Given that the last time there was a fully paid, premium game under the eFootball name, there’s a fair bit of pressure on eFootball Kick-Off! For Nintendo Switch 2. You see, shortly after eFootball / PES 2021, the series went free-to-play, offering yearly and mid-season updates, tightening the gameplay, updating transfers, adding limited time modes, and generally doing what a live service game does.
But eFootball Kick-Off! is not that. Here we have a budget friendly, standalone (so to speak) Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive football game from Konami and, well, honestly, it’s a whole lot of fun. And yet, truthfully, this is a strange game that almost feels like a starter kit for Nintendo fans, rather than the fully fledged football game that people may perhaps be used to. To say I feel conflicted over this title would be an understatement.
Most of the marketing has been around the World Cup, which is perhaps a misnomer for what eFootball Kick-Off actually is. There is a World Cup mode, of sorts, within the game called International Cup, but I didn’t feel as though it was the focus of the title at all. So what is here, then?
You can, of course, just have a quick match locally, online, or offline. Commendably, GameShare is present meaning you can play locally with one copy of the game. The World Cup-like mode is the third option, but the main draw (certainly for me) is the player collecting mode that is more like traditional eFootball on the other consoles, but crucially, with any pay to win or real-world transactions completely removed.
Here, you have four in-game currencies, each a different colour. These correspond to Goalkeepers, Defenders, Midfielders, and Attackers. At the end of a match, if you’ve been victorious, you can sign a player from your opponent. But you also get to play a bingo mini-game that gets you from 100 to 400 credits for each of those positional currencies. You could just sign Bruno Fernandes from the start after a few games, but as you play better teams in higher quality tournaments, more players are added to the pool, and you’ll also get to play teams like Manchester United. By then, I’d signed Bruno, so I took Kobbee Mainoo as my Defensive Midfielder instead. It was always exciting finishing a league and seeing which legends and players were unlocked.
Mixing the likes of Bruno with legends like Dennis Bergcamp and Cafu is always a good time. Each of the tournaments is regional, so you’ll play teams from the regions involved. You’ll start off playing in D-tier tournaments, playing very easy matches and signing players you don’t really want, so I’d suggest keeping that currency, save grabbing a few legends from the initial Hall of Players. You can compete in the tournaments in any order, but being a fan of English football I naturally stayed in Europe to begin with, soon getting to nab the very best from Spurs, West Ham, Manchester United and, for some reason, Southampton.
Of course licensing is still an issue with eFootball. Man City are Manchester Blue, and by now you likely know the drill. Shirts don’t look like the right designs; badges are approximations that, frankly, don’t get close. I get it, and I can’t really fault Konami here because licenses are what they are, even if it just sucks for the player. But there’s nobody around who isn’t going to frown when seeing players that aren’t Arsenal, Man United, or Barcelona (for example, from the licensed teams) not quite looking right. You’re either an “okay, it is what it is” type here, or you aren’t.
But what of the on-pitch action? Well it’s a fast-paced, arcade affair. For years now I’ve felt eFootball, PES, Winning Eleven – whatever you want to call it – has nailed the feel of shooting and crossing. I can’t quite articulate why it feels so good, but it just does. The ball feels physical, and power matters. Crossing and firing lofted passes doesn’t feel as though the ball is on an invisible string to a pre-ordained player. You have to position yourself and get the receiving player in the right place. It feels almost messy, but in a good way, like real football can be. The feeling of pointlessness when making certain moves or passes is missing from eFootball Kick-Off, and that’s a check in the right box for me.
Of course, all of this is dependent on what settings you’re using, but I’d strongly recommend getting assists at least down to half from the start. The gameplay, then, is responsive and fast-paced. It’s fun, but I’d suggest fans of the series start on (at least, if not higher) hard, because on Normal the difficulty is a joke, especially when it comes to keepers, who don’t seem able to save a single shot until you get to “hard” difficulty.
