To understand the missed opportunity that is eFootball Kick-Off! on the Switch 2, you have to look at the game's history. For a generation of football fans, Konami was the gold standard of football video games. In the late nineties and throughout the 2000s, International Superstar Soccer (ISS) and the legendary Pro Evolution Soccer (PES) didn’t just compete with FIFA; they beat it to the finish line in depth and gameplay.
Pro Evo was an amazing series, truly put together for the football connoisseur who wanted something more than the yearly copy-paste of FIFA. The physics felt fantastic, and the depth of the Master League was something to gloat about to FIFA-playing friends. Scoring a goal in the game felt like a hard-fought tactical victory that you earned through genuine football intelligence.
Back then, we didn’t care that licensing restrictions meant lifting a generic trophy with "Man Red" instead of Manchester United. But today, not having proper club licenses just feels like a cheap, budget imitation after years of playing FIFA and now EA FC.
Combining the lack of real teams with fewer modes than a demo version makes eFootball Kick-Off! a conflicted misstep from Konami and leaves an open net for EA FC to score freely for the foreseeable future.
The eFootball era, which kicked off a few years ago, was a disaster at launch. The initial release was universally panned, meme'd into oblivion for terrifying player faces, and rejected for its clunky, broken physics. When Konami pivoted the entire franchise into a free-to-play, live-service model, the old PES magic felt dead, replaced by aggressive gacha mechanics, virtual card packs, and a transparent focus on the mobile market.
Which brings us directly to eFootball Kick-Off! on Nintendo's new hardware. It is one of the most conflicting football games I’ve played.
Let's start with the best thing about it, and the reason it isn't getting completely dismissed: on the pitch, this thing plays FANTASTIC. It throws out the heavy, sluggish feel of mainline free-to-play eFootball and introduces incredibly beginner-friendly, arcade-lite gameplay. Player movement is responsive, passing is sharp, and the ball physics strike a brilliant balance between the unpredictable nature of old-school PES and modern responsiveness.
Konami has also made this the most newcomer-friendly football game on the market. They’ve implemented a suite of brilliant beginner-assist options and a streamlined control setup that make it easy to hand a controller to a mate who hasn't played a sports game and have competitive matches. Within five minutes, anyone can pick this up, understand the flow of the match, and start putting together passing plays. It has that “one more match" local-multiplayer energy that made old-school soccer games so addictive.
It is also a massive relief to play a modern sports game that isn't actively trying to pickpocket you. Konami has released this as a traditional premium product at a genuinely fantastic budget price point. There are no pack openings, no premium currencies, and no predatory menus designed to tempt you into spending real cash just to unlock a legendary player. You buy the game, you turn it on, and you just play football. For that alone, Konami deserves credit.
But the moment you step back and look at the complete package, the whole thing crumbles.
Calling this game bare-bones is a massive understatement. The lack of content here is staggering; it feels more like an extended demo than a complete game. In terms of offline single-player modes, you have three choices: a basic Quick Match, an "International Cup" tournament that acts as a knock-off World Cup mode, and a lightweight season mode where you build a custom team to play in tournaments. Beyond that, you get a handful of basic practice drills and a couple of arcade mini-games. That is the entire single-player offering.
There is a massive, gaping hole where a proper career mode should be. If you are coming into this hoping for anything remotely resembling the legendary Master League of the Pro Evo glory days, you are going to be bitterly disappointed. There is absolutely zero depth here to hold your interest over the long haul. Once you win the fake World Cup once and play a handful of season matches, you've seen everything the single-player game has to offer.
Club licensing limitations are also back with a vengeance. Ironically, Manchester United is one of the sole official English top-flight clubs present with full kits and branding. If you want to play as (almost) anyone else in England, prepare for generic strips and team names. It almost makes me want to change Manchester United's name back to the old-school Man Red and remove the official strips, since they stick out like a sore thumb. International teams also suffer from a lack of licensing, although the Scottish League is mostly fully licensed. Must be a cheaper or easier license for Konami to obtain.
The online options don't save it either. It is equally, if not more so, hollow, offering nothing beyond standard Quick Match or Ranked matchmaking. There are no online leagues, no community hubs, and no ongoing events. It feels completely detached from the hyper-connected era of modern sports gaming.
The strategy behind this release is completely baffling. Even the smartphone version of eFootball is practically identical to the mainline PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X versions. Why Konami decided to build a completely separate, hyper-simplified spin-off for a more than capable piece of modern hardware like the Switch 2, instead of just porting over the full mainline engine, is a total head-scratcher.
It feels like a missed opportunity for them here. If they had problems with the gacha gameplay and Nintendo approving it, then they could have easily ported over the rest of the game and removed purchases - that would have given us plenty of modes and events to play with and could have elevated this title to a less predatory step in the right direction for the franchise.
Ultimately, eFootball Kick-Off! is a tricky one to recommend. It’s a game that is incredibly easy to love during a local multiplayer session on the couch, but equally easy to abandon when you're playing by yourself on a Tuesday night due to being as shallow as a puddle. The on-pitch action is a phenomenal, accessible return to form that reminds us why Konami used to rule this genre, and the budget price tag means it won't hurt your wallet. But the total lack of depth and the demo-like state of its available modes mean it simply cannot sustain long-term engagement.
The one saving grace for the game, despite the lack of modes (aside from the outstanding gameplay), is that it is priced at a budget-friendly £15.98/$19.99, which should be taken into consideration when comparing it to the likes of the full-fat offering of EA FC 26 from EA.
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.
