My impressions thus far. Some good, a lot of bad.

I have Play Pro on PC, and have put probably about 7 or 8 hours into the game so far.

My PC specs:
i9 10900K stock
RTX 3080 10GB
32GB RAM

I don't have a lot of time, so I'll keep it simple and give 5 good and 5 bad impressions....

Positives:

1. Game is frickin gorgeous. Without a doubt the prettiest golf game ever made. Aside from a few inconsistently dropped frames on fly-bys and ball follows, it's smooth as glass. Playing some of the coastal holes is sweet therapy. I did notice a couple of small texture issues, but nothing major and almost not worth mentioning.

2. Sounds are great. The ocean, the birds, the ambient sounds... all wonderful. Like the graphics, therapeutic. I also love how the crowd hushes when you're ready to shoot. Nice touch.

3. Overall, the presentation is really good. I mean *really* good. It looks and sounds like a modern PGA game should, which lends a strong sense of authenticity. Very attractive.

4. Gameplay is, overall, very good. Now that I've spent some time with it, and improved my golfer's accuracy skills a bit, I find it has a nice balance. Challenging, but fair. I play on the hardest difficulty, with all aids turned off except the power meter. All is not perfect, however. Far from it.

5. A proper career mode with real major tournments, with adjustable AI difficulty before you start a tournament. I truly appreciate this.

Bonus: When I was 18, the original PGA Tour for Sega Genesis was released. I *loved* that game, and readily recall how much I thought about it when I wasn't playing it. It was something I always wanted to get back to whenever possible, and it actually got me interested in real golf. Same with TW14, which I consider to be the best golf game ever made. At the height of it, it's all I wanted to play. And when this new game is firing on all cylinders, it gives me the same feeling those older games did. It makes me want to play as much, and as often, as I can.

Unfortunately, it doesn't always fire on all cylinders and, in some ways, feels like it's half-baked, and simply not ready for release. In others, it feels completely at odds with the authenticity established by the presentation.

Negatives:

1. No mouse swing. On a PC golf game? This is just patently ridiculous, especially considering the pedigree of TW games on the PC. I know 3C is coming, but something tells me mouse swing isn't. And I am equal parts angry and stupefied.

2. Shot feedback does not always equal what happens on a shot. Far too often, probably around 1 in 5 shots, a shot will go errant, to varying degrees, while the feedback shows everything was good. Or, conversely, feedback will show trouble, but the shot sails along fine. Maybe there's something about the game I don't understand, but I'm not making the connection in these circumstances. If it's a mild error, it's frustrating. When it costs me a stroke or two, it's infuriating.

3. I honestly don't understand how the factors affecting a shot's timing work, or the effects they actually have. If I overswing, what does that do? If my shot is slow or fast, what does that do? What causes the ball (in the feedback on the bottom right) to wobble while it's in flight? I think I've found a correlation between the wobble and a resulting hook/slice, but I still don't know what causes it, or how to avoid it.

4. The triple-bogey pickup (where the hole automatically ends after the 3rd shot over par). Seriously, man. What. The. [Edit - Admin.]!? I could see this as a welcomed option in multiplayer with randoms, as a way to thwart griefers who just want to knock the ball around and waste everyone's time, but a forced feature? In single player mode? In *career*!? In *tournaments*!? That has no business whatsoever in single-player play but, if it has to exist, it needs to be an option. If that isn't either patched out or patched into an option, I will stop playing this game. I mean it. If lack of mouse swing isn't a gamekiller for me (it's real close), this triple-bogey bs definitely is.

5. As far as I can tell, there's no alternate turns in multiplayer, not even in private matches. Every one shoots simultaneously. When my friends and I play, we like to watch each other shoot. But at the moment, we can't. This needs to be made an option, or we won't be playing it.

Bonus: I have to unlock the ability to putt from the fringe? WTF?

There's a great game in here, if EA is willing to put the time in to chisel off the nonsense, and polish the potential. But as it stands, I can't give it higher than a 5/10. It sucks, in spite of its strong positives.

Ya know, I don't get EA. They literally made the best golf game of all time 10 years ago. All they have to do is update it. Modernize it. But, for whatever reason, they are now incapable of producing real quality, it seems, even after they already have.

I'll be watching to see what EA patches and acknowledges in the days and weeks to come. I still have Play Pro for like another 5 months. That's exactly how long I'll give it. EA has been a major disappointment to me this past year, and PGA was my final consideration. If it still sucks in September, I won't be renewing Play Pro.