It’s worth noting there are multiple elements here as well that are for first-time players: there are fully optional “easy mode” controls. If you fancy, you can even have a bullet-time slow-down when you take a shot. You can also have players giving you little instructions as you play via speech bubbles. This even continues into the line-up selection, with some saying “I’ll struggle” if you are playing them out of position, and gave my son a good laugh seeing Liverpool’s Florian Wirtz say “I’ll struggle”. He referred to it as “Meme fodder”, and it’s hard to disagree. It does feed into the feeling this is more for a younger, or newer audience than the hardcore PES-fans, but it’s also something you can switch off if you prefer.
Referees seem rather lenient, and I think there’s work to be done with set-piece taking as it feels a step back. Defending is satisfying, and for those who’ve played football games for a long time, we’re back to the “hold a button to pressure” homing-missile style play, with added slide tackles and shoulder barges based on how you’re feeling.
I don’t have a lot of complaints about how the actual sporting elements play out, though as always with football games, things appear over time, with tweaks to the balance, and so. For what it’s worth, if you can find the right difficulty here, it plays a good game of football. Some of the players are modelled better than others. Mo Salah feels like he should, though for some reason is in the game twice as a Liverpool player, and as an Egypt player, and he’s not the only one.
What I have to take issue with, however, is the commentary. Regardless of whether you’re a fan of the poetic nature of Peter Drury’s commentary style, what I can say is this: there are not enough voice lines. You will hear the same lines said almost every other game, and that’s being generous. On top of that, he’s either disinterested, or at the point of climax. Not every goal in football is an “Aguerooooooo” moment, but it is in eFootball Kick-Off. I don’t blame Drury for this, as he’s doing as he’s been directed, but it’s absolutely too much, and is borderline laughable within a few hours of play. Once you’re into tens of hours, I’d switch it off.
There are a few interesting “mini-games” within eFootball Kick-Off that suggests Konami has fresh ideas for football games. As well as playing 6-a-side (which is an option in the quick match, with other games being traditional 11-a-side), you can play 3-a-side “wall football”. Here you have three lanes, with the middle allowing a direct shot, and the outer lanes offering wall-shots. It’s first to five and is a fun mode: no notes here.
Likewise, there’s a speed-based training mini-game involving five players. You’ll have to dribble, pass, and sprint, culminating in a lofted pass into a shot to get the best time. This is a great idea, and I just wish there was more of this evolution of training ideas. In fact, I sort of wish there was just more of eFootball Kick-Off overall. I don’t know why Master League is such a dirty word these days, especially when this is a standalone exclusive title, and not free-to-play, but I’d have loved to see it make a grand comeback here.
Elsewhere, there’s an overall ranking system that you progress through as you complete challenges from attacking, defending, and dribbling areas. It’s nice to see the bar fill up, but aside from that overall rank going from “Bronze 3” to “Silver”, I really couldn’t work out the actual point behind it. Aside acting as an over-arching tutorial to get you doing things, I really don’t know why this system is here, since levelling up never actually rewards you with anything.
What I’ll say, however, is that it’s not a bad looking game. It’s has a smooth frame-rate (60fps to my eyes), though it has an odd hitch on almost every kick-off that I can’t explain away. It’s definitely not ugly, but nor is it stunning, looking about what I’d expect from a Switch 2 version of eFootball. The crowd is a bit ropey, and while the presentation for the UI and menus is good (again, tweak it to make it look more to your taste in-game), again it feels like a good base to work from.
So here we are with a brand new “not free” eFootball, and it’s exclusive to Nintendo Switch 2 in time for the World Cup. Given Konami’s beloved football franchise skipped Nintendo entirely last generation, I’m very glad to say eFootball Kick-Off! is better than I expected. It feels like it’s been designed for the hardware it’s available on, offering quick matches and modes for when you don’t have hours to spare.
If you don’t play online matches you might run out of content a bit sooner than you’d like, but otherwise, eFootball Kick-Off! is an arcade-y football game and a good first go for Konami on Nintendo’s latest hardware, and for the price, you can’t really argue with that.
