PGA Tour 2K25 Review: A Pure Drive Down the Fairway – Operation Sports

Published: Feb 28, 2025 05:14 pm
It’s only been two and a half years since PGA Tour 2K23 was released, but much like the sport of professional golf itself, the landscape surrounding it has changed significantly in the interim. Just as the PGA had to contend with the advent of LIV Golf offering something slightly different to fans, PGA Tour 2K23 was forced to compete with EA Sports PGA Tour arriving on the scene in 2023 with something to prove. This showdown naturally resulted in comparisons between the two titles and ultimately some added pressure for HB Studios and 2K to deliver when they announced the release of PGA Tour 2K25. As any avid golfer will tell you, it’s certainly a lot easier to sink a winning putt on the 18th hole when you don’t have someone else breathing down your neck for the title.PGA Tour 2K25 showcases the eye of the Tiger by rising up to the challenge of its rival as a more polished and realistic golf game than its predecessor. That starts with a noticeable upgrade in the visuals, closing the gap between itself and the EA title in one of just a few areas where it was clearly lagging behind. The way you swing your clubs has always been a strength for the series, dating all the way back to when it was known as The Golf Club, and that remains the case here. The new Evo Swing meter provides further clarity on how to correct errant shots while forcing you to confront a tougher mechanic to master.Courses are both more vibrant and treacherous, making it imperative to stay on the lush fairways and avoid the dangers of the rough and bunkers. The tweaks to how you customize and improve your created MyPlayer are smart, and for the most part (more on that later) sidestep the reliance on microtransactions that many were expecting. MyCareer hasn’t been given as much attention as you’d hope, but there have been some smaller quality-of-life changes. Online matchmaking instantly becomes exponentially better thanks to one simple change that levels the playing field.Despite an attempt to update the way you can upgrade any clubs and balls that you acquire throughout your career, the whole enterprise still comes across as too arcade-like for an otherwise dedicated simulation, and worse than that, slightly confusing. Online Societies continue to be a neglected mode, receiving only some cosmetic changes instead of expanding on the promising foundation.Let’s jump in the golf cart and explore the landscape of PGA Tour 2K25 to find out what areas of the game are hitting the sweet spot and what components are being slightly shanked instead.It was obvious that if PGA Tour 2K25 was going to be able to keep pace with EA Sports PGA Tour, it was going to need to address its most glaring existing weakness and at least match that game’s superior graphics. It’s relieving then to see that visuals were evidently a top priority for PGA Tour 2K25, as the golfers and courses look better and possess more personality than they did in the previous game. A huge catalyst in this upgrade is dynamic lighting that really makes the features of a course pop when the sun is shining down on it the right way. The fairways are so bright and dazzling that there are times where you can lose track of the white ball as it rolls along its carpet of neatly trimmed grass. The physics have seen some work as well, with balls bouncing off and rolling over various surfaces in ways that (usually) make sense.The swings of the golfers appear more natural than they did in PGA Tour 2K23, whether they’re teeing off with a powerful drive or lining up a tricky putt. It’s fun to see golfer’s reactions as they sweat out putts as they break towards the hole or view shots soaring wildly through the air. The frustrated gestures that accompany a drive veering left or right often are a good representation of the anger you’re feeling yourself when you know you’ve messed up.It deserves to be mentioned that PGA Tour 2K25 finally gives the series the fully functional replay suite that you would expect from a sports game in 2025. It was incredibly annoying to have a special moment in PGA Tour 2K23 that you were confined to watch only from a series of stock angles with limited control. Now you’re able to view your memorable shots from a variety of focal points and speeds that give you almost free rein over how to watch the action unfold.A crucial aspect of golf that PGA Tour 2K25 manages to capture with painful accuracy is how hard it can be to get that darn little ball to go where you intend. Perhaps to accommodate this frustration, the game has added a Perfect Swing difficulty that allows the ball to head where you aim regardless of your controller input. On higher difficulties like the online default of Pro, you’ll become acquainted with the new Evo Swing, which does a better job than past entries in the series of communicating what you’ve done right and wrong on any given shot. That’s especially helpful since there are an awful lot of things that can go wrong with how you you utilize the control stick to wield your club.For starters, your intended swing is now slightly offset from center to account for your preference of a draw