To some, 2017 may feel like a lifetime ago. A year that started with no less than the grand reveal of Nintendo's then-curious little hybrid of a system, Switch. A period where all talk on hardware limitations was, if not entirely non-existent, on the back-burner. So too an initial concern that the system's slim pickings at launch could prove fatal. At a time when Nintendo needed anything but post-Wii U. But eventually, over the course of the year, it gave way to a carefully-organized schedule of releases that many would argue was not just one of Nintendo's best years from a software output, but in retrospect, arguably one of the best debut years for any video game console, period. While the first-party front had plenty of highlights, however, another key component to the Switch's immediate success at launch was the bolstering of its third-party support on top. Reviving a seemingly lost component on Nintendo's part -- a vital means by which any system thrives. And of all these titles, big and small, it was Sidebar Games' Golf Story that was by far one of the Switch's stand-out releases.

A game if not purely original in its 16-bit inspired, arcade-styled, RPG-lite antics, oozed with the kind of charm and admiration for games' treasured past that has become synonymous with independent releases. A combination of a vibrant visual palette, eccentric characters, unconventional but entertaining means of applying the sport of golf, on top of a caliber of writing that was funny, witty and delivered in so surprisingly on-point a fashion again and again. Golf Story, on the surface, should not have been as treasured as it was, but Sidebar's talents on both gameplay and presentation, resulted in their debut outing -- let alone debut Switch outing -- quickly garnering a cult following. A profile whose inevitable sequel, eventually revealed in 2019, would be met with no less than unhinged excitement at how Sidebar could build on it. Not least that as it was quickly made apparent in its reveal, Sports Story's ambitions had grown to focus on more than just golf, but a plethora of different sports for the follow-up.

Fast-forward three years, a couple of delays and a never-ending anxious wait later, Sidebar have finally dished out the eagerly-anticipated follow-up. An early Christmas present, one would like to think, as it shadow-dropped onto the Nintendo store near the end of December. A great way to cap off 2022, one would assume. Closer to home: maybe an [extremely] early contender for similarly-end of year discussion in 2023. At least, that was the hope...and perhaps, again through hindsight, a naive way of looking at it. Oh Sports Story and Sidebar Games: what happened?! And you thought The Callisto Protocol could end the year in disappointing fashion? Call it overreach, mistaking ambition for cohesiveness, amateurish design decisions and absent features aplenty, or just forgetting altogether why the original worked as well as it did. Sports Story is, sad as it is to detail critically as much personally given one's enjoyment of the original, a complete mess.

You wouldn't guess such a sad state of affairs would become apparent given how well the opening manages to reassert the original's writing as a skill it hasn't lost. A game (and in this case, a sequel) that despite its lack of voice-acting manages to find a way to imbue its individual characters with sufficient quirks and personality. Done so by the way speech bubbles and even the very dialogue itself manifests on-screen. The speed, text size and even slanted way certain words and sections appear, seems like such an inconsequential and meager feature, but as it was in the original, Sports Story's writing still manages to inject its sporadic, multi-discipline tale with welcome humor and charm. A much-needed salvation given everything else taking place in the game. Granted, Sports Story doesn't always succeed in finding its punchlines land the way it wants -- certain jokes dragged out for too long along the way -- but if nothing else, Sidebar's writing department have done well to follow-up on the strengths of the original. Both returning and new characters alike finding ways to make one laugh or simply smile at their outbursts, all without a single second of recorded voice work.

Everything else though: dear me, where do you even start? Perhaps the easiest place to start and subsequently branch out from -- in dissecting the plethora of issues -- is in its very premise. A sequel that this time intends to introduce multiple disciplines of sports. Aside from the staple golf, Sports Story includes the likes of cricket, cycling, tennis, fishing and football, to name its more notable inclusions. The sequel is still primarily golf-orientated with individual areas often capped off with tackling the respective region's course or story-aligned tournament so as to progress onward. But throughout one's adventure, the meandering progression -- that attempts to offer some form of overarching plot, but instead feels more like an imbalanced string of self-contained quests -- finds you employing said sports. Be they as part of the main quest or as optional side activities. The problem is that little of these disciplines, like a lot of Sports Story, stick around long enough to feel meaningful. The "best" moments, if you will, often being those that have you swinging a club over any one other piece of sporting equipment. But even these moments -- notably during a nine-hole round on a course -- can suffer. Environmental hazards, at points, lacking too from explanation. Success on subsequent holes feeling less like carefully-applied skill and more like pure luck.

