Sports Story Review – A Series Of Unforced Errors

Golf Story was one of the biggest surprises in the Switch’s extremely strong first year on the market. Thanks to Golf Story’s charming, nostalgic presentation and novel sports/RPG fusion, Sports Story has long been one of my most anticipated sequels. Sports Story’s unfocused gameplay and frustrations are not enough to make it worth your while. 

Sports Story, as the title suggests expands the game’s world by including other sports while telling a larger and more ambitious story. As sports go, golf remains the most prominent; everything in the story is told through the lens of a golf-crazed world, and that often plays to the title’s strengths. The fun of getting back to the links is the same as in previous titles. You have to choose the correct club and ball and then play the course. There are also dozens more minigames. The approachable three-click meter usually plays well, and considering the distance, surface, and wind direction to deliver a perfect shot never ceases to satisfy. In these fleeting moments, I’m reminded why Golf Story was such a success. Sadly, despite golf being the best sport in the game’s stable, the less-enjoyable sports and tedious story too often distract from this glaring strength.

Sports Story includes activities around BMX, cricket, volleyball and fishing. However, only a small number of these activities are not just distractions. Tennis takes up perhaps the most time, but it doesn’t live up to golf’s superb blueprint. It required a lot of precision in swing timing and character positioning. I had moments when my opponent would give me the points, even though I scored clearly. Minigames are almost all that exist in other sports, but BMX offers a mixture of challenging obstacles and fun races against time. Sidebar Games brought the world back to golf with every new sporting event.

Unfortunately, the stories side isn’t as good as the sports. Additionally, the story takes up an inordinate amount of the 20 hours that I spent in-game. Where Golf Story used this part of its game to lay on the charm and humor, Sports Story’s dialogue is mostly tedious and unfunny. Except for some fun bits, most jokes were flat and the story arcs never engaged me. Not only was this, but I also spent way too many hours trying to figure out the solution to the fetch-quests of whom I was supposed talk to and what I was supposed interact with. The more focused dungeons have some simple-yet-enjoyable golf-focused puzzles, but they’re only a small percentage of the overall time spent exploring.

All these issues are exacerbated by an inexplicable lackluster polish. The game crashed me several times, causing me to lose significant progress. Perhaps more substantially, the game doesn’t run well; the frame rate drops and gameplay stutters are annoying when I’m exploring the overworld, but when they happen in the middle of the timing-based backswing in golf or precise gameplay of tennis, they result in me missing a pivotal shot or losing a point. The ever-present issues, combined with lesser problems like dialogue not trigger, quests not correctly completing and dialogue not being triggered, make Sports Story a frustrating experience. My character started to levitate over the map as I tried to cast my fishing pole. This allowed me to get around blockades, and ultimately broke the mission progression chain.

Sports Story would be a disappointing sequel to the original title. The new sports don’t play well, the fetch quests are tiresome, and the story is tedious and less charming than that of Golf Story. The retro-golf experience remains enjoyable, although the game is a classic example of not being able to achieve lofty goals.