As a strictly offline player I stayed with 25. I just like the way it plays. I started a Magic/Bird era as the Lakers on default Superstar. Short 22 game season with 1-3-5-7 playoff format. I predictably cruised through the regular season finishing 19-3. Cruised mostly through the Playoffs to the Finals where I met the Celtics. I had beaten the Celtics by 13 in the regular season. I shockingly went down 3-0 in the series including a 30 point beat down in game 3. My Lakers responded in Game 4 winning by 15. Then won Game 5. Game 6 was close then I had a 1 point lead with seconds left with about 5 seconds left difference between game and shot clock. I let the clock wind down but then Gerald Henderson stole the ball and laid it in to put Celtics up 1 with 1 second to go. What a way to lose the Finals! But wait, inbound to Kareem and he hits the hook to win game 6! Game 7 at home I mostly cruised to the Championship coming back from a 3-0 deficit. What a series!
-
-
As an offline players who has 26, I can comfortably say that this game is garbage for people who like sim gameplay. Like, utter garbage. So many aspects of BASKETBALL(!!!!!!) are missing from this game for people who want to play realistically, for example: fouls barely exist (even with slider and roster adjustments, good luck getting realistic numbers), completing a simple alley oop has now become a needlessly complex mini game, making any shot when a defender is ANYWHERE near you is damn near impossible, meaning contested jumpshots are IMPOSSIBLE and layups are HARDER than open 3's(!?!?), This means offence basically works 1 of 2 ways: open shot make or contested shot miss. There is ZERO in-between, it might sound trivial, but after you play for a while and notice it, its completely immersion breaking. Players like Luka, Shai, Embiid etc who cant make a shot if theres a defender near them? and if you adjust sliders to where the defence matters less, EVERYTHING becomes open, so they will almost never miss... Stick to 25, use a custom roster (like ATD) and enjoy a proper basketball sim, because this game (26) is NOT itComment
-
so has the tendencies being completely broken been fixed?Comment
-
NBA 2K26 is amazing, it corrects a lot of bad stuff from 2025 such as physics, AI decision making, animations are FINALLY quicker, defensive settings are finally working, the AI is much much smarter on offense and both defense.
The main issue being as usual, default roster is garbage. It is built to feed real players ego based on OVR ratings, but in terms of attributes, tendencies, playbooks and so on it’s a pure garbage.
Therefore you have to use a custom roster, where the owner basically changed everything to provide a realistic gameplay. And from my experience is doable, you can have a look to the CoY Roster project, we have been correcting all these issues thanks to data science and mathematics to replicate each player real life behaviour.
Please find some examples :
Comment
-
I’d like to know if defensive settings actually work or are they still broken especially hedging before I buy it.Comment
Comment