Fifa 07 is IMO is the best in the series since RTWC 98 which was a huge leap at its time from Fifa 97.
Frankly the graphics and sound effects this year are just brilliant, I feel like watching a real football match especially during the cut scenes like at the start of the game and after scoring goals.
Graphics, sound, and game modes are a major achievement for EA this year and we can't take that away from them. They've got to be saluted for their hard work in those departments.
But gameplay wise, c'mon, they've simply just "CLONED" winning eleven and pro evo. They've even changed the controller configuration to draw more PES fans into trying the game. And despite all that they still didn't manage to make the gameplay as fluent, real, or fun as PES, at least for die hard football fans like myself.
To cut it short just look at the variety of tactical options available in WE and PES and compare them to Fifa where you can't even make your own personal formation.
People who say PES is much harder, I really don't think so. Infact I feel I have much more control on my players in WE than Fifa. I'm not the perfect player, I play both games on a "medium" difficulty (4 stars for WE/PES and Professional for Fifa). But for instance, the tricks in WE are much more controlled whereas in Fifa using that stupid "trick stick" it's just about smashing the right analog in all directions and hoping that my player would pull off something sweet to get him past his marker. Infact, this is somewhat unimportant in Fifa since most of the time you can get past defenders just by avoiding face to face contact whereas in WE you have to do something to get past defenders especially when you play against a defensive style team.
I just feel that EA will never get that edge in gameplay unless they finally start to watch some real football matches on regular basis.
It just doesn't make sense to play an entire half of football with the ball never going out of bounds even once for example.
I'm not saying PES is perfect, it has it flaws, and I'm not talking about the graphics and sound effects, it has other gameplay flaws but still, gameplay wise, WE is the champ.