A great caddy for your Switch
I had an absolute blast with this game; let's start there. Game-play wise Golf Story operates very similarly to games like Mario Golf or Everybody's Golf, with some light RPG elements. You will unlock some new abilities and items as you go through the story. The game does a great job of breaking up the regular golfing segments with tons of side quests, puzzles, and mini-games. All in all it took me about 22 hours to 100% complete everything in the game, but a lot of that is optional so the main story can probably be beat in 15 hours.
Story-wise I found the writing to be very charming and funny. The developers were very creative with the way that they expressed emotion with their text boxes. I cannot recall ever having seen anything like it before in a video game. The story also really takes you to some interesting places. One minute you may be trying to get a coach to teach you to golf and the next you're negotiating with cave men at their golf course. There is a ton of stuff like that and for the most part I enjoyed all of it.
Graphically the game is passable, though not outstanding in any way. It is definitely going for a 16-bit retro style with all pixel art, which it pulls off passably, but that's about it. If you look at a game like Stardew Valley you can really see the difference in the details between these two games and how much nicer it could have looked. Still, it doesn't hinder the game experience in any way.
Some negatives: I encountered at least 3 bugs during the course of my playthrough. They weren't game breaking but I did have to re-load my save file a couple times. The putting in the game is not very good. It takes a long time to get the hang of it and how far you expect the ball to roll. By the time you finally get used to it you'll be at the end game. Finally, the game starts to get repetitive near the end. Luckily by the time it starts feeling like a slog it's almost over.
For $15 Golf Story is a great value and a really fun game with a nice story. I looked forward to playing this every day until I beat it. It's a great addition to the Nintendo Switch and I hope more people will check it out.
