NBA 2K25 review: A 7-foot 6, 300-pound center that’s plenty skilled, but still a bit turnover-prone
2K’s basketball behemoths have long felt like a pretty strong package, but this year isn’t a wholly authoritative slam dunk for reasons beyond VC.
If anyone’s asked me over the past few years which of the big annual sports franchises generally offered the most bang-for-your-buck on a yearly basis, I’ve probably said NBA 2K.
It’s not a hugely ringing endorsement - unless you’re interested in whichever minor tweaks to the formula are on offer, you can generally skip any at least a year or two of it or its competitors in the handegg or footsphere business without actually missing much. But, in a genre where the strength of the package, the sheer volume and depth of content aimed at letting you do a sports thing in various ways, is king, NBA 2K’s felt like LeBron. If he was constantly trying to sell you fake money.
NBA 2K25 is just as big as its notoriously girthy predecessors, clocking in at about 133GB on my PC, which is in the ballpark of Starfield and Baldur’s Gate 3, both games that are noted for their hugeness. What you get for surrendering all that hard drive space isn’t a sports game so much as it is several smaller games that’ve combined into one giant mecha-sports thing. Like if you told Shaq, Kobe, and Phil Jackson to stand on each others’ shoulders.
What are the actual basketball games like, you ask? Alright, I answer. There are a whole bunch of new ProPLAY animations to make stuff like shooting feel that tiny bit more fluid and true-to-hoops by making your movements mimic those of real players. There’s a new dribble engine, which does a bit more of the above, as well as allowing you to transition straight from signature dribble into a pop-up shot as one animation.
On defence, there’s the ability to cut off an opponent with a single well-timed flick of the stick. Each of the tweaks does add something, but it’s more in making an already very dynamic experience feel that little bit more refined and smooth, rather than wholly different. The addition of Learn 2K, a tutorial mode that runs you through everything from the basics to working use of these new additions into your game is a wise move accessibility-wise, as are the similar features to guide folks through the basics of MyTeam and The City, which definitely can be intimidating to newbies.
In terms of the modes, I’ll start off with the big one that’s actually three modes in a trenchcoat: MyPlayer/MyCareer and The City - the open-world space which acts as the staging ground for both your usual single-player ‘establish yourself as an NBA star’ experience, and a whole bunch of online and non-online activities that surround it.
This year’s city is a visually interesting place to play some hoops, hang out, or fly around in a go-kart bouncing off of pedestrians you’re desperately trying to run down. It’s also a fever dream that you’ll struggle to describe to any non-2K playing mates without sounding a bit bizarre.
Take the Proving Grounds, one of this year’s additions. It’s basically a Roman colosseum with Michael Jordan's face on the side of it. You go in, and you jump into some multiplayer pick-up basketball games which are designed to be more competitive, ranked affairs than those you’ll get in The City’s other buildings. Because nothing says serious competition like blowing a layup while actual tigers watch on courtside, like the Frosties dude’s about to come out on dunk on you if you lose.
If I’m honest, there’s a loveable goofiness to this and a lot of the other things you can do and places you can visit in The City that I’d find it all endearing, if it wasn’t coloured by existing within a game that’s flown so close to the sun microtransaction-wise in the past that stuff like this can feel a bit like the gaudy window-dressing you’d find on the Las Vegas strip. The same applies to the new hangouts of the two online factions you can join - Elite and Rise - who call a cove with a full-size pirate ship and a factory where mechs are being built home, simply for the cool factor.
The reintroduction of a customisable court in your player’s apartment is a positive, but the new Squad Finder tool was a bit useless the couple of times I’ve tried to use it to seek out folks to play with, especially when you’re always running into randoms who’re usually down to do whatever’s on offer in the location you’ve headed to.
The MyCareer experience itself - you know, the bit where you play in the NBA via The City’s arena - is fine. While there are cutscenes, there’s the ability to keep things pretty minimalistic and jump straight into the action due the fact that Heart of a Dynasty, the element that tells the backstory of how your player got to the league seems pretty optional. It’s linear, but is there to offer a few high school and international games with decent rewards to those who want that extra story.
Finally, 2K’s aimed to beef out the process of selecting the initial build for the MyPlayer you use to engage with all of this stuff. Admittedly, I’m always a bit basic in this regard - give me a 6’8’’ small forward who can do a bit of everything scoring-wise and I’m happy, but hopefully the pro-tuned build mechanic can help out those who are seeking something a little different. So far, I haven’t had time to build up my player enough to definitively judge whether I’ve ended up with a better build than usual, or unlock many of the new takeovers and badges to play around with, but I have had plenty of fun in the games I’ve got under my belt.
