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Golf Story |OT| Return to Camelot

S

squid

Member
BTA said:
I'm as far as Tidy Park and it's not like I'm not enjoying most of my time with it, particularly as a podcast game, but I increasingly feel like people are playing a different game from me when they talk about how nice and charming it is.

It's definitely funny and has some charm to it, but I was told this had Earthbound-esque warmth/charm, particularly by that Eurogamer review. This really, really, doesn't have the kindness or compassion I understand that to imply.
The main plot really just being you having an angry ex-wife with a new man who's explicitly trying to take your money is such fucking lazy tropey garbage. It's bizarre and mean spirited and really puts a damper on the whole thing. It's so completely unnecessary, and what's even more disappointing is that there's even jokes during some of the relevant scenes that are well written so they can clearly write better than that. Did one of the devs have a bad divorce they felt the need to work through in the plot of the game, or did they just watch too many shitty movies or something? It just makes me feel gross during those scenes.
Click to expand...

I dunno man, I did find those scenes pretty amusing and didn't find it mean spirited at all. Bizarre, sure, but a lot of the humour in this game was kinda bizarre.
And that section was a very small part of the game, not the 'main plot' of the game. The main plot of the game was all about you working to become a pro golfer even when everyone else doubts you. Having a bitter ex-wife was just one small part of that.
But that's just how I see it I guess.
 
B

Bendo

Member
I'm currently in Tidy Park and I'm starting to think I messed up by buying every club I could. I'm about 150 short of the irons I need to progress. Pretty sure I've done every sidequest thus far. Do I just have to grind courses to make more money? Does repeating courses even give money?
 
D

duckroll

Member
The devs on Twitter told me to try mashing B in case it was triggering a cutscene somewhere, and that worked. After a gazillion mashes, it skipped to the end of the offscreen scene and I was teleported back to the entrance for some golfing challenge. No idea wtf was happening, but at least the save isn't permanently fucked!

Whew. Lol.
 
S

sanstesy

Member
BTA said:
I'm as far as Tidy Park and it's not like I'm not enjoying most of my time with it, particularly as a podcast game, but I increasingly feel like people are playing a different game from me when they talk about how nice and charming it is.

It's definitely funny and has some charm to it, but I was told this had Earthbound-esque warmth/charm, particularly by that Eurogamer review. This really, really, doesn't have the kindness or compassion I understand that to imply.
The main plot really just being you having an angry ex-wife with a new man who's explicitly trying to take your money is such fucking lazy tropey garbage. It's bizarre and mean spirited and really puts a damper on the whole thing. It's so completely unnecessary, and what's even more disappointing is that there's even jokes during some of the relevant scenes that are well written so they can clearly write better than that. Did one of the devs have a bad divorce they felt the need to work through in the plot of the game, or did they just watch too many shitty movies or something? It just makes me feel gross during those scenes.
Click to expand...

What? That everyone is so mean to you is the funny part and the ex-wife is barely a part of the game in that respect. Calling it "lazy tropey garbage" is even funnier - there is a reason people have a hard time coming up with another comparison other than Earthbound when describing the writing. Mother 3 had gross parts and those were some of the best parts of the game and the same is the case here.
 
T

The_Lump

Banned
BTA said:
I'm as far as Tidy Park and it's not like I'm not enjoying most of my time with it, particularly as a podcast game, but I increasingly feel like people are playing a different game from me when they talk about how nice and charming it is.

It's definitely funny and has some charm to it, but I was told this had Earthbound-esque warmth/charm, particularly by that Eurogamer review. This really, really, doesn't have the kindness or compassion I understand that to imply.
The main plot really just being you having an angry ex-wife with a new man who's explicitly trying to take your money is such fucking lazy tropey garbage. It's bizarre and mean spirited and really puts a damper on the whole thing. It's so completely unnecessary, and what's even more disappointing is that there's even jokes during some of the relevant scenes that are well written so they can clearly write better than that. Did one of the devs have a bad divorce they felt the need to work through in the plot of the game, or did they just watch too many shitty movies or something? It just makes me feel gross during those scenes.
Click to expand...


