NBA 2K27 review for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X, Nintendo Switch 2

Let’s be honest, pretty much everything I wrote about NBA 2K26 last year still applies to NBA 2K27. It’s not like any of these annualized sports games vary all that much from year to year, so you could easily read last year’s review, sub in 27 for 26, and you’d have a pretty accurate picture of what this year’s edition is like.

To be fair, it’s worth noting that there are some new additions this year that differentiate the game a little bit. For starters, the career mode has a neat new stop as part of your journey: Rucker Park, the iconic New York basketball court. While it’s only a brief part of the game, it’s neat to see 2K add in a real location with real history versus the made-up drama they usually insert into MyCareer.

And speaking of history, 2K27 also adds a neat historical aspect to MyCareer, allowing you to send your player back in time to play in other eras against legends. While the gameplay doesn’t change too much, it’s still neat to see the game broaden its focus from the modern day to include more generations of basketball.

As for the rest, though, it’s pretty much the same. That means, unfortunately, the bulk of the game is mandatory online (and the associated anti-cheat). Apart from a few bits and pieces here and there, if you want to do anything – whether it’s build a franchise or play out a solo career – you have to be online. While I get that the game wants to send you to its online hub and spend money to buy Virtual Currency, if you’re just interested in playing solo it doesn’t seem like it adds much.

And, of course, this wouldn’t be an NBA2K game unless there was that aforementioned Virtual Currency. Like every other year in recent (and not-so-recent, at this point) memory, the game basically gives you two options: spend a whole lot of real money on top of the cost of the game just to make your fictional player good, or spend hours upon hours grinding it out to improve them. Admittedly, if you’re willing to pursue either of those options, you’ll find yourself with an insanely good player, but it means that the game is a much harder sell for anyone who just wants a casual, pick-up-and-play experience.

The flipside of this being the same old NBA2K, however, is that the gameplay itself is second-to-none. The presentation feels like a real basketball game, the players move smoothly and naturally, and it looks fantastic. As with every other year, once you get into a game and away from all the superfluous stuff, it’s hard not to have a very good time.

The question is, though, is it a better time than you’d have in 2K26, or 2K25, or 2K24, etc.? And truthfully, it’s hard to say that it is. It’s unquestionably a well-made game, and as someone who also plays MLB The Show every year I appreciate how much effort 2K puts into at least pretending they’re trying to differentiate each new edition. But, like every annualized sports game, you don’t see a massive swing in quality or content from one year to the next. NBA 2K27 is a very good game, but don’t expect it to be new or groundbreaking.

2K provided us with a NBA 2K27 PC code for review purposes.