But such is the manner that objectives are laid out, players will simply fluke their way to success or haphazardly guess at what the game is requiring you to do, without feeling that one has gotten used to the controls. Or that, being honest, it's even that much fun to employ. That lack of explanation and compelling reason to revisit these other disciplines goes doubly so for other parts of Sports Story. A game that in many ways assumes one has not only played the original title (to within an inch of its life, it seems), but that players will simply figure things out for themselves on first try. This direction, on paper, is no bad thing -- a game requiring more trial-and-error application can work when implemented properly. The problem is that Sports Story introduces so much so early on, but never bothers investing the time and space in explaining how and why said changes are beneficial to the player. One example being the different types of golf balls you pick up along the way, that you can swap between whenever one decides to use your golfing abilities. The benefit of picking one differently-colored ball type over the default type? Sports Story barely explains this and worse, provides little incentive to dig deep into such a system. The truth is simply this: the game throws too much into the mix in a vain attempt to prove ambitious, without properly fleshing out one or maybe two new ideas for the experience to feel cohesive.

Bad enough the game introduces so many ideas that don't stick and prove inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. Worse still when the sequel changes other aspects of progression, when said changes feels entirely unnecessary. The original's form of RPG-like progression that allowed you to custom-tailor how you leveled up is now replaced by an arbitrary increase of some out-of-view value governing one of your three golfing attributes. But the game doesn't explain how said improvements affect your abilities outside of simply noting said attribute has increased by "+1". How that incremental change has affected you, who can say? The only other form of progression in Sports Story being the ongoing need to fill out punch-cards that serve as the only means to increase one's rank and thus gain access to other parts of the game world. But given how this feels compulsory way by which the main story progresses, it again feels less like a worthwhile, optional endeavor to invest in and more a shallow attempt by the game in offering the illusion of player investment. It comes to a head when something like purchasing new golf clubs or better-stat equipment feels like an assumed necessity -- as much a hopeless attempt to use the money you accrue -- because, again, Sports Story offers virtually nothing by way of encouragement that this is the right way to go about one's adventure.

Not that you'll feel entirely compelled to engage with the plethora of activities, attributes or mechanics, even if to fill out said punch-cards. For all the occasional spots of mini-golf that are at least pleasant enough, Sports Story is shockingly littered with other side-quests and activities not only suffering from a formulaic, fetch-quest format, but again are so poorly explained to the point that wasting a player's time with such vagueness seems inevitable. One example having you taking shots in a rain-drenched harbor and as a consequence, mindlessly scouring the surroundings looking for the next quest marker -- the game providing no marker or indicator to tell you where to go. This frustrating sense of scouring environments looking for the next event to trigger repeats again and again throughout Sports Story and it's because the game is so adamant on refusing to explain things (and what little it provides is communicated poorly) that what novelty the game provides by way of its set-up and gameplay quickly loses its luster.

All of which is delivered under the assumption that the game performs competently during play. Which again, Sports Story also suffers from on top. A game that constantly struggles to maintain even a frame-rate of 30FPS. Frequent instances of hitching, slow-down and areas with a blatantly-visible drop in performance. Add to this the inconsistent presence of auto-saving and bugs that, to name a couple of personal instances result in quests accidentally completing, others by contrast failing to trigger said completion status, don't be surprised to find a hefty amount of player-time and progression lost thanks to the game's poor state at launch. In my case, nearly an hour's time lost at one point. Resulting in a frequent, desperate relying on the manual save system; such is the quickly-embedded fear the game will shortly throw up another issue to add to the pile.

Closing Comments:

Sequels that don't quite match the lightning-in-a-bottle status of its originator are nothing new. But it's telling when a game like Sports Story regresses so much that the follow-up to one of 2017's most charming and delightful little adventures is as miserable and misguided a release as it is. A game far too broad and all-encompassing for its own good, lumped into a progression that lacks cohesion, explanation and even the most basic of design principles. Resulting in an experience, though briefly entertaining by way of some pleasant distractions and spots of similarly-charming writing, technically and mechanically incompetent. How Sidebar Games could put out a game of this quality is puzzling and depressing on top, given how much genuine enjoyment was felt in the 2017 original. But Sports Story is a pale and poorly-constructed excuse of a sequel proving above all else that ambition and scale doesn't always end well.