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Sports Story Review – Over Par

Sophomore effort from developer Sidebar Games, sports storybuilds on the success of its golf-focused predecessor RPG by adding sports to participate in and adding additional considerations to the golf experience. Far away. golf story As special as it is, it creates an often suffocating experience under the bloat of too many unnecessary fetch quests and unpolished mechanics. , disappointing Sports Story as a whole.

Sports Story picks up shortly after the events of Golf Story. After proving himself to be a capable golfer, the unnamed protagonist finds himself on the verge of signing a contract and becoming a pro. After checking into your hotel, finding a new golf club and getting your license, head to the countryside for a little practice. Arriving at his destination, bat-wielding Iron He finds an area under Dragon’s abusive thumb and assumes the role of a detective to figure out what’s going on and how this gang is ruining people’s lives. I decided to prevent it from doing so.

The story suddenly shifts this early. No longer are you an aspiring golfer doing your best to solve other people’s problems through your golf skills. Instead, as a freelance investigator, he hops from one place to the next, helping people with the struggles they face and gathering clues related to the ongoing threat of the Iron Dragon. Many of Story’s amusing and memorable characters only appear in limited capacity or are removed from the plot entirely, focusing on bland and annoyingly simplistic ideas, so the development Not all stories are compelling to watch. main character.

Early on, the plot suggests that all the problems you encounter are somehow related to a larger plot, but mainly because there’s not enough reason to care about the main characters and what’s going on in that story. Even the thread isn’t that interesting.It might happen to him. The few characters who make the transition from Golf His Story to Sports Story, like Coach and Lara, are written to be either completely unhelpful or actively annoying. They had these traits back in Golf Story, but the storyline deftly subverted these archetypes, portraying their role in the story with both humanity and humor, making them want to know more over time. No such conversion takes place here, and the cast is filled with annoying people who really don’t want to help.

Sports Story is mostly a series of fetch quests.

This narrative shift also affects the main gameplay loop of Sports Story. This is a series of fetch quests for the incompetent people around you. You are regularly forced to find items for someone to advance the story. Sometimes it involves finding a series of fishermen to learn how to catch different types of fish, or unlocking a series of cages so that they can prove themselves competent enough to help someone in need. Finding a bunch of keys to free the bird inside. that they open the gates for you; Because it’s not always immediately clear where to go or what you need to do to progress, a lot of sports stories focus on who you can interact with and what they want. Spent running around to check. Point and click adventure.

But it’s all pretty boring. Sports Story lacks the charm and witty jokes of its predecessor, so there isn’t much fun in dressing up the tedium of doing the same task in different ways. Sports Story ostensibly adds more variety by adding non-golf sports, but the overall gameplay structure of his loop is so fixed that it quickly becomes tedious and tedious at runtime. start to feel

At the end of each chapter you can play a round of golf. This is the real thrill of the game. Like its predecessor, Sports Story uses a three-click system for golf. So, after selecting the club you want to use, click once to line up the shot, second to set the power of the shot, third to set the shot. Determines how straight you hit the ball. The system is mechanically familiar and easy to pick up, but with the addition of elements like sand traps and wind speed, the sport’s fun complexity and sense of strategy can be well curated.

Building on this already winning formula, Sports Story adds an assortment of switchable ball types to help you land complex shots and give your opponents even more chances to win. For example, a skipper ball can be propelled across a body of water, while a vector ball is automatically redirected towards a hole on its first bounce regardless of where or how it lands. These balls have limitations. It can be found in treasure chests scattered throughout the map. So it’s strategic both in what you use and when you use it. It is not in your best interest to use them at will. That means you’ll be taking most of your shots with a standard golf ball.

The variety of locations also plays a big role, creating a variety of golf courses that each present a different type of challenge. The mountains and tunnels at Britannia Station are surprisingly windy, for example, high winds must be considered in every shot. On the other hand, PureStrike Links have numerous slopes and divots, making it often difficult to roll the ball along the green with a putter. I like that each location has a theme associated with it, and it continues to evolve over the course of the game, encouraging you to develop your skills beyond hitting the ball as much as possible.

There is no sport more fun than golf.
There is no sport more fun than golf.

When you’re not picking up items for someone or playing golf, Sports Story cuts through the tedium of repetitive structures with dozens of new sports and activities to participate in, such as volleyball, tennis, cycling, and fishing. try to eliminate However, nothing is more fun than golf. Volleyball and bike riding in particular are utterly frustrating because they’re activities made to reward agility and positioning, and Sports Story’s movement mechanics aren’t designed for anything. It’s physically more intense than swinging a golf club.

With the titular shift from Golf Story to Sports Story, you might think the new sports would play a big role in the sequel, but they’re mostly an afterthought to Fetch Quest. Most non-golf sports are played only once or twice, with the option to play again. This gives you extra cash to buy new golf clubs and experience points to improve aspects of your golf. your golf swing. However, I don’t want the monetary benefits and experience gained from playing these activities again. Earn enough money and experience through the main questlines to keep progressing at a steady pace. And most of them feel overdone and unfinished, especially compared to golf. However, fishing is tedious, repetitive and requires little skill. All you need to know is what bait your fish prefers.

Sports Story also has technical issues where the game crashes regularly, the protagonist gets stuck in the environment, or you can’t open the menu and save the game. After losing, I had to redo the mission six times and replay entire sections of the game. These issues make the annoying cycle of repeating fetch quests all the more frustrating. Of course, always saving manually would alleviate the problem, but given how often these problems occur, even having to do so is annoying. The regularity of these issues has been reduced, but it still persists.

Sports Story’s bloated design sometimes hints at something special. For example, when a joke or two hit the mark and make me smile, or when a moment of inspiration forms the basis for a strategy that turns a seemingly impossible shot into a possible one, a wave of victory erupts within me. I’m going to flow. But these moments are too rare to adequately mitigate the game’s many shortcomings, and they’re all frowned upon by recurring technical glitches. It deserves a sequel.

https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/sports-story-review-over-par/1900-6418016/?ftag=CAD-01-10abi2f Sports Story Review – Over Par

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