Golf Story (Switch)
Even in some of the best golf games, any sort of campaign or career mode is mostly going to be tied to playing golf in a fairly traditional manner. Get your ball to the hole in few enough strokes across enough courses and there’s your single player story mode. Rather appropriately though, Golf Story goes for having much more to its plot than just winning match after match, not only spending some time on a narrative with amusing characters but constructing some activities to engage with that get much more out of the adventure than normal golf play.
After years away from the sport, one day the unnamed player character moves out of his house to pursue a life as a golf pro. However, even his early efforts to just acquire a coach seem to hit unexpected snags, few believing he has any potential and the social climate of the golf world more of an impediment then he first figured. His journey to playing in the big leagues ends up being more adventurous than he could have expected, the player heading to many different golf courses and meeting eccentric characters on their path to earn a chance to play on the professional course. A good deal of the writing leans in towards a comedic tone that keeps things light-hearted and fun even as the player character can often end up belittled along the way, a good supporting cast and some unusual situations spicing up an otherwise fairly calm sport. An immediate stand out is the pink-haired Lara who becomes a quick rival to the player, the fellow novice starting off abrasive and with a golf swing that is more anger than athleticism but she learns how to hone her swing and becomes a more capable competitor at different points in the plot. A golfer named Max Yards becomes an egotistical barrier to the big leagues as he refuses to believe anyone lower than him can beat his incredible distance-focused golfing style, but almost on the other end are the old men of Tidy Park who you’ll need to play in a deliberately poor but still precise way to earn their favor.
Golf Story’s plot has quite a few side quests and activities that break away from typical golf matches, many of them actually brilliantly designed to help acclimate you to certain elements of golf such as anticipating how strong the wind will impact a ball’s flight or how you should try to over come slopes on the green. There are times you’ll need to hit into specific target zones with unusual complications like needing to worm the ball around patches of snow or bounce your ball off turtles in the water, many of these challenges having some wiggle room so you can get a feel for the challenge instead of immediately failing if you don’t get it first try. It is a bit bothersome you aren’t able to retry any challenges, even the simplest ones, while still in them, meaning sometimes if it’s a foregone loss all you can do is play through and then speak to whoever gives you the quest to try again, but this design does at least encourage you to try and make up for bad play in the actual tournaments rather than leaning on easily revoking mistakes with a reset. Most side quests are pretty brisk as well, it fairly easy to break off from the main plot for a bit to indulge in the little unique challenges they provide. It is remarkably clever how well these help refine your skill as well despite also offering unique and enjoyable diversions, and while the late game ones do get perhaps too demanding in terms of precision they also aren’t necessary for completing the game.
Admittedly some side quests are pretty basic, a few are just about running around an area in a little race that doesn’t really test your golf skill much, but they are counterbalanced by plenty more interesting ones. For example, not only is finding the mini-golf course already a bit of a scavenger hunt, once you’re in there you find a group of scientists who take it far too seriously in an aversion of the usual idea behind the more family friendly twist to the sport. Actually playing the mini-golf challenge is a good test of ricocheting putts and managing power as well, many other challenges like the driving range also teaching things like the value of a good bounce when the distance otherwise seems unreachable. While much of the plot is grounded albeit written rather humorously, you also do have some dalliances into the absurd, a fairly early mission already having you break apart animated skeletons with your golf balls as its goal. However, the supernatural actually appears only in limited amounts and is better for it, it being a good while before you see anything of the sort again so that the game doesn’t drop an otherwise realistic approach to the sport. You will still find some places with unusual theming, the second course having people who speak like cavemen but its mostly part of Lurker Valley’s aesthetic where tar pits serve as hazards and some of the course designs feature fossils or stretches of course shaped like footprints for more setting variety.