Tropey? I've literally never played a game with those circumstances as a feature of the plot. Are you sure you mean Tropey? Besides, it's not really the main plot at all.
 
epicnemesis

epicnemesis

Member
Beat it last night. Overall I really enjoyed it. It felt like the sequel to the Camelot Mario Golf that needed a sequel. My only complaint was that it was way too easy. There were a few tough challenges that took a couple of tries, but all the competition stuff with the exception of the last were pretty much in the bag by hole 3.

When I realized you could use special shots the game really broke. Focus pretty much guarantees a hole in one on every par 3.
 
Q

QuixoticNeutral

Member
Fireblend said:
I agree that I don't know where the Earthbound comparisons are coming from. It's like people just equate Earthbound with plain quirky humor instead of the passion and emotion that is imbued into every line of that game, which is an absolute shame. The writing is ok in Golf Story, but some of the jokes and situations haven't really landed for me.
Click to expand...

There has always been a prolific strand of lazy writing that attaches the EarthBound name to every single retro-art game in a contemporary setting with a few bizarre or supernatural elements that are treated matter-of-factly as part of the world. It's as cliché as using Dark Souls as a byword for difficulty or Metroidvania to refer to every side-scroller with some kind of item progression that lets you run in both directions.

I'm charmed and occasionally amused by the game: the Galf manual is a real must-read of a treat, the bursts of speech bubbles in crowd scenes are a classic method of delivering comedy straight out of Paper Mario (Golf Story actually reminds me of Color Splash from several unexpected angles), and characters doubling back on their own speech bubbles to rethink what they are saying is used more cleverly here than I recall seeing anywhere else. But it is rarely the kind of experience that shades its humour with heart. That's fine—not every game needs to do it—but from the perspective of someone who just came out of the phenomenal Thimbleweed Park the week before, the difference between these temperatures/sensibilities of comedy writing is night and day.

I'm fussier about these things than most—standards for writing are pretty dire at all levels of the industry—but Golf Story could have used not just an extensive QA pass but also a thorough copy-edit. It's very hit-and-miss when it comes to the material separating the golf, though nobody can deny the sheer variety on display. (The
Tidy Park rap battle
is a fun idea in principle but the actual writing makes a clunker out of it; it drags on and on and isn't at all interactive.)

This doesn't spoil my experience, mind you, as I only came in expecting golf, and that there is a competent quirky charm to it reminiscent of lighter moments in Paper Mario is already a bonus.
 
P

pirateluigi

Member
Bendo said:
I'm currently in Tidy Park and I'm starting to think I messed up by buying every club I could. I'm about 150 short of the irons I need to progress. Pretty sure I've done every sidequest thus far. Do I just have to grind courses to make more money? Does repeating courses even give money?
Click to expand...

You shouldn't have to grind. I had enough to buy everything without grinding.

Did you hit all the holes at aqua golf? Did you do the oak park quests?
 
Porcile

Porcile

Member
Weird. Just had a soft lock. Instead of going to Lurker Valley after finishing Wellworn Grove I walked over to Cheekybeaks and after the message the game doesn't let move or press any inputs.
 
K

kami_sama

Member
duckroll said:
The devs on Twitter told me to try mashing B in case it was triggering a cutscene somewhere, and that worked. After a gazillion mashes, it skipped to the end of the offscreen scene and I was teleported back to the entrance for some golfing challenge. No idea wtf was happening, but at least the save isn't permanently fucked!

Whew. Lol.
Click to expand...
Thank God it was solved!
 
N

Ninja Dom

Member
Yeah there are still a few bugs in this game. I’ve had the “Save & Quit” bug where I exited my game, saved & quit. Went back later and loaded up to continue yet nothing at all was saved from my last session.

I also had a few bugs in Mario + Rabbids too.
 
D

duckroll

Member
DogDude said:
Just got to the first frisbee side quest and I can't control them at all :/
Click to expand...

Use left and right, don't use up or down. Think of it as tank controls with auto movement, so you're turning it. Tap X to start instead of holding it down, so it goes slower and you can practice first. That was the super helpful advice I got earlier in the thread.
 
