PGA TOUR 2K21

Yeah the game is great, however even though my player has supposedly earned 10 million dollars this season he cannot afford new clothes or golf clubs. Why is that? Oh because the dollars are actually bullcrap and 2k really wants you to buy their over priced currency packs instead.
Why 2k? It costs 1,200 of your currency for a single callaway iron and yet you want 60 dollars for 6,000 of that currency? Are you kidding me? Why cant I just buy a game and play it, why am I always nickeled and dimed by scumbags?

If you played Golf Club 2019 and are wondering if PGA Tour 2K21 is better. It is.
Now allow me to explain why, in my opinion, it is better.
First, I left the prior version because I found the game inconsistent, absurdly difficult, and especially abusive on the greens. Why do you think people defaulted to chipping on the greens for any putt over 20'? Because judging the distance was absolute guesswork and feel. There were no cues, markers, or hints as to how far back to pull the putter to get close to the hole 30' away or 45' away. Honestly, for me, it was just stupid hard. You want to hit the driver further? Choose "pro" level clubs with an unforgiving margin for error. Sure, you'll hit it further but you're screwed if you go offline just a touch. Again, it was just stupid hard.
Enter PGA Tour 2K21. Clearly, 2K either saw the inherent problems or heard feedback from the community and resolved the issues with grace and triple-A polish. Gone are the incredibly hard nuances on the green. Gone are the inconsistent elevation, wind, and green speed issues. It's all been replaced with a difficulty and aiming system which has so many options, you can dial it into your personal preference.
Want the abuse from the prior version. No sweat. Want a more forgiving and enjoyable experience. No worries. The difference between rookie and master? There is NO difference on distance, now the difficulty simply changes the XP multiplier as you play and gain levels. A rookie can bang the ball 300 with a driver with incredible forgiveness. The master will bang the same ball 300 but gain levels faster. Levels mean coins, mean unlocks, clothing, and access to brand name clubs.
Personally, I'm playing on PRO AM level and put the AI opponents on "normal" difficulty, which means they will finish the round somewhere around -6 to -8 under (with some plus/minus random wiggle room). That has been perfect for me and after entering the six-venue PGA qualification tourney, I won the Korn Ferry Invitational at -14 under (two rounds), the second tourney I finished at -10 under (two rounds) and took fifth. The competition is just right for me - too easy and it's boring, too difficult and it can become tedious.
You can adjust the difficulty at any time. There are two levels above and below "normal" to keep things interesting. The upper levels are pretty serious with the AI opponents dropping -15 under on the hardest setting. Bring your A-game.
Yes, you can buy clubs with a marginal increase in distance at the cost of less forgiveness but it isn't critical to enjoy the game. For me, 2K have done an amazing job of polishing a promising title and broadening it's appeal. I have 20+ hrs in thus far (in three days) and look forward to more licenses, courses, and players joining the action. Meanwhile, I need another win but TPC Sawgrass looks like trouble. Wish Rip some luck.

Challenging, yet habit forming. Being a little older, I have some work to do an my eye/hand coordination before I'll be very good at this game. But I love golf, and since I can no longer play IRL, this is a good substitute.

it's like an extremely polished Tiger Woods 05-08 which is incredibly satisfying

I usually don't write reviews but i'll make an exception on this one. this is by far the best game the devs have made compared to the golf club 2 and 2019. the introduction of the shotmeter and shot recalibration is easily the best feature. and on top of that they overhauled the difficulty to however you want while using whatever clubs you want is so much better than the previous difficulty. very impressed so far. love it

