Golf Story review — Nintendo Switch’s hole-in-one blend of RPG and links

Golf Story is not like actual golf. Real golf taxes your emotions. Chipping in a shot from some godforsaken bunker can feel like a star exploding in your chest. Driving a shot onto the green, watching your ball grace the lip of the cup, only to watch it spin cruelly away can blind you with such frothing rage you’ll shatter your club against a tree. Sidebar Games’ role-playing game is, frankly, too dang chill to plumb those depths. This game is mellow every step of the way, its all encompassing light vibe making missed shots barely sting. Even bizarre, silly scenarios like pitching flaming golf balls into frozen golfers seem downright normal.

More than anything, Golf Story invokes the feeling of playing an old-school Japanese role-playing game on Game Boy Advance, such as Nintendo’s own much-missed Mario Golf, with the relaxed commentary of televised golf on in the background on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Its buttery calm pulls you into a pleasant rhythm of golfing, puzzle-solving, and fetch-questing. It has almost no massive emotional, narrative, or challenge peaks; rather, it’s a slope of rising action as smooth as the best putting green.