Golf Story - REVIEW (Nintendo Switch)

At first glance, Golf Story looks like someone took a Super Nintendo and smashed it together
with a title from the Mario Golf series.
It has a visual style reminiscent of many games found on Nintendo’s 16-bit juggernaut,
gameplay modeled after Camelot’s older Mario Golf games, and humor that evokes memories
of Earthbound, the fan-favorite gold-standard for RPGs that take place in a contemporary
setting.
Which may leave you wondering — is Golf Story on par with its obvious influences?
Let’s find out.
Right off the bat — or, club — Golf Story, in classic storytelling fashion, begins with
a flashback to the unnamed main character’s childhood, where we learn that golf was once
a big part of his life but is only now returning after a twenty year hiatus.
While simple at first, the plot does eventually begin to complicate although the final goal
of winning the pro tournament is always in sight.
For example, stealthing my way past snow bandits to steal golf balls is still somehow relevant
to gaining access to the pro tournament.
From the start, I was pulled in by the story that Sidebar Games was trying to tell.
The first half of the game has your character constantly underestimated, despite performing
well at every challenge thrown his way.
This humorous belittlement kept me engaged in the plot, encouraged me to prove everyone
wrong, and had me on the lookout for every little joke or pun.
It doesn’t take much to complete the main story — only nine full courses must be beaten
to gain access to the pro tournament.
And along the way, NPCs are scattered throughout the courses with challenges for you to complete,
which vary in both difficulty and length.
Some will have you putting the ball into small areas, while others will have you playing
up to nine holes.
The reward is always cash and experience points.
The money allows you to buy new and better clubs while the experience allows you to increase
golfing attributes such as drive length and accuracy, lending the game more of an RPG
feel.
While the desire to prove the NPCs wrong and improve my skills was a great motivator for
the first half of the game, that driving factor seemed to fade on the back nine.
After my character’s coach and close friends gained more faith in me, there wasn’t much
pushing me forward except for that far-off goal of winning the pro tournament.
Luckily the game keeps a similar level of charm throughout, maintaining the fun of discovering
new courses and completing challenges.
However, the story seemed to take a backseat as the game progressed.
There was a standout mystery mission in the latter half of the game, but it seemed like
most of the story consisted of visiting new locations and just beating those golf courses.
As far as the actual golfing is concerned, I found the controls and mechanics to be nearly
perfect.
You can change clubs to adjust the overall distance of your shot, in addition to utilizing
‘precision mode,’ which further allows you to control your swing.
The game also includes the ability to change where on the ball your club will make contact,
allowing you to curve the ball in ways that seem inhumanly possible.
Besides my character’s insane golfing ability, I found the physics and realism of everything
that takes place after the hit to be pretty spot on — minus the moles and turtles that
may help or hinder the ball’s placement.
The way the ball bounced and rolled across the fairway and green felt fair and accurate,
never allowing me to be frustrated at the game itself, only my ability to carefully
choose where and how hard I hit the ball.
While the controls are not explained extremely well in the beginning, I did find it pretty
easy to learn how to hit the golf ball.
Chatting with NPCs also helped, since many handed out challenges that simultaneously
taught me a new mechanic and rewarded me with the usual quest goodies.
In addition to the standard method, there are three other forms of golfing: mini-golf,
disc golf, and drone golf.
Mini golf proved to be the most fun, since it took the already well-established mechanics
of standard golf and restricted them to putting.
Disc golf can be fun when you get the hang of it, but the crazy controls had me more
frustrated than I would have liked.
Golf Story grants you total control of the disc as it’s flying, but, confusingly, the
controls match the direction the disc is facing.
So for instance, if you throw the disc south, pressing left will send the disc to the right
on screen, since that is the disc’s relative left direction.
It’s more confusing than it should be, and the controls get in the way of how much fun
disc golf could potentially be.
Drone golf doesn’t show up until the very end of the game and there’s not much to
do once unlocked, since I only had a few challenges to complete with the drone.
It’s fun, but it definitely could use more content to really be considered its own mode.
I found the art of Golf Story to be extremely well crafted.
It features extraordinarily well made sprites that harken back to the SNES era of games.
The game sticks to this aesthetic for everything except the text boxes and the UI — and for
a good reason, specifically in the text boxes’ case.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen more expressive text boxes in a video game.
They would grow, shrink, and rotate all depending on the speaker’s mood and expression.
It really gave life and emotion to characters when the art couldn’t, something that can
be is difficult to overcome when limited to 16-bit sprites.
In the sound department, everything seemed to click.
Sidebar Games seems to have gone the extra mile with the sound effects and converted
them all into HD rumble vibrations, which made every bounce of the ball and every hit
of the golf club immediately satisfying.
The music was fitting for each course as well.
The haunted course felt spooky, the old-timers’ course felt preppy, and the beach course felt
tropical.
When putting, the music even changed to an intense tune — making that final hit all
the more nerve wracking.
While none of the songs have stuck with me, they did the job of setting the mood at the
very least.
For those that want a break from the main game, Golf Story also features a two player
mode, where you can change the course, wind speed, and other attributes for whatever kind
of game you desire.
I tried it with a friend, and we had a great time.
It definitely provides a change of pace from the story mode, removing the pressure of wanting
to advance the plot that is omnipresent in every match.
Overall, I found Golf Story to be a fun, light-hearted RPG that’s fairly easy to pick up and kept
me engaged most of the way through.
The plot and gameplay do drag on a bit at the end, as the later courses don’t do enough
to change up the formula, and it really felt like I was just going through the same motions
over and over again to complete the game.
Regardless, Golf Story is well-crafted and it brings life to a unique genre of games
that hasn’t been present on a Nintendo console in a long time.
I liked Golf Story, and I can’t wait to see what Sidebar Games will work on next.
Thanks for watching and be sure to subscribe to GameXplain for more on Nintendo indies
and other things gaming too.
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Golf Story - REVIEW (Nintendo Switch)

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