or fade, and it’s tricky to execute a movement that isn’t quite straight up and down. If you’re a little off on the backswing or the downswing, your less-than-ideal swing path or contact will cause either a slice or a hook depending on which way you erred and how severe you happen to be off. The penalty for messing either of these up even just slightly can be severe (especially when your golfer has low attributes), causing balls to more frequently end up in the rough or in gulp even worse hazards. Shots are also impacted by how fluid your rhythm is when transitioning between backswing and downswing, as a slower rhythm than desired will result in losing power while a rhythm that’s too fast will lead to shots being longer than you wanted.It’s enough to beg the question: will the game be too difficult to attract newer players? It will be interesting to see just where the community lands on the matter, but it’s easy to imagine developers responding to any mass outcry by dumbing things down a bit. I think it’s actually appreciated to see a bigger skill gap present itself and a need for better course management rather than simply hunting pins no matter where you are on the course. It’s also evident from the leaderboards on some of the online events though that the best players in the game are still capable of posting some absolutely ridiculous scores.As much as you might want to praise the developers for faithfully recreating some of the best courses in the world, you’re just as likely to want to curse them once you’ve had to deal with some of the toughest features on those courses. PGA Tour 2K25 does a better job than its predecessor of making you confront how quickly a course can quickly turn a round into an absolute nightmare. As someone who has already spent some time in what could very well be every bunker in the game, you can trust me when I tell you that missing fairways can get you in a lot more trouble now. The sand traps, particularly the pot ones or those with especially steep slopes, can end up taking you a couple shots (or more) to free yourself from them if you’re not careful. Even the heavy rough will give you some problems since you can no longer get the necessary spin to stop a ball on a dime. And the water, oh how the water will find you!The game also offers an endless stream of courses to play thanks to a course creator that’s producing some impressive designs courtesy of the community as we speak. While I’m not exactly someone who’s gone beyond laying out the most basic of tracks, the early impressions from the top course creators within the community would indicate that there have been some helpful additions and adjustments to make the entire process easier.Ever since HB Studios partnered with 2K, there has been the natural fear that microtransactions would suddenly become a necessary reality of trying to level up your golfer and improve their attributes. These fears proved to be mostly unfounded in PGA Tour 2K23 and surprisingly, at least for the most part, they remain not really that much of a concern in PGA Tour 2K25. That’s said with at least a little bit of trepidation because there have been some red flags in the week after the game was released that could point to the game heading in a troubling direction.The promising news first though is that the new system of spending attribute points on various aspects of your game works quite well. You still choose an archetype as you did before, but you’re now able to apply those attribute points to give you player their own unique strengths and weaknesses. The neat thing about this is that all attributes are paired with another, preventing you from boosting one attribute without another getting neglected. So if you want to create a powerhouse golfer and max out your power attribute to have you slamming drives into the sun, you’ll have to be prepared to live with a lower contact attribute, which will make it harder for those monster drives to be straight. There’s also a skill tree where you can spend skill points you earn from ascending levels to learn and then refine new types of shots that come in handy in various circumstances on the course.The initial impression in the early release of PGA Tour 2K25 was that you earn enough VC just by playing rounds and completing quests (also a welcome new addition) that you wouldn’t really need to ever worry about purchasing VC. Your golfer could rise to a respectable overall rating after spending just a few hours on the course with them. But as the early release week rolled on, the amount of VC that you were able to earn per round and quest has been reduced by a large margin. It’s a disappointing move and one whose slow rollout seems specifically designed to give people a favorable first impression of the game (perhaps especially among influencers and reviewers) before pulling the rug out from under players and nudging them to reach for their wallets.There isn’t all that much that needs to be said about MyCareer mode except that it remains a serviceable if not spectacular mode where you can chase tournament wins and increase your notoriety. It’s appreciated that you can cut down your time investment by playing only select holes during a