I

Imp the Dimp

Member
How long is the game roughly? I'm afraid there is no way I beat this before Stardew Valley releases. I'm about 4h in at the moment (just did the
molerat
quest)
 
C

Cerium

Member
Imp the Dimp said:
How long is the game roughly? I'm afraid there is no way I beat this before Stardew Valley releases. I'm about 4h in at the moment (just did the
molerat
quest)
Click to expand...

You're only that far? Yeah you're fucked. Stardew Valley has no end, you should finish Golf Story first.
 
M

Mistouze

user-friendly man-cashews
Third zone spoilers :

The fetch quests in the beach course are kinda killing my love for the game, hope there's not many of those after the first batch of them
 
B

brerwolfe

Member
The game started slow for me but I'm loving it now. One of my favorite pastimes is tossing a ball at an NPC right after talking to them. Some of the shit they say makes me laugh out loud.

I'm also impressed with how deep the golf mechanics are for a top-down 2D game. I love irl golf and I'm happy with the flexibility and creativity the game allows for different types of shots.

Btw, I just discovered top/backspin by holding L or R (not the triggers) when you're setting your shot. You'll notice a sliver of shade on the ball that sits on the right side of the screen.

Just arrived at Tidy Park. No idea how far I am. Maybe halfway?
 
M

mindsale

Member
Mistouze said:
Third zone spoilers :

The fetch quests in the beach course are kinda killing my love for the game, hope there's not many of those after the first batch of them
Click to expand...

I'm stuck here. I fell asleep while playing and have no idea how to advance the narrative so I can golf at Bermuda Isles. Help would be appreciated.
 
S

Skittzo0413

Member
It's weird, I never had a single bug in my playthrough, outside of running too quickly in one of the clubhouses so that the next screen didn't load, but I just walked back and forth for a split second to fix that.

I really liked this game, and funnily enough the actual golf (tourneys, match play) is what I found to be the most boring part compared to all the challenges and dialogue/quests.

mindsale said:
I'm stuck here. I fell asleep while playing and have no idea how to advance the narrative so I can golf at Bermuda Isles. Help would be appreciated.
Click to expand...

Check your notes in the pause menu, it will usually give you an idea of where to start looking for things to do.
 
B

BTA

Member
squid said:
I dunno man, I did find those scenes pretty amusing and didn't find it mean spirited at all. Bizarre, sure, but a lot of the humour in this game was kinda bizarre.
And that section was a very small part of the game, not the 'main plot' of the game. The main plot of the game was all about you working to become a pro golfer even when everyone else doubts you. Having a bitter ex-wife was just one small part of that.
But that's just how I see it I guess.
Click to expand...

The_Lump said:
Tropey? I've literally never played a game with those circumstances as a feature of the plot. Are you sure you mean Tropey? Besides, it's not really the main plot at all.
Click to expand...

There's media that exists outside of games. You've seriously never seen/read/played anything where an ex-wife/girlfriend/whatever was portrayed as "crazy" and the hero either wins her back for no clear reason or gets a new love interest while his old one gets what she supposedly deserves in the end, and so on? It's particularly weird here because it starts with her being (reasonably) angry that he quit everything to play golf, and then nope it's shitty woman just wanted your money garbage and she was totally in the wrong for being annoyed that you dropped everything to go fuck around with golf somewhere (and to be clear - not really asking for realism here, but because it's trying to frame her as being in the wrong on that I have to bring that in).

And I dunno, it's sure intruding on the main plot a lot where I'm at. Unless she suddenly vanishes from the plot I don't expect that to change.
 
W

wild wild rice

Member
Hmm, the bugs have me a bit bugged out, even if not everyone is experiencing them. I just got to the second zone and I think I'll slow down a bit until a patch releases.

This won't be easy. I'm really enjoying the game. It's not my GOTY, but I feel like it's the game I have the most to say about.