The areas you visit are often much more than just golf courses, including optional activities to get involved with like disc golf or things to dig up once your pitching wedge is upgraded to be more like a shovel. These diversions give you a bit more to do than just run around doing little golf practice games and Golf Story gets rather creative with them at times as well. The beach course has a trading sequence to figure out and you even eventually find yourself getting caught up in solving a mystery elsewhere, but even the stretches where golf isn’t the main focus usually try to slip it in somewhere or at least be conceptually similar like disc golf’s focus on guiding the disc through the air to reach a set destination. When it is time to step up for a full course run or tournament you won’t feel like you need to acclimate yourself since you’ve never strayed too far from the core mechanics, and those side activities can have appreciable benefits like the experience you gain from each one allowing you to level up your stats like your strength and how little your swings will deviate from their intended path. Cash is also an important reward since you can buy better equipment, some having simple benefit like hitting farther while others can add extra options like adding a curve to a putt or hitting a wedge shot at a variety of angles. You even a get a few special skills you can activate while out on the links, options like increasing the power of your swing or ignoring the wind and terrain type your ball is on costing some energy that is slowly regained through playing through the rest of the course. These extra powers aren’t necessary to succeed but can give you an edge as the competition starts stepping up their game, but by the time you do reach those harder competitions you’ll have been trained up surprisingly well by all the fun little activities that also built your golfer’s stats up.
For the actual play itself, Golf Story is a 2D top down golf game where the courses are usually fairly flat. Only the green has any slope to it, but wind will impact the flight path of your swing, both slope and wind indicated by arrows in the top right. Luckily the story does do a great job of giving you a feel for how different levels of wind and slope will impact your play, and while courses do have unique hazards, something like a puddle, tar, or ice will behave at least somewhat similarly to a sand bunker or rough patch of grass so you can work your way out of it without having to think too outside of the box. The course design has a wide range of ideas though that encourage different degrees of risk taking and special maneuvers. Some may have hazards like molerats and birds that will move your ball if it comes too close to them, helpful indicators ensuring you know where to avoid or even where to potentially target if you know that creature might move it up the course instead of into the rough. Other courses rely on more grounded complications, the beach course having a lot of hitting between islands so the danger of hitting the ball into the water is fairly present. A graveyard themed course has plenty of little objects your ball might bounce off of if you aren’t careful, but even more mundane concepts like the normal green golf courses can have things like a hole with no putting green around it that provide an unusual complication that injects additional complexity but not confusion.
The basics of hitting in Golf Story are easily understood but allow for a good deal of adjustment. When you’re ready to hit the ball you press a button, an indicator moving along a meter to determine your stroke strength. Once you press that button again, the indicator moves back towards a purple area, the player wanting to hit in the center of it to make their shot fly as intended without hooking in any direction. A large line representing the ball’s flight path can be adjusted before you swing to give you an idea where the ball will fall, and while the camera unfortunately won’t let you stray too far from the ball’s expected destination, you can swap clubs to try and get a feel for the nearby space and figure out where you want to aim for. One interesting and extremely helpful idea comes in the form of Precision Mode, the player able to adjust their target destination while an indicator for the new strength level shows in the meter. Rather than trying to eyeball how strong you need to be below the maximum, you can set your target spot and try to hit it, good reflexes still needed to get that exact spot but the player is able to better manage the information to hit where they want to go. Naturally different surfaces might impact how it rolls after and the wind isn’t accounted for in where the line predicts you’ll land, but Precision Mode alone lets you have far better control over the distance you want to hit and things like changing the hit point on your ball are remarkably easy as well so you can bend a shot around a tree or pitch it up and over a barrier. The story again introduces these concepts and even tells you about side benefits like making your shot roll further after it lands by hitting the right spot on the ball, the player able to make constant informed and involved decisions on how they approach a hole rather than hoping they eyeballed things right. The only real annoyance found in using Precision Mode is the fact you can’t see the slope of the destination if it’s not the endpoint of the pre-adjusted line, although that may be better blamed on the game not even attempting to show the elevation shifts of the green.
