Golf Story - 29/52

     I don’t like sports.  I feel like that’s unsurprising considering I’m a huge nerd writing a video game blog but I feel like it deserves an actual confirmation.  I don’t click with various sports for numerous reasons, lack of coordination, asthma, general lack of interest in anything that doesn’t feature a minimum seven chances for me to come out as weeb trash.  Sports games are usually not any better for me.  I have distinct memories of an unsuccessful attempt to get involved in a PS2 era Madden game that I sort of inherited from my brother that I just did not get at all.  That is until the Wii era of games introduced me to two sports I could actually work with.  One of which was golf.  Wii Sports Resort is probably my third most played game for the Wii just because of how often I would play Golf with my friends.  Golf being as slow as it is probably keyed into my RPG background and that’s why I clicked with it like I did.  In fact, it’s very surprising in hindsight that it took this long for us to get a full-fledged, well-known golf RPG.  This is Golf Story.

Pictured, the beginning of every RPG ever made.

     So, stop me if you’ve heard this one before, future people who can’t actually stop me.  A scrappy, down-on-his-luck golfer decides to quit his job and pursue his lifelong dream of becoming a professional golfer.  But everywhere he goes, he’s faced with adversity from his peers, his trainers, his family and, most importantly, himself.  But somehow, in spite of it all, he manages to gain the glory and become the golfer his father always believed him to be.  Along the way he’ll make some friends, make some enemies, build rivalries and hone his skills until he finally wins the world championship and more than likely gives all his money to the one kid who believed in him along the way which was just him as nobody actually believes in him at any point in this game.  It’s the tried and true sports story formula.

     I wasn’t overly wowed by this game’s story.  It feels more like a proof of concept that a Golf RPG could work rather than a serious attempt at making one.  It’s just so generic.  Even though I didn’t grow up with a love of sports, I did end up watching a lot of sports movies and they basically all play like this.  I may have expected too much, admittedly.  I heard the words ‘Golf RPG’ and thought I was going to be getting a full on fantasy epic but instead of battles, I had to go nine holes with some evil clown who wants to ascend to godhood.  But I can’t help but feel like I would’ve been disappointed with Golf Story’s story either way.

     Golf Story subscribes to the traditional three-click system of golf games.  Each swing is set to three phases and, subsequently, three clicks, one to aim, one to select power and one to select accuracy, with the latter two being timing based.  It is a simple and tried formula for golf games and, while I prefer the Wii style of simulation where you’re attempting an approximation of what it’s like to actually golf, there’s still a lot of charm to the traditional ways.  And to Golf Story’s credit, it’s one of the best examples of this style I’ve seen in a long time.  The golfing in this is super intuitive and really fun, with a surprising amount of options on how to navigate each course based on your club setup.  Make no mistake, regardless of any criticism I might hold against Golf Story, the golfing itself is very good.


     Speaking of club setup, this is the part of Golf Story that is most clearly reminiscent of the RPG genre.  Rather than having all your clubs just be standard for each course, your golfer has an equipment screen where you can mix and match your own set of Woods, Irons, Wedges, and Putters that you collect over the course of the game.  There are shops to buy them, side quests to do where you get them and it seems like there are 3-5 kinds of each club for you to find and use.  Some of them even have a number of special abilities unique to them, such as the Skimming Woods allowing you to bounce your ball across water traps or the Whirly Putter allowing you to curve your putts.  It gives you a lot of different options to find the setup that’s right for you.  Unfortunately, it isn’t a fully customizable equipment setup, which is understandable given the general simple, user-friendly design of the game but is a huge disappointment for fully establishing your own unique style.  I found often that I would’ve preferred to only have, say, one of the super powerful pro woods for distance, a skimming wood for technique, the sand wedge for trap scenarios, the 68-degree wedge for specialized shots, etc.

Apparently, Mini-Golf isn't just what teenagers and drunk adults do on double dates.

     Golf Story is packed with cool content.  For as uninteresting as the main story was, I found a lot of the sidequests in this game to be super cool and incredibly creative.  For every simple, easy starting quest like ‘get a certain distance on the driving range’ you have tons of interesting challenges like ‘play an entire golf course made up of different parts of different holes’ or ‘get under a certain score on a course using only your putter’.  I spent a majority of my playthrough trying to complete as many of these challenges as I could just because of how much fun I was having with them.  Not to mention the alternate golfing modes that are in this game, such as disc golf, mini golf, and lawn bowling.  Not only do most of these work super well and are just as fun as the actual golfing, they’re arguably more fun.  I gained a brand new respect for Disc Golf that I’ve never had previously just because of how much fun it seemed in this game.  And the mini golf course in this thing is excellent.  It’s really very unfortunate that once you beat these three alternate modes, you don’t get to play them again, they’re super fun.

