EA Sports PGA Tour Review (104th_IronMike)
WARNING: THE GAME FORCES YOU TO USE A CONTROLLER for its main core experience: online tournaments.
Just so you understand: the game has difficulty settings between arcade, pro, tour and sim. And to earn credits, which you need to buy specs to upgrade your clubs, the best way is to take part in tournaments. But, all tournaments except arcade (which has the lowest ridic payouts) are closed for anyone who uses keyboard and mouse.
Specs are extremely important to purchase for your clubs as they give you a massive boost in accuracy, power, control, etc... And they can only be bought with credits, which you do not earn at all in your single player career, only in challenges, quests (super grindy) and tournaments.
For some stupendous reason, specs are also shuffling in the store, iirc every 2 days. This means, the slower you earn credits, the more likely that legendary spec you have been grinding for is gone by the time you reached your goal. Sure, it may or may not come back one day, but what could possibly be more frustrating.
Compare a best ranking on sim tournament: 50.000 to 80.0000 credits. In comparison maybe like 1.000 or sometimes a bit more for arcade. A club spec (epic or legendary) will be around 15-20k.
And ofc, it is not like you have endless arcade tournaments, they change, and you have usually only one, which often does not even pay credits, but tickets, which you need for other tournaments like weekly and season, etc., which you then cannot partake in anyway.
It is really unfair and frustrating that all tournaments except arcade require a controller to take part - without a warning before you purchase.
I am a mouse and keyboard guy, I hate controllers, I bought the game on PC. Nothing says "this game requires a controller to play" before you buy it.
Even when you load it the first time and it advises you to play with a controller "for the best experience" - it does not tell you that you actually REQUIRE a controller for its core experience, tournaments.
It is really sad, I like this game, and common, try the 3 click swing on sim, and it is imo just as hard as controller stick input, if not harder to click on those tiny hitboxes. I would even understand this requirement on sim tournaments, but even on pro?! Pro basically is arcade...
This means effectively I cannot play any meaningful tournaments, only arcade. Well done, EA. Because having to click that tiny clickspot in sim is really an unfair advantage. not.
Here is an idea, EA: how about you add mouse swing then? Almost as if there was a middle ground to suit both...
Outside of that, how about you split controller and non controller tournament entry lists? But no, let us exclude rather everyone who does not play with a controller.
This ofc also means that earning credits for us non controller guys is limited to grinding challenges really. Which can be fun, but only to a limited extent, and it is way, way, waaaay more grinding than playing tournaments to win credits. If only one could earn credits also, dunno, maybe ... the career? But no, let us only grant you XP for that and stash the big payouts away in online tournaments, which I cannot even join.
Way to exclude your WASD customers on PC. Great job EA in closing off the main part of the game for us non-controller folks.
As much as I like the game (and outside of that it really is amazing), until this changes, I cannot give a thumbs up.
I wish I knew this from the get go, instead I spent two weeks doing challenges and upgrading my golfer here and there, and low and behold, when I felt ready for tournaments, there came the surprise...
Please change this EA or add mouse swing, or let us earn credits also in career mode. Outside of that you would think that forcing a difficulty setting should be enough to even the field. Because beyond the fact that I need to grind for credits, I would also like to compete against folks online on harder difficulty than arcade.
No one is asking to not have controller only tournaments. Just to let 3 click players also have online tournaments of all difficulty levels.
Failing that, at the very least warn your customers that the core part of online is closed off for anyone who does not use a controller - to not do that on a game available for PC, borders on false advertisement.
It majorly, majorly s u c k s.