EA Sports PGA Tour Review (Suel21)
A Good Game That Could be Great
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Visuals
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Visually and atmospherically this game is fantastic. it is by far the best rendition of the courses I've ever seen. The blades of grass and trees move with the wind. The winds gust at variable speeds as the ocean-side waves crash along the beaches. The stands filled with fans cheer you on as you hear roars from other holes during tournament play. The sand and grass variations are stunning from spot on mow patterns to varying textures of smooth bunkers and coarse beaches. They really nailed the immersion.
Gameplay and RPG Elements
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You start off creating yourself, or fantasy golfer, with vary basic skills. As you play more rounds you'll unlock skill points which can be addressed into different categories and sub-categories from overall power to approach game, short game, and putting attributes. As you progress these skills you'll unlock new shot types to help you around the course from high flop shots that land softly to low spinning shots that check quickly and limit the roll out. Each shot type also has requirements from skill attributes that'll level up in three stages from bronze to gold. The higher the level the more accurate and less affected by swing penalties from poor swing planes or timing. All in all the swing mechanics are very similar to any other game with the joysticks. Note there is no 3-click swing mechanic in the game.
Difficulty
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Here's where I feel most bad reviews are coming from. You cannot just load the game up, create a golfer, and expect to be the next Tiger Woods out of the gate. Unless you are playing as an in game pro, practice makes perfect. I have had the game since the pre-order early access launch and have logged about 16 hours at the time of this review and have leveled up to about level 33 or so and guess what? I'm only rated an 80 while the tour pros are start around 92 give or take. I still have plenty of rounds left until I max out my stats, I'm guessing I'm about half way since some stats such as power and putting cost more skill points as you level them up higher. I took the approach of unlocking the short game and accuracy more heavily than power which does prove to make some courses very difficult. Regardless, I have already had a round of 58 on Harbour Town which is a shorter course that rewards course management vs powering it down the fairway. On a lot of holes I find myself finding par a sense of accomplishment and birdies feel that much more rewarding just like real golf.
Bugs
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Here are the issues which I hope are addressed by EA and I have seen others post on the forums and have seen EA community managers responding to so it does give me hope.
-Putting grid
Since I like to play on Tour difficulty mode I do not receive a putt preview line, and rely on the putting grid lines on the green, the grid line will tell me a putt is moving left to right and when I strike my ball the putt will break in the opposite direction. However if you play on pro or arcade mode, the grid lines will remain incorrect but you putt preview line will still show you the correct direction.
-Challenge Modes
Challenges in challenge mode are a nice break and a good way to earn some extra XP and in game currency for clubs, clothes, etc. I have found multiple challenges, four so far, that after completion I have not been given credit for and the game does not show the requirements as having been met.
-Just off the green lies
I have seen a few holes consistently where my approach shot just trickles off the green and into the rough only to see my next shot on top of a hill 15 yards out or having to hit back over the green side bunker I cleared but did not quite make the green.
Performance
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The game has run very smooth on max settings in 2048 x 1080 getting around 78 - 85 FPS for me. 3840 x 2160 turned into a laggy difficult to play game netting me around 22 - 31 fps with huge dips to single digits during ball flight. Turning on HDR really seems to help also. For reference my PC specs are as follows. CPU i9-9900 / GPU RTX 3080 / 64MB Memory / CPU has a Kraken Z73 AIO on it as well.
Final Thoughts
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If you're looking for a new experience with a decent progression system that will give you more of a challenge over 2k and give you more of an authentic round of golf in my opinion, this game is for you. If you want a game to pick up and be the next PGA Tour Phenom on day one, 2K is for you. If you're on the fence and not sure, give it a month or two to see if the bugs get fixed since while they aren't too frequent, are frustrating when they occur. My experience has been very fun and I do enjoy this game more than 2k although 2k has a course designer if you're into that kinda thing (which I am).