30. Golf Story (Sidebar Games, Switch, 2017)

Golf Story is an RPG with classic golf video game mechanics. I played it for about 5 hours and took notes as I played, so my thoughts are a bit more scattered than usual here:

I don’t really like the text boxes, the text only has one scroll speed and is unskippable and I don’t read that slow. It lends more personality sometimes but mostly it’s tedious.

The music is chill and full of brass and bass, which I appreciate, though sometimes it's a bit too sparse.

So I spent a few minutes doing odd golf jobs around the course to scrape together $14.45 to afford a lesson, and then the coach pays me $3 when I do what he says.

I don’t love the pixel art, and each course has a flag that’s in 3D for some reason.

My favorite part is interacting with the world, but there's not a huge amount of that.

It’s the best 2D golf game I’ve ever played because it’s not super strict with the timing, and (just like Kirbys Dream Course), it shows you where you’re going to shoot.

At one point the game forces you to play disc golf and the controls are very confusing and not explained at all. Eventually I figured it out and fumbled my way through it, but I'm glad the game otherwise sticks to golf.

At the end of the day, it is constantly innovating and giving you clever new ways to play 2D golf, but the relatively slow pace is not what I'm looking for right now.

4/5, it didn't blow me away, but I have to respect what it does for golf games.