The actual basketball in NBA MT Coins is sublime, with the series continued to make small tweaks and improvements with every installment. This year, a number of those bothersome out-of-bounds situations are tightened up, but the biggest change is the shooting. While button shooting still exists, stick shooting attempts to provide closer hands, and after originally having a punishing difficulty curve, a fast implemented hotfix makes it run much simpler. On the court, you couldn't ask for more.

Off the court, it's another story. VC (or digital Currency) flows through everything, blocking off a few issues from the otherwise top class MyCareer manner, and forcing you to choose between either upgrading your MyCareer pro or enhancing your MyTeam roster. Of course, the game actually wants you to do both, but to do that, you need to invest more actual money in-game. It's not just that microtransactions are found, it is that the game pushes them so hard it damages your enjoyment of MyCareer, puts barriers ahead of your entry to The Neighborhood, also sees most offline modes missing out.

First, let's lace up our Nikes and head to the courtroom. The NBA 2K series has always been a half step ahead of FIFA (along with a couple ahead of Madden) in terms of raw sports simulation. After tightening up defense last year, taking home the crown as the top sports sim on the market ought to have been a simple alley-oop for NBA 2K21. It feels like they've missed the dip but put in the rebound. The passing, running, and defensive work is as clean as quick as it was last year, but this improvement has attracted in stick shooting along with the customary button play, as well as Cheap NBA 2K21 MT changing how the shooting meter both looks and works.