NBA 2K27 arrived on September 3 from Visual Concepts and 2K, and it sits at Mixed on Steam across nearly a thousand reviews with 73 on OpenCritic. Our official line is that NBA 2K27 delivers the same addictive basketball experience with solid MyCAREER and MyTEAM modes that keep you grinding.
That word — grinding — is doing an enormous amount of work, and this review is largely about what it costs you.
The AI Is the Best This Series Has Ever Had
Everything Around the Ball Still Needs Work
Shooting feels good in hand — contested jumpers with elite scorers land, and it’s more forgiving than last year. But the philosophy hasn’t moved: it’s still green-or-miss with no shot profiles, and the green window is tied to difficulty, which makes balancing a single-player game unnecessarily fiddly. That’s an online-first design decision imposed on people playing offline.
Movement remains the series’ oldest problem. Dribble moves cover less ground and you can no longer phase through defenders, both improvements — but players still manage to feel floaty and heavy simultaneously. Feet slide. Animations chain together messily. In-air shifts happen when a new animation triggers. ProPLAY’s captured moves look authentic; the transitions between them are where it falls apart.
Hands-up contests are far more effective and defenders keep up. Genuinely needed after 2K26.
Far too easy to get whistled inside, and better contests generate more shooting fouls than you’d want.
Too easy to pull off, and CPU defenders don’t contest them. An escape-from-jail card.
Rebounds bounce further than expected, full-court passes are inaccurate, ankle-breakers still feel random.
The ask is simple and both our sources made it independently: stop adding animations for a year and polish the transitions between the ones already there.
MyCAREER Has Great Ideas and a Toll Booth
There are two career paths this year. Fire and Concrete is the traditional story, running 11 chapters — roughly twice last year’s length — and the pre-draft section drags badly. Objectives frequently reward performing specific assigned tasks rather than simply playing good basketball. You can skip straight to the draft, and many people will.
MyCAREER Eras is the genuinely exciting one. Create a player, pick an era, pick a team, and insert yourself into NBA history — and crucially you don’t rewrite it. The real trades and draft picks still happen around you. It’s replaying history with yourself added, which is a lovely idea and easily the most interesting new thing in the game.
A partial mitigation: Casual Corner, in The City. It drops you into games with teammates in sensible positions, no queuing, no waiting to be judged for your cheap shirt. A 60 overall can hold their own against 70s by taking smart shots, setting screens, passing and defending — one of our sources won MVP doing exactly that.
It’s a real improvement. It also shouldn’t need to exist. If the game respected you rather than running a premium business model on top of a full-price purchase, online play would be fair by default.
MyNBA Finally Got Some Attention
MyNBA Legacy is the new headline mode: pick a current player, manage the team as normal, but player-lock during games, with its own RPG-style progression and the ability to continue for up to 100 years through your player’s children. On paper it’s brilliant.
In practice it’s fenced in. Modern era only. No custom rosters. Less flexible than simply player-locking in a regular MyNBA save. And picking the “rookie” version of a player doesn’t replay their rookie season — it just drops a young version of them into today’s league. 2K marketed it as transformative; both our sources found it close to what player-lock already did, with extra walls.
The W Is the Argument Against Everything Else
Presentation, and the DLSS 5 Question
Presentation is a minor step up. The modern scorebug finally looks normal again — centred and clean, after several years of an awkward left-aligned ticker hybrid — and it’s better for clipping vertical highlights. The main menu remains a lifeless parade of slow-motion player renders when 2K holds the licence to show actual NBA footage across every era.
Era presentation is inconsistent in a way that grates: authentic period broadcast packages sitting alongside modern timeout screens and player info overlays. Play Now Eras expands the historic team roster nicely but isn’t authentic enough yet — one of our sources found inaccurate court branding in the Jazz arena.
Base graphics are flat and lifeless. DLSS 5 changes that considerably if you own a compatible NVIDIA card, applying a neural lighting and material pass over 2K’s own frame and art direction. It isn’t a slop filter — but reactions are genuinely split, and “uncanny” comes up as often as “transformative.” It’s subjective, it’s optional, and most people won’t have the hardware for it.