A few ideas do come up a little short, the story introducing a rarely used “hot potato” maneuver where you toss a ball up and hit it while it’s in the air that is spaced out too much to get a feel for, but it also finds ways to spice up regular golf. Sometimes you will be playing courses just to try and get the lowest score, the goal being for the performance on each hole to add up to less than how well your opponents did. With your control and options for hitting the ball, getting birdies and eagles isn’t out of the question but it’s not so easy it loses its thrill, and earning medals for each hole on a course for doing so well becomes an optional goal if you want more out of the adventure after beating it. However, there is also Match Play, where golf instead becomes about winning on a hole by hole basis. Even if you do horrendously on one hole in this format it won’t matter, just as long as you outperform your opposition on enough holes to win more rounds. Two player golf with another human player is an option as well where you can choose your course and rules including things like large holes or minimal impediments if you don’t want prospective players to be too dependent on tight skill to have a chance. In story though you can even have match play where first someone else does your first hit, the player needing to worm their way out of a bad drop or strange spot to still win the hole. Usually if Golf Story is doing something, be it normal golf, a side activity, or the writing, you can usually expect an imaginative and amusing approach that is backed up by some mechanical depth and a sound structure.
THE VERDICT: Golf Story wins your heart first with an amusing story and endearing characters before it provides its remarkably varied golfing quests and story missions, all of them ingeniously training you and acclimating you to systems that pay off with more than just entertaining and challenging side content. Golf Story helps you grow into a better golfer in ways beyond just giving you new tools and betters stats, the player gaining an understanding that gels well with the range of options they’re granted to make informed swings that still pack some challenge even after your understand their intricacies. A few areas come up a little short like the execution of the putting green, but clever and imaginative design and an appealing world make Golf Story one of the best executions of 2D golf available on top of having an entertaining adventure over top it.
And so, I give Golf Story for Nintendo Switch…
A GREAT rating. It really is a shame that the handling of slopes on the green wasn’t done perfectly since otherwise Golf Story does so much to make its golfing mechanics easy to learn, adapt to, and utilize. Precision Mode is an excellent boon in helping the player hit where they’re aiming without robbing it of the difficulty since you still need to get the timing down and account for things like the wind and terrain. Gimmicks on the golf courses are reasonable and not overwhelming, the player able to treat things like the interfering wildlife much like a sand bunker or water hazard with a bit of a twist rather than needing to overhaul how they approach a course when they crop up. However, side content can get a bit more wild with the shakeups while still implementing the golf mechanics into them expertly. A lot of fun and varied ideas give the golfing more legs than just aiming for holes at the end of courses and the game takes a few appreciated breaks from it to dabble in other sports or give you extras to uncover. The story is a surprisingly good addition as well, the sports plot pretty simple on a surface level but the situations and characters elevate it further, especially since you aren’t sure where it might go at times. Sometimes its golf drama, sometimes there are undead creatures, and all the while you get to know your eccentric supporting cast enough its nice to hang out with them or take them down a peg on the links. A few half-baked ideas won’t spoil the bunch and Golf Story even has some legs for after completing the game if you want to play multiplayer or tackle the tougher side quests you really need to be a deft hand at golf to overcome, but the main story is still a wonderful ride because it provides a framework just as interesting as the golf mechanics it is supporting.
Golf Story is a role-playing game at the end of the day, some stats being improved and equipment getting swapped out over the course of the adventure, but while this element motivates you to engage with the side content, the quality and learning opportunities of the extra quests feel like they would have been justified and worthwhile even without the rewards that increase your character’s capabilities. Golf Story teaches you how to golf with its systems that are responsive and easy to use and understand. There will always be a wish for some visual representation for the slopes, the game even making sure the invisible wind is indicated somewhat in how plants move, but this golfing journey is filled with plenty of charm layered over top play that rarely comes up short, and when it does, it’s still worth it to play through since the rest of the story is designed to delight and test your ability in equal measure.