EA Sports PGA Tour Reviews
Between the lack of personality, inconsistent aesthetics, physics that, accurate or not, look broken, and cynical always online requirements, EA Sports PGA Tour gets just about everything wrong. I found myself jumping right back to Easy Come, Easy Golf almost immediately. Sure, it’s not the most realistic golf game out there, but at least it has fun with the sport and I’m not booted from the game after every other hole. EA’s dour, miserable effort is the “you must be fun at parties” joke/insult manifested as a sports game.
EA Sports PGA Tour is quite the bogey, but isn't far from stepping up to the competition.
I wanted to love EA Sports PGA Tour. Though I find myself as disappointed as Bart Simpson was when he got Lee Carvallo’s Putting Challenge for Christmas. The initial gameplay showcase had me as excited as a kid in a candy store. There’s no denying it’s a gorgeous game. Course flyovers and commentary are also superb. But these fleeting moments of brilliance make PGA Tour’s missteps all the more frustrating. Until EA gets under the hood and performs the mountain of work required to get it up to snuff, I’ll be sticking to PGA Tour 2K23. At least that game works.
Player customisation (historically a really big deal in this series) is laughably limited, the menus are buggy, there’s terrible lag when taking shots, and there’s no proper tutorial to explain how all the complex systems work. And yet it is the best-looking golf simulation around thanks to the heft of EA’s vast resources. Knowing the importance (and price) of the PGA licence, it’s hard to imagine the various issues won’t be fixed. But it was obviously released way too soon and currently sits in the rough.
While the menu navigation is clumsy, the videos are glitchy, and the ball-hitting can be spotty, this is a far better effort than the series’ last outing. The closest we have in the golf space is 2K’s PGA TOUR 2K23, but it doesn’t hold a candle to what EA SPORTS PGA TOUR offers. Having all four major golf tournaments is a huge boon to the game’s benefit, and Augusta National is well worth the purchase alone. I’m actually surprised at how well the live service element is done, the game feels more connected than most other sports games. EA SPORTS PGA TOUR is satisfying in its own right, the start of something solid, but needs more polish that I think will happen in due time with patches and updates.
EA Sports PGA Tour lays the foundation for what could be a really strong golf game, with a lot of content, deep mechanics, and excellent presentation. Its UI issues, though, are a significant problem that shouldn’t have made it into the final release, and its swing mechanics, while easy to pick up, never feel particularly comfortable. In future years there’s definitely potential to win the tour, but for the moment, I still think the competition offers a more compelling experience.
EA Sports PGA Tour is an absolutely beautiful and immersive golf game with a very realistic feel. The game can be quite demanding on even some of the better systems, so PC users should be forewarned to check the requirements and be ready to turn down graphic settings. It is a challenging game, but still a lot of fun and is a great foundation for players to become better with the ability to see true growth happening as they continue to practice, as long as the player has enough patience to get there.
EA Sports PGA Tour captures the intricate nuance of golfing. However, the systems struggle with what a user can reasonably decipher from a mere analog stick, leading to a frustrating experience. EA Sports PGA Tour is a game at odds with whether it wants to compete with rival 2K’s realism or veer closer to its own more arcade roots, and in the process, lands its first drive on this new round in the rough.
EA Sports PGA Tour is a good comeback for virtual golf, but it's a live service game that still feels unfinished and occasionally clunky. It lacks the LPGA Tour and has a slow, glitchy interface with unintuitive elements. There are no tutorials or explanations for those unfamiliar with golf, but it's enjoyable for those who know the sport and will offer more over time.
Review in Slovak | Read full review
There's a good golf game hiding in EA Sports PGA Tour. The litany of courses is enough to entice fans of the sport, while the roster of pro golfers is amplified by a presentation that looks gorgeous even if the TV-style broadcast feels excessive. However, the imprecise controls make one hope that the upcoming three-click system will make the gameplay more palatable, since everything else related to the actual sport does a great job of trying to help you understand how to perfect shots. Although PGA Tour 2K23 is the better golf game this time around, there is a good base to work with here. Hopefully EA's future iteration can fix the issues to make this a contender for best pro golf simulation on the PC.
The most welcome aspect of EA SPORTS PGA TOUR is the PGA aspect itself.
EA Sports PGA Tour is somewhat, par for the course, in many ways what I expected, retaining much of the previous few entries while adding more gameplay options and better simulation than ever before.
It has its fair share of issues, but there's more than enough in EA Sports PGA Tour to keep newcomers and golf pros occupied. It's a solid step forward for the EA Sports golf titles, and a welcome return to the course.
As a comeback, EA Sports PGA Tour performs well enough to compete with PGA 2K23 on fairly even footing. The inclusion of all four majors, the solid ball physics, the wider arsenal of shots, and the long list of official courses are impressive, though the presentation can be flat, laggy, and rough. If EA decides to turn this into an annualized sports franchise, the next installment will need to revamp the character creator and rework the user interfaces. Despite the game's flaws, though, I can still see myself casually playing it throughout the year alongside other sports games like MLB The Show 23. It’s been a while since we’ve seen two established developers battle each other within the same sport, and I’m all for it. At the very least, golf games will be made all the better from the competition.
EA returns to the world of golf with a challenging and rewarding title that's let down by a couple of inconsistencies and an underwhelming swing mechanic.
EA's comeback on the green is a well-made experience, but with a couple of flaws that we hope will be improved in the future of the franchise.
Review in Italian | Read full review
A technically solid game that has some pretty glaring issues with presentation, I still found myself going back to play round after round. It's challenging and rewarding, even if it's not the best entry in the long history of golf titles.
PGA Tour is an excellent return to form for the classic franchise. While it's a little rough around the edges and needs a few more options, it provides an honorable, realistic simulation of the sport that we've been missing for years.
With amazing visuals and a steeper-than-expected learning curve, EA Sports PGA Tour is a welcome return to the market.
EA Sports PGA Tour is a game that fails to unleash its full potential. It offers a considerable amount of content and a rather realistic game structure, with some graphical bugs and some ques-tionable choices in the game modes (especially in the Career) that slow down its race to success. This is a good starting point which that could improve along the way.
Review in Italian | Read full review