Sports Story review

The very first game I played on the Nintendo Switch was Golf Story. Thanks to my shiny new console arriving before the selection of games (which consisted of Super Mario Odyssey and Fire Emblem Warriors) I had to head to the eShop for my new console gaming fix. Golf Story was the obvious choice to keep me busy, and I absolutely loved the blend of RPG hooks and golfing gameplay. We’ve been waiting for the sporty sequel for years now, and then out of nowhere a festive miracle meant the game released unexpectedly as part of day five of Nintendo’s House of Indies event. Unfortunately Sports Story really wasn’t worth waiting for.

Sports Story carries on where the previous game left off. Our floppy haired hero and his coach are off on a sporting adventure, in a world increasingly dominated by megacorp PureStrike. PureStrike used to just sell golf clubs, but has since grown to sell sporting supplies for pretty much every athletic activity you can think of and have started buying up golf courses. None of this really matters early on for you though, as you’re just sort of thrown into an environment with your friends and given some random fetch quests to complete.

Although you’d think sport would be at the heart of this game, you’ll spend most your time wandering around the world and talking to NPCs. First off your coach wants a sandwich, then you need to find some sports equipment to actually start playing some mini games. There are even multiple times you’ll need to trade items over and over again to get what you want, running back and forth across an area swapping pens for expired credit cards until you finally get something useful that helps you progress. It’s busywork at its most mind-numbing, and with a slow run speed even with the button clamped down it gets old fast.

The sports do break up some of this monotony though, although they aren’t all created equal. Golf is still very much the focus of the game, and works like most arcade golfing experiences do. You’ll tap a button to start the meter filling up, hit it again to choose your power, and once more to see how straight it goes. Anyone who has played a golf game or two will have seen the system before, but it isn’t broke and doesn’t need fixing. Every new area is packed with plenty of tricky putting and chipping mini challenges to complete, as well as optional balloons to pop for extra cash and experience.

Adding extra sports to the game was an interesting way to evolve Golf Story for a sequel, so it’s a shame that pretty much all of them are a disappointment. The first new sport you’re introduced to is tennis, and playing the racket sport is just never fun. The ball has to practically enter your characters sprite for you to be able to hit it (which really doesn’t line up with the animations) and I even after beating the game I still have no idea how you’re supposed to control where the ball goes after hitting it.

Cricket is a little better, but when trying to move your character from side to side in front of the wicket they regularly get stuck on nothing and freeze in place. Cycling is fairly similar to the NES classic Excitebike, but ultimately isn’t quite as fun (and admittedly doesn’t show up very often). It’s a real shame because in theory getting a break from golfing every so often is a great idea, but that only works if playing the other sports are entertaining.

Despite mixing it up with a variety of sports, often the activities you’re given aren’t really related to them at all. You’re regularly tasked with running around an environment to collect blue flags in a time limit. There are also more puzzling sections in the game, like swapping around the tracks in a mine so a cart can travel safely from one side to another. Nobody could say that the objectives you’re given in Sports Story aren’t varied, but whether or not they’re entertaining is another matter entirely.

Although the sport side of Sports Story is a little lacking, the RPG elements are a breath of fresh air. Gaining stats and slowly seeing your abilities improve is really satisfying, and new clubs, gloves and rackets come with powerful abilities that will help you complete many a mini game. It doesn’t get better than going to the mall with your hard earned cash (maybe sneaking in a cheeky round of crazy golf) and coming back with new clubs that give you a huge power boost.

It’s fair to say I’ve got a few issues with Sports Story, but one of the most painful is the lack of tutorials. For golf especially, the game seems to expect you to remember every single mechanic from Golf Story in order to understand backspin or use power shots. Even when introducing new sports, odd and unnecessary mechanics are the focus instead of actually teaching you how to play. It doesn’t really matter if I’m using a slice or a dropshot in tennis if I have no idea how to aim the ball.

The confusion doesn’t stop there, because in a game where navigating the world is essential, you don’t have a map. When you get asked to go to a place you’ve never been before and don’t have any handy arrows on your side, you just have to resort to exploring every inch of the environment – and it’s miserable. It took me ten minutes to find the juice bar on the very first screen, because I didn’t think to walk out into the ocean to find it. I don’t understand why the developers thought this was acceptable, and it happens over and over again.

I also have to mention the technical issues that this SNES aesthetic sports RPG is packed full of. Firstly the framerate is painful. Frame drops happen constantly (often at really important moments like when timing a swing of your tennis racket or while a meter is rapidly filling) and certain areas tank to embarrassing levels. There were also times where certain buttons just stopped working; five separate occasions where the game crashed completely, and a section of the tennis academy where I collected an item out of sequence and made it impossible to progress without starting an entirely new save file. The fact the game shipped in this state is just not acceptable.

Sports Story is a late contender for the biggest gaming disappointment of 2022. The constant busywork, inferior new sports, and cacophony of technical issues make it a chore to play, and certainly mean it should be avoided until patched.