PGA Tour 2K25 review: Above par

by

2K Tour Golf 25 represents a significant step in the ongoing competition between 2K and EA in golf simulation games. With EA Sports PGA Tour returning in 2023 after a ten-year hiatus, HB Studios chose to invest two years into developing 2K Tour Golf 25 instead of their usual annual releases like NBA 2K. While both companies hold licenses for PGA Tour games, EA secured The Masters tournament, while 2K signed an exclusive long-term deal with Tiger Woods. In essence, this game is 2K’s initial countermove against its rival. Fortunately, they’ve come out strong with its launch.

Straight down the fairway

Stepping up to the tee, I’ve found PGA Tour 2K25 to be an impressive evolution of its predecessor, boasting enhanced graphics that truly bring the game to life. This golf simulation delivers just as you’d expect from a full-fledged experience, offering a realistic and challenging MyCareer mode on the PGA Tour, complete with 27 meticulously crafted courses designed to mimic their real-world counterparts.

The key to success in tournaments lies in making smart calculations and executing shots at the right moment to avoid any mishits. Once you’ve mastered the swing mechanics, whether using the control stick or three-click swing, you’ll find yourself scoring birdies and eagles with ease on every hole. It’s a thrilling experience that any golf fan won’t want to miss!

Just like Microsoft’s Forza series, this game offers a variety of difficulty settings for players. Each assist turned off increases the experience points earned by your character. However, the default Pro and Pro AM levels aren’t very forgiving; any shot that isn’t perfectly timed on the downswing can veer significantly to the left or right. Despite being more challenging than expected, it remains achievable. Furthermore, MyCareer offers multiple options for customizing AI opponent difficulty and tournament length, all without affecting experience points accumulation. This allows players to control the pace at which they complete an event, whether that’s four full rounds, a single round, or just a few holes.

Although it has some small issues, the presentation mostly succeeds rather than fails. The standout feature is the commentary from Luke Elvy, Rich Beem, Henni Koyack, and John McCarthy, who deliver insightful play-by-plays. The majority of the graphics have seen significant upgrades, with enhanced character modeling and stunning scenic vistas. However, a closer look reveals room for improvement in crowd animation and water textures, which could be made more dynamic. Some of the transitions between scenes are sudden, and on occasion, my character would sink a challenging putt, but the game would swiftly move on to the next scene without allowing enough time for my character or the spectators to respond appropriately.

Swinging into action

Beyond MyCareer, the game offers a modest yet sufficient selection of modes. Many gamers tend to gravitate towards the seasonal online competition known as Ranked Tours, where players face daily and weekly courses with set difficulty levels. Regardless of your position on the leaderboard, you’ll still receive rewards for participating. Additionally, the popular course creator tool has returned, enabling you to create a course from scratch and share it with other players for them to experience. There’s also an online ranked matchmaking system and TopGolf, a compact yet entertaining mini-game.

In online gameplay, the three-click swing is rarely used for controls, favoring instead the ‘swing stick’. This choice is more common in online competitions, but absent in ranked matches and many tournaments. As someone who prefers the three-click method, it feels like a significant oversight.

Seasonal shifts

In simpler terms, MyCareer functions as a virtual simulation for the PGA Tour season. It offers a mix of highs and lows, with the training mini-games and practice rounds before tournaments being quite effective at temporarily improving your rankings. The variety of courses and mini-games ensures that each event feels unique. Although it doesn’t include The Masters, it offers an alternative called The Legends Championship, which does a fair job of filling the gap.

In addition, there are several areas that require more development. The game includes a feature to track your player’s fame using a popularity meter, and offers interviews where players can respond boldly or reservedly to gain additional followers. However, the interviews become repetitive quickly, and the popularity meter is not an effective measure of progress. By around one-third of the season, my character had reached the maximum level of fame and was being asked about being the greatest of all time, despite having only won one major title.

Improving the flow of rivalries and sponsorships in the game could be beneficial. Instead of popping up sporadically throughout the season, it might be more engaging if rivalries were structured across multiple stages, perhaps even featuring head-to-head encounters like those between players such as Max Homa and Tiger Woods. However, these rivalries should not conclude too quickly, as a brief confrontation can diminish their impact.

On the other hand, sponsorships in the game seem to take an excessively long time to advance. Despite investing over 30 hours into MyCareer, I haven’t even reached the highest tier for any sponsorship yet. It would be more satisfying if progression through these partnerships were more expedient and rewarding.

A plugged lie

The progression in this game is deliberately gradual. Elevating your golfer grants additional stat points, which can be activated using an in-game currency called VC. This also provides a few skill points to unleash special shots and make them easier to perform. Notably, the Flop, Super Flop, and Power Drive shots are especially helpful due to their unique properties. The Power Drive adds extra distance when hitting from the tee. Additionally, each main skill tree contains a locked ability that becomes accessible across all characters once you’ve developed a golfer of one of five archetypes up to a specific level. Fortunately, you can create multiple custom golfers, allowing you to unlock these skills gradually over time.

Obtaining Venture Capital (VC) isn’t overly challenging during regular gameplay, and there are daily and weekly tasks to earn additional rewards. However, some of these tasks can be quite specific and limiting, such as requiring you to use clubs from a particular brand that aren’t even for sale in the shop. Additionally, there’s a skill tree that’s frustratingly inaccessible unless you have the seasonal Clubhouse Pass.

Regrettably, the recent gamification introduced for the clubs is not thriving. The equipment in your golf bag, including drivers, woods, hybrids, irons, wedges, putter, and ball, earn experience points as you play with them. This unlocks spaces to add accessories for additional benefits, and once the experience meter is full, the club can be upgraded using an Evo Tool for better advantages, but this action eliminates all current accessories. The process is confusing and complicated. Making equipment resemble something from Diablo seems unnecessary and excessive. In a twist of irony, the system dissuades you from buying new equipment from the store because they begin at the initial level and it’s impossible to transfer experience from one item to another.

Getting closer to the pin

2K25’s release on the PGA Tour sets a high bar for EA Sports PGA Tour, encouraging them to elevate their game. After a two-year absence, 2K’s latest offering, boasting strong gameplay and enhanced graphics, has a slight advantage over its competitor. However, some aspects of the MyCareer mechanics could use more development, and the inclusion of microtransactions in equipment and locked skill trees seems forced. Despite these shortcomings, 2K’s game currently leads the pack in golf simulations, prompting EA to consider if they can close the gap or risk being stuck in a sand trap.

As a devoted fan, I’m sharing my review of PGA 2K25, which was graciously provided by the publisher ahead of its official launch. This golfing sensation will hit PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S on February 28, 2025, but early access began a week earlier, on February 21, 2025.

Read More

2025-02-26 21:28