PGA Tour 2K21" is the deepest golf video game you’ve ever encountered.
That’s the benefit of giving an online community access to a custom course designer.
The rest – the official Tour, course and player licensing that’s been so heavily pushed in the marketing – is kind of just window dressing, albeit really attractive, sorely missed, nice-to-have-back window dressing.
Having spent the better part of the last week toying around with 2K21’s career mode, I can tell you that, judged as a PGA Tour simulation, this title returns golf gamers to the place where EA Sports left them previously. In that sense, we might actually consider it a push.
But if you take what gamers had before as a simulation and combine it with a full-blown course designer, then you have something else entirely. "PGA 2K21" is best judged then as the marriage of two features that had been previously kept separate.
As someone who’s been playing PGA Tour video games since 1999, this was the one thing I always wanted from EA Sports: the ability to create my own courses or to recreate courses that EA simply couldn’t license. Once I got that from HB Studios in "The Golf Club," I found myself pining for what I had with EA: Tour branding, Tour pros, Tour courses.
This game, finally, has both.
EA’s long-running "Tiger Woods" title came to an end in 2013, and a rebooted offering headlined by Rory McIlroy was abandoned after a single release in 2015. That left gamers in the woods (no pun intended) for three years, after they’d grown accustomed to a yearly Tour release for two decades.
Filling the void was a lesser-known title, "The Golf Club," from a lesser-known developer, HB Studios. "The Golf Club" – a game focused on allowing users to create, play and share their own custom-designed golf courses – begat "The Golf Club 2"and what eventually came to be known as "The Golf Club 2019 featuring PGA Tour."
That was the turning point. And not to disparage it – because I certainly spent enough time playing it – but "The Golf Club 2019" is, in retrospect, a (really good) half-step, a bridge to where we are now. The game, developed like its previous iterations by HB but this time published by 2K, was the first to feature Tour branding in three years, since EA’s "McIlroy" release. It came with seven real-world courses, including TPC Sawgrass and TPC Scottsdale, and served as a starting point.
"2K21" is really the final product, the completed version of "2019." It’s what gamers hoped to get when the PGA Tour decided to get back into the video game business, and it’s what they have now two years later.

Coming from The Golf Club 2019. While the game was extremely rough on the edges, especially on the presentation being awful, I still loved the game for one reason : The gameplay. It felt amazing and I fell in love with it despite all the other shortcoming.
When I saw PGA Tour 2k21 out, I expected to be completely let down, the usual EA tactic of releasing the same game with barely if any change at all. Luckily I was wrong on this regard. A ton of gripes I had with TGC2019 was corrected, such as partial swings being impractical, the green grid partially covering the green, no spin control on the ball and no customizable clubs/stats. Yes the game is basically TGC2019 V.2 but, to be honest for a moment here, you can't really add anything too substantial to a sport game that relies on being realistic beside polish. I do agree on the fact that full price for this game is a tad expensive : You do need to enjoy realistic golf to make the price tag feel right.
A very welcoming addition is customized difficulty. Back then difficulty was decided by the clubs you would choose : Easy, Normal and Hard. More distance for less control basically. This time every detail is customizable. Have a bad mouse or shaky hand, or simply want to have a relaxing golf game with your friends ? Turn off downswing tempo entirely. While matchmaking isn't affected by this, it overall got more forgiving with the addition of the power meter and customizable stats. An update also made the swing meter - The one for fast/slow tempo - A lot larger for lower hitting clubs.
Presentation overall drastically improved. Grass looks a lot better, especially the rough. TGC2019 had absolutely awful animations presentation. 2k21 still isn't stellar but it's now at least passable. Crowds still look pretty bad though, but players now react properly after every shot and have a few animations to reflect on how well, or poorly they hit the ball, along with new address animations. The PGA Tour is also a lot better looking and feeling. However, options to customize your character are still awful. 9 styles of hair only, why ?
Despite all the improvements, the game also brought some new negatives :
- The Punch Shot is nowhere to be found. Why ? It's even mentioned in text in game that it exists
- Swing speed seems too, "consistent". Slower shots like pitch and lobs require to be as quick as a normal full shot, which makes no sense with the speed animation, causing me to very often have a slow tempo. Pitch's fast/slow tempo penalties are way too punishing
- Automatic replays do not save anymore. In TGC2019, you basically had your whole golf play session recorded and you could seek and find the shot you would look for. This time, you have to manually save a replay. Not only that, as far as I know, you still can't save a replay by playing multiplayer, which is stupid as fuck
- The lie grid is not visible in rough and sand. This wasn't a problem before
- Waste area looking terrain is still programmed as heavy rough
- Multiplayer performances are still awful, likely even worse. Many times, the game needs 10+ seconds to load onto the next player's shot. Sometimes you see a player select the chip shot or another approach, not matching the actual shot the player used
- Microtransactions are a lot worse this time. Everything seems to cost a lot more, especially with the fact you have to buy your clubs now. Not only that, but you cannot customize your clothing/clubs anymore, which is not excusable whatsoever, and very obviously done so people spend more coins, and possibly spend real money for more coins for a color variant of the same gear. At the very least everything is obtainable and for now at least, you do get a decent amount of coins over time, though seemingly slower than in TGC2019
I've seen a lot of people hating on the multiplayer due to ragequitters and being hard to find other players. This is easily circumvented by joining groups such as The 19th Hole and the adequately named PGA Tour 2k21.
If you want a challenging and rewarding golf game, this is still strongly recommended by me. I still think Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005 is the best game of the two, but this one is a very close second and the best golf game to own in recent times