Things to Know Going In
The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly
| The Good | The Bad | The Ugly |
|---|---|---|
| Genuinely Excellent AITeams play like themselves — Jokić as a hub, Edwards pressuring the rim — and the CPU adapts tactically mid-game, switching from pick-and-rolls to post-ups when personnel change. The best AI this series has produced, and barely marketed. | Inconsistent AI TendenciesThe same system will have Haliburton dribbling the air out and chucking bad threes, which isn’t his game at all. Star players go permanently supernova in the CPU’s decision-making. High ceiling, unchanged floor. | You Start at 60 Overall in a $70 GameBoth career modes make an unpaid player miserable to use, maxing a build costs more every year, and your build is locked to the mode you made it in. Want to try the other one? Start over from 60. The good new ideas exist to sell VC. |
| Defence Finally Has ToolsNew bumping, cutting attackers off, blocks and strips. Dribbling nerfed so one-on-ones are about angles and direction changes rather than animation lotteries. Defenders can actually stay in front of people now. | Shooting Is Still Green-or-MissNo shot profiles, and the green window is tied to difficulty — an online-first design decision imposed on people playing single-player, which makes balancing offline games needlessly awkward. | $69.96 of Season 1 DLC on a $69.99 GamePasses and mode-specific bonus offers priced at effectively a second full game, VC bundles up to $149.99, random-item purchases, and an ESRB Everyone rating. Steam users have tagged it Gambling for a reason. |
| MyNBA Got Real AttentionNew CBA rules, deeper contract negotiations, bolder CPU trades, and draft class playlists that let you mix eras into randomised classes. Michael Jordan on the Pelicans is precisely why this mode is the best franchise sim in sports gaming. | Movement Is Floaty and Heavy at OnceFeet slide, animations chain messily, in-air shifts trigger mid-move. ProPLAY’s captured animations look authentic; the transitions between them still don’t. Polish the joins before adding more. | MyNBA Legacy Is Fenced InA brilliant concept — franchise plus player lock plus 100 years of descendants — restricted to the modern era, no custom rosters, and less flexible than the player lock that already existed. Marketed as transformative, plays as familiar. |
| The W Proves It Didn’t Have to Be This WayMyWNBA overhauled with MyNBA’s structure, better-feeling grounded movement, and a career mode that’s fully offline with no VC — an 85 overall, free, from the start. The best argument in the game against the rest of the game. | Presentation Is Half-FixedThe scorebug finally looks right, but the main menu is lifeless slow-mo renders when 2K owns the actual NBA footage licence, and era broadcasts clash with modern overlays. Base graphics remain flat. | Casual Corner Shouldn’t Need to ExistIt genuinely helps unpaid players compete without sweating, and we’re glad it’s here. But it’s a patch over a wound the business model inflicted. Fair online play should be the default in a full-price game. |
The Verdict
Underneath everything, Visual Concepts have made one of the strongest single-player basketball games in this series’ history. The AI is the best it has ever been. Defence finally has real tools. MyNBA got meaningful, thoughtful work. MyCAREER Eras is a lovely idea. The W is quietly the most enjoyable thing in the package.
And then 2K keeps sabotaging it. A 60 overall in a $69.99 game. Builds locked to a single mode so experimenting costs you twice. Season 1 DLC that costs as much as the game. A shooting system designed for online play imposed on everyone. Genuinely good new ideas fenced in by restrictions that exist for no discernible reason other than to shape spending.
Our two perspectives on this landed at slightly different places — one at 5.5/10, harder on the year-over-year sameness; the other more taken with the AI but disgusted by the monetisation. Both agreed on the shape of it. This is the best 2K in years, and that’s a low ceiling to celebrate.
The honest read: if you buy 2K every year and enjoy it, this is one of the better ones — buy it. If you haven’t played since 2K23, this doesn’t move the needle enough to justify $70; a cheap used copy of an older entry gets you a broadly similar career experience. And if you mainly want offline basketball, know that MyNBA, Play Now and The W are the parts worth your money, and they’re the parts least interested in your wallet.
The basketball is good. That’s not the same as the game being worth what it’s asking.
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