PGA Tour 2K25

Written by Jason Dailey on 2/20/2025 for PS5  

I will be perfectly honest with you, friends – I am not a golfer, nor a fan of the sport in general. I’ve attempted to play a handful of times in my life only to walk away frustrated after totally embarrassing myself on the course. In real life, golf is certainly not a sport for everyone, but as a video game, PGA Tour 2K25 is a golf game that almost anyone can enjoy. Like most sports games, 2K25 is more of an evolution than a revolution, even with a two-year gap since the last game, but the franchise continues to move in the right direction.

One of the big gameplay improvements in 2K25 is EvoSwing, a new club swinging mechanic that considers four key elements when striking the ball: contact, rhythm, transition, and swing path. Each element is measured independently of the others, either boosting or penalizing each swing of the club. It’s not nearly as complicated as it sounds, but it does feel more like a golf simulation than 2K23. Playing on a controller, it’s rather straightforward – contact is measured by where you aim the downward movement of the right joystick, swing path is the upward movement of the joystick, rhythm calculates the timing of how fast or slow you make the down-to-up stick movement, and transition is the alignment of the stick during the full motion of your swing. Essentially, the straighter and smoother you can move the stick from down to up, the better your swing will be. It certainly takes practice and the development of some muscle memory to not slice it into the rough every time, but overall, it feels intuitive and smooth.

By default, the swing difficulty is set to Perfect Swing – this year’s other big gameplay enhancement. Perfect Swing is a fancy way of saying “easy mode”, but I found it to be a rather cozy, and occasionally boring, way to experience PGA Tour 2K25, which makes sense for a sport that encourages spectators to be quiet when action is happening on the course. With that said, after spending a good amount of time playing MyCareer on Perfect Swing difficulty, jumping online was a bit of a shock at first because most ranked competitive modes are at Pro-Am difficulty or higher (one step below medium and up). Of course, I get why the ranked modes are not set on the easiest difficulty, but you’re going to feel like the rug has been pulled out from underneath you if you try to go online after playing career mode exclusively. In other words, if you’re someone who likes to go back-and-forth between casual and competitive play, consider starting out at one of the higher difficulties, or risk getting your feelings hurt against human players. You also earn more XP for playing at higher difficulties, so the payoff is worth it if you are up for the challenge, but overall, the difficulty system feels a little imbalanced.

MyCareer mode is the premier mode in PGA Tour 2K25, allowing you to create your own player and advance up the career ranks from the Korn Ferry Tour for amateurs, and eventually the PGA Tour where the big kids play. The structure of MyCareer is quite inertial and streamlined, with something always unlocking and very little bloat to get in the way. Each week, you will have optional training and pre-tournament events which award temporary attribute boosts if completed, or you can skip them entirely and just play golf, which I appreciated. Additionally, a new dynamic round length feature lets you play a limited number of holes during each round of an event, with the rest being simulated. As a new-ish Father, I cannot tell you how much I appreciated the ability to complete an entire tournament in a 30 to 45-minute session, and I never felt like I was missing a big moment or getting screwed by the simulation.

Regardless of how you play, everything you do will grant experience and Virtual Currency (VC), which are used to upgrade your player however you see fit. There are several stat and skill categories to dump points into, though you must choose carefully, as spending points in one category will lower the maximum potential level of another. So, for example, increasing swing power lowers the ceiling for swing contact, requiring you to be a little judicious with attribute points and consider what your ultimate style of play is.

One thing I did not like about this system is that leveling up and earning attribute points was not all that is needed to improve your player. Instead, the game requires you to use VC to buy those attribute increases. So even though you have the AP to use, you can’t unless you have the VC to do so. As you can probably guess, VC is the premium in-game currency that you can also buy with premium real-world cash, though it is entirely earnable without spending money, to be fair. Along those lines, there is also the Clubhouse Pass, which includes a slew of unlockable cosmetics and equipment boosts – some free, and some locked behind a paywall. The good news is that 2K has adopted the same business model from TopSpin 2K25, meaning each Clubhouse Pass will not be time-constrained, so you don’t have to worry about missing out on anything post-launch.

Backing up a bit, MyCareer in 2K25 has expanded upon the role-playing systems of 2K23. Now your player has a personality profile and a popularity rating that can affect sponsorship opportunities, as well as occasional conversation opportunities, such as media interviews, that will boost your popularity and further unlocks. Sometimes conversations lead to dilemmas, which can have a direct impact on your performance depending on what you choose in the moment. Quests are another RPG system that acts as a set of progressive challenges which create meta progression across all game modes. These can be anything from hitting 50 greens-in-regulation to winning a particular event, and they do a good job of fostering that continual sense of character progression.

Beyond the flagship MyCareer mode, there is still plenty to do in PGA Tour 2K25. You can play one-off matches with other players in a variety of formats, either locally or online, including normal stroke play, scramble, skins, and others. I’m also happy to report the return of Divot Derby – a battle royale-esque game mode that sees players racing against each other to finish a series of holes first. Folks who grew up playing a basketball game in gym class called Knockout will be right at home – if you know, you know. Top Golf is back, as well as Online Societies, which are simply clans where you compete against other people for leaderboard supremacy. A new addition is Ranked Tours, which is also a leaderboard-based mode that coincides with the real-life PGA Tour schedule. 2K says that there will be events for all skill levels upon release, though there were only a few options available in the pre-release environment. Strangely, just as VC is required to improve your player, it’s also needed to buy in to a Ranked Tour event before you can play. The game has been generous with VC thus far, but I can’t help but think of the worst-case scenario where someone could conceivably have to purchase VC to play in an online tournament and improve their player, or do the alternative, which is grind for VC instead.

Looking at some of the more nuts-and-bolts of PGA Tour 2K25, this year’s entry includes 27 official courses, including three of the four majors, and 11 real-life playable pros. There has been a noticeable graphical upgraded from 2K23, particularly for character models. My guy still doesn’t look like me, per se, but he certainly looks more human than alien. In general, there are two graphical modes you can choose from (at least on PS5 Pro) – quality and performance. The game defaults to performance mode, but honestly, I couldn’t find a reason to not play in quality mode, which looks and performs great. The presentation package and commentary have gotten a bump as well, with a much more “televised” quality to the presentation, while commentary sounds more organic and authentic than 2K23.

Overall, PGA Tour 2K25 is a solid package and continues to move the franchise forward. It may be incremental improvements rather than exponential, but that’s part-and-parcel to the sports sim genre. Still, the new EvoSwing mechanics and Perfect Swing difficulty allow 2K25 to cast a wide net, offering a golf game that can be cozy, laid-back experience, or an ultra-competitive sim. I’m not convinced that the difficulty is balanced across all modes the way it should be, but reviewers don’t always see a full multiplayer suite in a pre-release environment, so it’s possible that things are structured differently at launch. Elsewhere, the almost trademark prevalence of paid-for currencies in 2K Sports games has found its way into this year’s game. It’s nothing egregious right now, but my hope is that they remain sensible in how they implement it moving forward. Ultimately, if you’re looking for a golf sim that is enjoyable to play regardless of what you’re in the mood for, PGA Tour 2K25 delivers.