Golf Story unassumingly does so many things with a sense of fun and freedom, unbeholden to a consequence of mainstream success that can be really hard to find in games, even from the indie sphere. It almost feels the way Deadly Premonition felt when it came out. Not in terms of genre or polish or anything like that. But they both feel amatuerish in a good way, unbeholden to certain norms and expectations of modern game design, but with such a pure and fun vision or identity that none of that matters.

Like a really kick ass garage band, Golf Story may not be the best at its "instruments," but it plays with such a great, undeniable energy that gets lost in more refined games.

Part of the charm of Golf Story is it's slightly weird and uneven presentation, the underproduced music, the non-localized dialogue, the "figure it out, but have fun with it" mechanics.

I can go on, but I'll stop. I'm only on world 2.
 
S

Skittzo0413

Member
BTA said:
There's media that exists outside of games. You've seriously never seen/read/played anything where an ex-wife/girlfriend/whatever was portrayed as "crazy" and the hero either wins her back for no clear reason or gets a new love interest while his old one gets what she supposedly deserves in the end, and so on? It's particularly weird here because it starts with her being (reasonably) angry that he quit everything to play golf, and then nope it's shitty woman just wanted your money garbage and she was totally in the wrong for being annoyed that you dropped everything to go fuck around with golf somewhere (and to be clear - not really asking for realism here, but because it's trying to frame her as being in the wrong on that I have to bring that in).

And I dunno, it's sure intruding on the main plot a lot where I'm at. Unless she suddenly vanishes from the plot I don't expect that to change.
Click to expand...

I think there are a total of four scenes in the entire game (counting the end game credits sequence) in which she shows up. Only two with her new boyfriend. That's basically as far away from being part of the main plot as it possibly can be.

And unless I'm remembering wrong the player doesn't even mention her at all outside of those scenes.
 
B

BTA

Member
Skittzo0413 said:
I think there are a total of four scenes in the entire game (counting the end game credits sequence) in which she shows up. Only two with her new boyfriend. That's basically as far away from being part of the main plot as it possibly can be.

And unless I'm remembering wrong the player doesn't even mention her at all outside of those scenes.
Click to expand...

Well, it's good news that it doesn't dip into that much at least. Where I'm at currently it definitely felt like this was an increasingly focused on part of the plot.
 
K

Karspankey

Banned
Just got my Switch and started playing! Love the humor so far!

However, my game just soft-froze after talking to a guy who said that a golf course is not a place for kids

Is this a common problem with the game?
 
W

w0s

Member
Is there an easy way to tell where a quest is completed at?

Also I swear I picked up the drink for the kid at bermuda isles but now it is like it is gone.
 
C

Cerium

Member
Karspankey said:
Just got my Switch and started playing! Love the humor so far!

However, my game just soft-froze after talking to a guy who said that a golf course is not a place for kids

Is this a common problem with the game?
Click to expand...

There is some "indie jank" that they're working on patching. If you get a soft freeze usually a save and quit will solve it.
 
G

GDGF

Soothsayer
Cerium said:
There is some "indie jank" that they're working on patching. If you get a soft freeze usually a save and quit will solve it.
Click to expand...

I usually just exit to the worldmap via + and everything is fine. Had two freezes so far and that fixed it right up.
 
B

BladeoftheImmortal

Member
Love the game. Only thing I hate is that I can't use the space to control the aim. About 3 hours in and loving it.


Edit: how do I save this game? Is there a way or is there only autosave.
 
C

Catvoca

Banned
Finished the final tournament today. I think I've done everything. Absolutely incredible game, it might be my favourite thing I've played this year. Definitely top 3 for sure.
 
T

testtrack321

Neo Member
Enjoying this game despite three major bugs that made me force quit (Galf, chipping in a shot to the cup, and another that is escaping me). This game had a lot of love and attention put into it, I’d love to see more about the development of this game from Waypoint or someone.
 
C

Coxy100

Banned
testtrack321 said:
Enjoying this game despite three major bugs that made me force quit (Galf, chipping in a shot to the cup, and another that is escaping me). This game had a lot of love and attention put into it, I’d love to see more about the development of this game from Waypoint or someone.
Click to expand...

I agree about the love part - but not sure about the attention part. Reading through the thread there have been quite a lot of bugs reported.
 
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