Bewilderingly incomplete, broken, and boring.
If you asked me at any point in the last 3 years what game I was looking forwards to most, it was Sports Story. Golf Story was the first game I had played upon getting my Switch, and I will always have fond memories of how unexpectedly fantastic it was. Couldn't have asked for a better game to kick off the next gen of Nintendo games.
Sports Story, by all means, was looking to be the Silksong to Golf Story's Hollow Knight. Sure, it was originally scheduled for release in summer 2020, but it was delayed so that it would only be released when it was ready. Welp. Here we are.
You'd be one of the lucky ones if you managed to beat the game prior to the 1.3 patch, as there were several game-breaking glitches that prevented players from progressing the game. Besides that, the game has countless softlocks that can occur through completely normal gameplay, as well as sudden inexplicable crashes. While the game has an auto-save feature, it didn't do a good enough job that many people (me included) were forced to redo hours of gameplay.
The gameplay, by the way, generally sucks. Absolutely no instructions on what you are doing are given for anything. The best you will get are a few button prompts at the bottom of the screen that you must discover the purpose of as you are trying to play the sport, often when your focus is needed elsewhere. Though, if you fail a match, it hardly ever seems to matter. As far as I can tell, you can't lose any of the golf tournaments in the game, no matter how bad of a score you receive. By the way, golf is roughly 80% of the Sports in Sports Story.
And somehow golf is worse than it was in Golf Story. You can't put spin on the ball, the courses are uninspired in their layout, and besides that, constant stuttering in the game will often prevent you from tapping A at the right moment, ruining your shot. Oh yeah, the game is slightly laggy everywhere, and will randomly stutter.
Despite the trailers, the game's own description on the eShop page, and the cover art for the game, you don't really play any sport other than golf and tennis. There is one mission where you kick pinecones into a goal (which by the way makes no sense at all). That's about it you'll see for soccer. There is one minigame where you hit toasters with a baseball bat. That's about it for baseball. Cricket amounts to blocking incoming balls being launched towards a wheelie bin. You play volleyball once at the beginning of the game and never again.
What you will have a chance to play is BMX, which is generally despised, and fishing, which is actually alright though not very fleshed out.
The plot of the game is absolutely batshit insane. I seriously cannot explain what is going on. You will see emotional arcs with characters you know nothing about talking about supposedly important things that you know nothing about. The game ends with the Queen of the island declaring sports shall never change again and your character showing full support for god-knows-what reason, then some mystical looking dudes staring at you through a magical telescope implying there is something bigger going on. And then credits roll.
Everything about this stinks. I have no idea what happened. Whether it was due to internal complications with the devs, or Nintendo pushing out a game that clearly wasn't ready, I doubt we'll ever hear a full explanation, as the devs have been mysteriously silent through nearly the entire development of the game.
It is with confusion and sadness that I recommend you don't play this game.
If you asked me at any point in the last 3 years what game I was looking forwards to most, it was Sports Story. Golf Story was the first game I had played upon getting my Switch, and I will always have fond memories of how unexpectedly fantastic it was. Couldn't have asked for a better game to kick off the next gen of Nintendo games.
Sports Story, by all means, was looking to be the Silksong to Golf Story's Hollow Knight. Sure, it was originally scheduled for release in summer 2020, but it was delayed so that it would only be released when it was ready. Welp. Here we are.
You'd be one of the lucky ones if you managed to beat the game prior to the 1.3 patch, as there were several game-breaking glitches that prevented players from progressing the game. Besides that, the game has countless softlocks that can occur through completely normal gameplay, as well as sudden inexplicable crashes. While the game has an auto-save feature, it didn't do a good enough job that many people (me included) were forced to redo hours of gameplay.
The gameplay, by the way, generally sucks. Absolutely no instructions on what you are doing are given for anything. The best you will get are a few button prompts at the bottom of the screen that you must discover the purpose of as you are trying to play the sport, often when your focus is needed elsewhere. Though, if you fail a match, it hardly ever seems to matter. As far as I can tell, you can't lose any of the golf tournaments in the game, no matter how bad of a score you receive. By the way, golf is roughly 80% of the Sports in Sports Story.
And somehow golf is worse than it was in Golf Story. You can't put spin on the ball, the courses are uninspired in their layout, and besides that, constant stuttering in the game will often prevent you from tapping A at the right moment, ruining your shot. Oh yeah, the game is slightly laggy everywhere, and will randomly stutter.
Despite the trailers, the game's own description on the eShop page, and the cover art for the game, you don't really play any sport other than golf and tennis. There is one mission where you kick pinecones into a goal (which by the way makes no sense at all). That's about it you'll see for soccer. There is one minigame where you hit toasters with a baseball bat. That's about it for baseball. Cricket amounts to blocking incoming balls being launched towards a wheelie bin. You play volleyball once at the beginning of the game and never again.
What you will have a chance to play is BMX, which is generally despised, and fishing, which is actually alright though not very fleshed out.
The plot of the game is absolutely batshit insane. I seriously cannot explain what is going on. You will see emotional arcs with characters you know nothing about talking about supposedly important things that you know nothing about. The game ends with the Queen of the island declaring sports shall never change again and your character showing full support for god-knows-what reason, then some mystical looking dudes staring at you through a magical telescope implying there is something bigger going on. And then credits roll.
Everything about this stinks. I have no idea what happened. Whether it was due to internal complications with the devs, or Nintendo pushing out a game that clearly wasn't ready, I doubt we'll ever hear a full explanation, as the devs have been mysteriously silent through nearly the entire development of the game.
It is with confusion and sadness that I recommend you don't play this game.