crosses like that rightly lose a lot of pace and defenders are in place to head them out.
If you have a fast striker and are decent on the sticks you can really create some 1 on 1 or you vs keeper breaks a few times a game. It's still defendable with decent manual defense.
I like that manual on ball defense is almost required now. You can't just plug in some battleship of a CB and hold R1 anymore.
Long shots are awful. I have played nearly 30 games online and probably haven't seen a goal from more than 22, 23 yards out, and those were me lobbing wayward keepers.
My chief complaint is that due to animations, sometimes you'll be trying to reasonably do a 1-touch pass, but your guy will take an extra step or almost feint his touch, dummying the ball to the other foot and then doing one of those awful pirouette passes. If you are passing laterally or backward this is a huge problem because the ball just rolls to a stop. This is probably realistic to a point, and I would be fine with it, but most of the time I'm trying to pass a full second before this happens and an awkward, unexpected animation causes it. This increases with lag and well over half the people playing against me in seasons are playing tethered to 3g in a crowded city center or something so most of them lag on and off.
Free kicks are terrible and penalties are almost as bad. Changing both of these systems was totally unnecessary.