Right now all of that’s out of the way - MyTeam. I’ve not found what I’ve played of the card-collecting mode too bad, stuff like the new Breakout and Triple Threat Park modes that serve up short games for you to work through using your collected players is actually good, and appealed to me despite the mode as a whole not usually being one of my go-tos.
Showdown games are your average online head-to-heads, and it’d have been nice to get a better flavour of how they fit into the new King of the Court weekend challenges they’re designed to build to, but unfortunately there hasn’t been an instance of the latter timetabled while I’ve been playing so far.
As for how the return of the auction house and the introduction of a Rep system designed to last the full year play into the economy and the mode’s long-term prospects, we’ll have to see, but I did seem to hit a bit of a noticeable grind wall with the latter once I get past the first three tiers.
Moving on, The W, the WNBA-focused element NBA 2K has had for the past few years, still draws mixed feelings from me, despite some solid improvements. As ever, I’m really glad it’s included in 2K, but implementation-wise, it still feels like it’s been banished to a corner that’s underdeveloped compared to the rest of the game. It has its own MyPlayer mode and online bit, but both are on a much smaller-scale and still not at all integrated with The City or any of its accompanying elements.
I get there might be some corporate bollocks stopping it from being so, but surely letting you run around The City as your WNBA player and letting you use its arena to progress through that career wouldn’t be too difficult to pull off? Come on, there’s a building with Caitlin Clark’s face on it just waiting to be built, especially since steps like giving A’ja Wilson equal billing with Jayson Tatum on at least one of the game’s covers are being taken.
I’ve left the bit of NBA 2K that I’ve recently vibed with the most until almost last. MyNBA Eras has been the main mode that I’ve played 2K for over the past few years. In addition to doing a thing I’ve yet to see another sports title like this deliver - allowing you to play out about thirty years of alternate league history as a franchise mode, in a fashion ideal for those who love what ifs - it offers pretty much all the customisation you could want.
This year though, it feels like it’s lost more than it’s gained. There’s a new era to go alongside the established three decades and modern day point, but it’s a weird choice. Kicking off in 2016-17, the Steph Curry era weirdly splits the 2010s, already catered to by the LeBron era, which begins around 2011, into two, while pushing the modern era back to right now, instead of having it begin around 2020.
While I’ve a lot of respect for Curry’s Warriors, I don’t think there are enough unique changes to the league going on around this point in history that you couldn’t class a just being part of the modern era to warrant this being its own seperate era. It’s not taking anything away from the mode, but it does feel a bit unnecessary. What is taking away from the mode is something that NBA 2K’s devs possibly couldn’t do anything to help.
I’d assume due to rights negotiations or refusals, several important players who were important to the landscape of the league during the Curry Era aren’t in 2K25 right now, despite having starred in previous 2Ks. John Wall, Blake Griffin, and Andre Iguodala are the big ones, with the latter being very important to the Warriors dynasty itself. Thankfully, they’ll inevitably be added in via custom rosters, but it's still not ideal.
Our final stop is the relaunched MyGM, which is fairly lacklustre. There’s been an attempt at making it a bit like an RPG, but it feels just as surface-level as it ever has when it’s tried this kind of thing previously. You can build up a GM with specific traits, which is cool, but going the charisma route, I found myself able to talk my way out of most goals team staff and players were trying to set me. The conversations are a bit repetitive too - at the start of two consecutive seasons, I had Cade Cunningham demand to be traded if I couldn’t promise him we’d be winning.
I even encountered a Jedi mind trick joke and a conversation about dreams I was fairly sure I remembered in some form from previous GM modes, though I haven’t double checked that. It’s a mode worth having in there, but with Eras now on the block, this revamp doesn’t do enough to stop it feeling like a bit of an afterthought.
Overall, there’s still plenty of fun to be had in NBA 2K25, and I’d still argue it does enough to maintain the series’ place as a market leader - especially now PC’s finally on the next-gen version. However, there are just enough hangups that I don’t think it’s a slam dunk in terms of being a positive step forward, even if you definitely can’t label it just a retread of last year’s game.
It’s a huge enough game that you’ll have more than enough to do if even if you just stick to one or two modes you prefer, but if 2K’s strength is in the entire humongous package, it’s setting itself the goal of being King in every area, and I don’t think NBA 2K25 quite achieves that.
NBA 2k25 released on September 6 for PS5/PS4, Xbox Series X/S/Xbox One, PC, and Nintendo Switch. This review was conducted on PC, with a code provided by the publisher.