2K’s new bid to replace your tee time with VC time
After a three-year layoff, the team at HB Studios is back with the newest entry in their PGA 2K series, PGA 2K25. The third entry in the series since 2K purchased the rights to The Golf Club, 2K25 expands the franchise with improvements to the gameplay engine and amount of content on offer. Returning fans will find a lot to enjoy here, but a somewhat lackluster career mode and a continued over-reliance on Virtual Currency holds PGA 2K25 back from what it could have been.
When you boot up the game and launch into the tutorials, you’ll immediately notice the improvements to the swing mechanics in this year’s game. The EvoSwing system consists of four different parts, Swing Path, Transition, Rhythm, and Contact. Swing Path is influenced by your ability to hit a small target at the bottom of the circular swing meter by pulling the stick back straight, this determines if your shot will be pushed or pulled. The Transition is where you switch from pulling the stick back to pushing it forward at the “apex” of your swing, which allows you to match your power to whatever percentage your aiming reticule requires. The Rhythm of your swing is the speed of your stick movement, swing too fast and you’ll hit the ball farther at the expense of your accuracy. Swing too slowly and you’ll come up a bit short. Lastly, Contact is determined by how closely your downswing lands at the small target at the top of the swing meter, which determines how much your shot will hook or slice after it comes off the club face.
Price: $69.99 (Standard) $99.99 (Deluxe) $119.99 (Legend)
Platforms: Xbox (reviewed), PlayStation, PC
Price I’d Pay: $29.99
If this all seems a little too complicated for you, you’re in luck. 2K25 offers several variations on the swing formula which can be tuned to your specifications. You can even choose whether to use the left or right stick (default). If you’re a little more old-school, you can also choose to do the classic three-button press meter system. For those of you who want to jump right into the action without worrying about whipping your swing into professional shape, the new Perfect Swing system will dramatically reduce the penalties of any errors you make, making it easy to come out swinging like a tour pro without the expensive lessons. Every golf game rises and falls on its swing controls, and I’m pleased to report that 2K has nailed the mechanics in this game. I always felt like I was in complete control of what I wanted to do with the golf ball (unlike in real life) and the game makes it very easy to adjust spin, shot types, ball placement, and stance adjustments to make sure you can steer around doglegs and stick wedge shots with the best of them.
In terms of the content on offer, there’s a lot here but with a somewhat mixed bag of quality. The largest and most attention getting of modes is, as is typical with 2K Sports games, MyCareer. 2K tends to have levels to their MyCareer experiences. NBA 2K is the juggernaut, of course, so it gets the full voice acted, animated, multi-part storylines, press conferences, and interviews. WWE 2K gets some of those things, but you also get some items relegated to menus and text messages. PGA 2K25 falls firmly into the “Top Spin 2K25” camp. You won’t find any voice acting or animated interviews here. Everything is handled through menus and text message like interactions, from conversations with your agent to press conferences. You’ll have text message conversations with your “rival” that really don’t add a ton to the overall experience. They do have a quasi-morality system, which allows you to be a brash, arrogant, firebrand or a more humble and reserved everyman. In practice, this doesn’t really do a ton besides contributing to your XP.
The career mode is broken down into Tuesday through Sunday days of the week, with optional Training minigames and a pre-tournament practice round taking up the first couple of days. Thursday through Sunday is reserved for the tournament (presuming you have your tourney’s set to the standard, but customizable, four rounds). Within each tournament you’ll have customizable options to play all or some of the holes in each round, with the new Dynamic Rounds system allowing you to choose a portion of each round to play and the Interactive Simulation mode allowing you to jump in or out at will. There are a bunch of customization options here and it’s a welcome addition for folks who don’t have the time to play through a full 72-hole tournament.