round and there are some fresh wrinkles to make each week a little more interesting. The text communications between people in your orbit have become a tired staple of career modes at this point though and grow tedious quickly, even if you do earn a bump in your fan popularity ranking. Similarly, rivals that develop with fellow tour members and signing sponsorships with companies are concepts that are still too half-baked to satisfy.Playing against others online competitively hasn’t fundamentally changed from PGA Tour 2K23, however one important requirement for all players makes a world of difference in this case. The main centerpiece of online modes remains 9 holes of match play in which the winner accrues ranking points while the loser naturally drops some. You can earn better rewards by climbing tiers throughout the season if you’re able to rack up enough wins. The big change is that you’re no longer able to use the 3-click method of hitting shots like you could in PGA Tour 2K23, instead being forced to utilize the swing stick. Among the community, the 3-click method was justifiably viewed as being slightly easier than navigating the analog stick. By having everyone now using the same mechanic, online play feels fair and balanced. If there are people that would prefer to use the 3-click swing, there are plenty of offline modes where they can still do just that.There have been some big changes to how you’re able to customize, upgrade, and add fittings to your clubs and the mileage on these is likely to vary. The new system manages the rare feat of somehow being both simplistic and confusing. You can increase certain aspects of your clubs by equipping them with fittings that you can either purchase in the game’s store or earn as rewards. But you also want to progress your clubs using an evo tool because then your fittings will be worth even higher boosts to your attributes. The catch is that when you evolve a club, you also destroy all existing fittings. Oh, you can also evolve a club faster by using another form of currency: coins. Is this sounding convoluted yet? In the end, it all amounts to a bunch of ways to sink your VC into collecting and improving clubs.The ultimate goal is to add a bunch of fittings on a fully evolved set of clubs to gain a +6 bump to whatever attributes you focus on with those fittings. This kind of advantage seems a tad excessive and creates too much of an opportunity to create a perfect golfer by using fittings that compensate for the weaknesses in your archetype. The fittings in PGA Tour 2K23 worked better in my opinion as they were largely about ensuring a balance where you couldn’t boost one aspect of your game without another suffering.Online Societies remain a nice way to compete online against other players over the course of a series of events, but it’s disappointing that the mode returns largely unchanged from PGA Tour 2K23. Having created one of the most popular Online Societies in that previous game myself (shameless plug: join Legacy Leagues Golf), I feel like I’m uniquely qualified to speak to just how underwhelming the customization of the mode on the administration side continues to be. It’s all the more disheartening because Online Societies date back to when the series was known as The Golf Club and they were somehow able to provide you with more options then. It’s confusing as to why developers don’t return and build off that earlier framework by allowing people to add their own flair to their Online Society’s clubhouse with all sorts of furnishings. Instead, we’re relegated to putting our hollow stamp on a society with just a logo and a Message of the Day.Making a compelling argument for sports game series sitting out a year on the bench every now and then, PGA Tour 2K25 demands immediate consideration as one of the best golf video games of all time. The visual enhancements are a giant leap forward for the series, and the presentation can now stand confidently alongside that of its chief competitor, EA Sports PGA Tour. The increased difficulty is likely to frustrate newer players, but the feedback of the new Evo swing mechanic always spells out what went wrong with your bad shots and makes your good shots especially satisfying. The variety of the game’s vividly rendered real courses mix beauty and danger by forcing you to carefully consider your strategy in navigating their diabolically designed pitfalls. The creation and progression of your MyPlayer is handled with minimal invasion of microtransactions, even though recent tweaks to the rewards you earn from playing have unfortunately made them a little more prevalent. Online matchmaking has made a wise decision by eliminating the use of the easier 3-click shot method.There isn’t a whole lot to fault about the game, besides how the new method for upgrading your clubs is trying to fit an arcade peg in a simulation hole and winds up being more complicated than it really needs to be. Online Societies somehow fell through the cracks in the update, with the mode missing out on some easy opportunities to have each Online Society become a little more unique.

Source: https://www.operationsports.com/pga-tour-2k25-review-a-pure-drive-down-the-fairway/