Golf Story is a sports game with RPG elements for the Nintendo Switch. It's among the first indie games I heard about for the Switch, and immediately added it to my list. It's a golf game in the spirit of the handheld Mario Golf games for the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance, and seeing as I loved the GBA game so much, I was very eager to try out its spiritual successor.
You control an up and coming golfer in this game, trying your best to become a pro golfer. It's a trope seen frequently in games of this sort, and is perfectly great. Along the way you'll meet a colorful cast of characters who will either impede or aid in your quest to golf greatness. You have to finish numerous little challenges on each course to unlock one final challenge, which will typically unlock the next course. There are several courses to play (I didn't count them, but I think it's at least 6), and each has its own little environmental hazards to deal with. As you complete challenges, you'll not only proceed through the story, but also be rewarded with cash and experience that you can use to buy better gear and improve your golfer to your liking.
The mechanics of the game are the typical three-click system, which is also great. I'd hate for them to break up something so perfect, and am very glad that they didn't. You get the usual options in addition to the basic three clicks, including striking the ball at certain locations to increase/decrease spin and loft, drawing back your club power a bit to lay up for shots, and the use of a variety of power/specialty shots.
The golf physics themselves are very good. You'll rarely be hit with a surprise-how you hit it is typically how it flies. The putting mechanics are very good, and are the best 2D golf putting mechanics to date. Every green just has a simple slope denoted by an arrow and a word, showing how it slopes and how severely, making aiming very simple.
The graphics are ok, I guess. I feel like they could have done something much prettier with them, to be honest, but they're basically a 16 bit approximation, which feels like the right stylistic choice.
The music is so bad that I turned it off. I mean, it's really, really bad. I never do this with games, but I simply couldn't take it anymore. What's worse, they don't even give you an option to turn off the music inside of the campaign mode, forcing you to back up to the main menu to turn it off.
I rarely found the writing in this game compelling or interesting. There were a few times I would laugh at some of the antics of the characters, but it was mostly very dry, and I was frankly tired of it by the end. It also felt that the story was filled with challenges that had precious little to do with golfing, or was just filler to waste time. If I have to shoot 6 out of 9 balls into a circle again...and that's nothing compared to the bizarre half hour I spent solving a murder mystery. Your opportunities for match play and tournament play are few and far between, and skirt around the actual fun golf physics that this team put together.
If you really like golf games, this is a perfectly fine choice. I got it on sale for 9.99, which felt just about right. But I can't help but feel that with better music, better writing, and a more diverse set of golf related activities along the way, this would have been a game to which I would have returned again and again. Instead, I'll cross it off the list, and probably never return. I'll give it a 7.0/10.
I still haven't decided which console game to clear next, as I'm currently having a tremendous amount of fun sticking to my New Years' resolution by replaying some old favorites, so keep an eye out for a new handheld review in the next few days, in all likelihood, and a console review next month or so, if I had to guess.
-TRO
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