Your goal in the career mode is, of course, to be the number one player in the world and to do so, you’ll need to make improvements to both your player character and his/her equipment. There are few sports where equipment matters more than golf, and that importance is evident from the multitude of options presented to you for the 14 clubs in your bag. You’ll unlock new brands of equipment as you play (or buy them with Virtual Currency, more on that later) and you’ll also unlock various upgrade slots for club groups (Driver, Woods, Hybrids, Irons, Wedges, and Putter) that you can slot fittings into to improve your EvoSwing attributes or to make your shots go longer, fly straighter, or to allow more precise shaping. I respect what 2K was trying to accomplish here, because tinkering with the clubs in your bag is nearly as much of a hobby for real golfers as actually playing the game, but I can’t help but feel like the whole system is a little too complex and would be better served with a more straightforward leveling mechanic.
Improvements to your player character are a little more straightforward, but a lot less satisfying. Your MyPlayer will improve through two different progression systems, skills and attributes. Skills allow you to allocate Skill Points (SP) into various nodes of 6 different shot skill trees (Tee, Approach, Recovery, Bunker, Green, and Chip). These nodes will unlock new shot types, on course aids, and allow you to increase the EvoSwing sweet spots for each. The game is relatively generous with SP, and this section of the player progression would feel pretty solid if it wasn’t tied at the hip to the Attribute system.
The attribute system is where you’ll increase stats for your player in categories like Power, Shot Shaping, Correction, and the EvoSwing attributes. Unfortunately, this is where the whole thing breaks down. Like NBA 2K and other games under the umbrella, your MyPlayers attributes are generally increased by spending Virtual Currency. The game is less stingy about giving out VC than its hardcourt sibling, but not by a ton. It absolutely floors me that we’re still trying career mode player progression in these games to Virtual Currency. My ability to play a single player mode should be, in no way, tied to my willingness to spend money on character attribute upgrades. Many of the Skill Point nodes are restricted to OVR player levels, which encourages fast leveling if you want to unlock all the shot types and on course enhancements. I’m not sure how much you’d need to spend to max out your character, because it’s locked behind leveling, but spending about 8500 VC only took my character to 87 OVR (for context, 7500 VC is $49.99 in the Xbox store). Attaching MyCareer player progression to VC is the worst thing that has come out of the last several years of releases from 2K, and it’s a feature that needs to go away as soon as possible (although it’s unlikely to go anywhere, with the amount of money it makes). Virtual Currency is also used for cosmetics like branded gear for your player, but it’s hard to suggest spending any of it there when it’s so closely connected to your attribute progression.
Because it’s 2025 and everything needs one, the game also includes a “battle pass” like tiered content system called the Clubhouse Pass. As is standard from this type of system you’ve got a free tier and a paid tier, and it’s broken down into seasons of unlockable content. Most of the content here is cosmetic, but there are some fittings and other enhancements included as well.
If you’re not interested in MyCareer, there’s plenty of other ways to spend your time in PGA 2K25. You can play online multiplayer matches and tournaments, play through the various training exercises, or battle it out with your friends at TopGolf. You can play these modes with your MyPlayer of course, but you can also use one of the tour pros. Be prepared for a lackluster selection however, as only 11 male and female pros are included. Perhaps the most detailed distraction on offer is the incredibly robust Course Creator. The Golf Club always had a tremendous course creation engine, and I’m pleased to report that trend continues in this year’s game. Creative types can edit all aspects of your dream course, add terrain and hazards, shape holes, and even place the scenery. The customization options here are crazy and I was able to play some incredibly inventive user generated courses (including a whole host of putt-putt style ones). This feature is a real shining star in the genre and should result in nearly endless new experiences once you’ve tapped out the 27 licensed courses on offer.
PGA 2K25 has a lot going for it, with a very satisfying swing system, a competently structured weekly tournament structure in Career mode, and a dizzyingly complex course creation suite. It’s a shame that the game is a bit lacking in the presentation department, with everything outside of the oncourse gameplay feeling a bit shallow in MyCareer. It’s also a shame that this is another franchise from 2K cursed by the scourge of microtransaction based player progression. As it stands, if you’re willing to grind it out and your primary concern is everything from the tee box to the flag you’ll have a great time here. If you’re looking for a more satisfying deep dive into the life of a Tour professional, without the predatory currency shilling, you’ll have to wait and see what they come up with for the next iteration.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