This wizard you engage in the only real boss fight in the game with is the most relatable character.

     One of the more potentially divisive elements of Golf Story is its humor.  At this point, you basically can’t make an RPG without it being super jokey unless your name is Square Enix.  Golf Story attempts to use its humor as a way to get you engrossed in the game, with a lot of characters personalities being defined entirely by a combination of their humor and their specific stereotype.  Humor is tricky, though.  What everyone thinks is funny is entirely dependant on the person of course.  And, yeah, I think Golf Story was more obnoxious than anything.  Don’t get me wrong, some jokes, characters and funny settings did click with me.  I’m quite partial to this section near the middle of the game where you investigate a murder mystery that may involve a werewolf only for there to not have been a murder or a werewolf and it was just some guy trying to cover up that he isn’t playing golf entirely by the rules.  And the spooky Halloween course is full to brim with funny characters and scenarios.  But, for the most part, Golf Story’s sense of humor leans very heavily into the mean-spirited.  The majority of jokes are done at the main character and, by extension, the player’s expense, constantly berating and belittling him without him necessarily realizing because he’s a lovable idiot.  It’s very similar to the kind of humor that the dynamic of Strong Bad and Homestar was built on in Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People, and much like that game, I just didn’t click with it.  I think I fully tuned out about halfway in when two characters stop the game dead in its tracks to have a full four-minute long rap battle of just golf puns and the player is just held hostage while it’s happening.

Literal course design.

      Golf Story had a difficult paradox to work through in terms of course design.  Golf Story in total has eight courses of nine holes for you to play through of increasing difficulty.  Normally golf courses are designed with a heavy emphasis on fair but difficult design, which would seemingly be beneficial for a progression-based RPG.  But golf courses largely don’t have especially strong theming and usually can look very samey.  So you have this conflict present here between fair course design and theming for a progress-based RPG.  So I don’t necessarily fault Golf Story for its decision to focus more on theming courses instead of wasting its time attempting to find a balance that might not be there  I just feel like, as a result of this decision, the actual appeal of Golf Story, the golfing, ends up wearing thin.

   Golf Story initially isn’t too bad.  The first course, Wellworn Grove, is your standard golf course.  Nice balance of fairway to rough, quick holes without too much hassle, it’s a solid if easy course.  The second course, Lurker Valley, isn’t too bad either.  It hits heavier on the traps and has more rough, but it’s a nice, fair step up in difficulty from Wellworn Grove.  It’s about the third course that I personally feel Golf Story starts losing its magic.  Cheekybeak Peak isn’t too terrible when you get down to it, but this is where Golf Story stops being about playing golf and starts being about training you for playing golf.  Cheekybeak Peak serves as basically one long tutorial on how to play against the wind.  Admittedly a necessary skill to have, but one that derails the game to learn.  Similarly, the next new course, Bermuda Isles, is just a long tutorial on how to play against sand and water traps.  The fact that these two courses are basically themed to be tutorials for skills the game doesn’t need to teach you as overbearingly as they do just absolutely destroys the pacing of the first half of the story and gives you two not entirely fun courses to play in doing so.

To give you an idea of how miserable Blue Moon Dunes was for me, I totally forgot this fairy existed.

     But the second half of the game is worse.  At this point your golfer is on the road to being a real pro and to do so, he needs to take off to schmooze the old guard at Tidy Park.  Tidy Park is the worst thing ever.  The theme of Tidy Park is that the old guard is so into keeping things as they are without major changes that they’ve let their course overgrow.  Rough is now Deep Rough, Fairway is now Rough and the Green is usually now Fairway.  I think I get what the game was going for here, a severe ramp up in difficulty in course design to show that it’s no longer playing.  But it’s also not especially fun.  The sixth course, Oak Manor, is honestly the last fun course in my opinion.  It’s the spooky course I’ve mentioned previously and while it’s not necessarily the strongest course in the world, it has absolutely wonderful theming and some interesting hole setups testing all your previously learned golfing skills.  After that it’s just a boring snow course and Blue Moon Dunes, which is the final course before the end and I spent 13 hours on it before beating it because I was always one stroke off and I cannot fairly discuss how is it as a course because it made me never want to look at a golf game again.

     So, I didn’t like Golf Story.  Unlike, say, Brutal Legend though, I can totally see why people really dig this game.  It has really good golfing and if the course design and humor don't bug you, yeah, go for it.  Me, I’m just blah on it.  I was so done with Golf Story after spending 13 hours of my life on a single course that I uninstalled it the moment I was done without sticking around for the credits.  I really want this whole Golf RPG thing to work though and I’d definitely be down for a sequel for reasons other than my obligation to do it since I played the original.  As always, thanks for reading and we’ll be back next time with the most innovative shooter of all time.  See you guys then.