PlayStation 4 Critic Reviews

NBA 2K21 offers the best virtual basketball experience out there, even if it still needs some tweaks to polish the gameplay and microtransactions are, once again, everywhere.

With some small gameplay changes and an improved My Team Mode, NBA 2K21 offers enough to still be considered one of the best sports videogames on the market. Still, it takes a more powerful hardware to show the great change the franchise really needs.

Coronavirus has extended the previous season of the NBA and next-gen is very close, so the timing is not the best for this entry in the franchise, which is very continuist. However, it is still a great basketball game.

NBA 2K21 is still one of the best sport simulations around, but if you are looking for something really new you should probably wait for its next-gen version.

NBA 2K21 executes the fundamentals of basketball to perfection. Add to that a wonderful narrative in Long Shadow, and the package becomes even more appealing - even if MyCareer is linked to an online mode. These modes have a lot of potential, especially My Neighborhood, but some of the ideas still need a year or two of percolation before they're at their true potential.

At the end of the day, NBA 2K21 is still an insanely good game of basketball that feels and plays like a game that hit its stride a couple of years ago and is now coming to the end of the generation. I still am amazed at how good the moment to moment action is in this game. And although I would have loved to see them really go for it in the MyCareer mode and revamp the microtransactions more than they did, this is still a game that I adore and continue to be impressed by. I have no idea what to expect from the PS5/XSX versions of this game but if its roots are still planted in the foundation of the last couple of years, we could have a very exciting game of basketball to look forward to.

NBA 2K21 is a fantastic basketball simulation, but it is a shame that most of the game feels more like an update than an entirely new entry.

Gameplay wise, NBA 2K21 is once again an excellent product, and the best hoops videogame on the market (also due to lack of competition). While very similar to its predecessor, it is also evolved and revised. However, being a 2K title, microtransactions are inescapable.

It's pretty much unchanged from last year, however. That's the deal with NBA 2K21. If you can find a way to deal with the new shooting mechanism and you don't mind some pretty bad storytelling, NBA 2K21 is great… because it's largely unchanged from last year. Or the year before. Or the year before that.

There aren't much changes in the latest entry in 2K's NBA series, and it seems that the developers are finally out of ideas, at least for this generation. If you already own the 2020 version, there is not much sense in paying the full price to get your hands on the new game, and maybe it's best to wait and see how the series will go forward when next gen arrives.