Golf Story

Oh, and the golf itself is pretty damned good too! It’s 16-bit era sort of gameplay: top-down, point and shoot with a power meter stuff, but it works as well as it ever did. Add in things like gophers trying to steal your ball and other hazards, and Golf Story manages to spice up the old with new twists. Add in the fact that there’s also disc golf, mini golf, and stuff like mowing, racings, drone flights and more… well, you get the idea. Golf Story is like Stardew Valley and Caddyshack had a baby. And that baby is the best baby, you guys.

Golf Story doesn’t totally live up to the legacy of those Mario sports RPGs, but it does a very good job at touching on those classics and putting its own spin on the genre. A few nagging issues might draw down the experience, but the golfing is fun enough to work in tandem with a wacky story and world to make a genuinely enjoyable adventure on Switch.

While the actual RPG elements may initially appear thin at times, the well-delivered and genuinely funny writing is not only one of Golf Story‘s hidden traits, but something that will keep Sidebar’s entrant a much talked-about title, even for a console that has already garnered a fair few highlights. While a story or intriguing use of narrative might have only gone so far, though, Golf Story’s easy-to-grasp; hard-to-master core gameplay — that still manages to pace its teaching players the smaller details — is what will keep players coming back for more.