Everybody’s Golf Hot Shots (Switch 2) - A Mixed Golf Bag with Excellent Replay Value

My personal history with the Hot Shots Golf series begins and ends with the first two titles, which at the time were the high water-mark for simple arcade golf games. The first game (Everybody’s Golf in most territories, Hot Shots Golf in North America) was developed by Mario Golf developers Camelot Entertainment, but Sony second-party studio Clap Hanz was responsible for subsequent entries, which grew ever more ambitious and wacky. 

Clap Hanz has moved on to Easy Come, Easy Golf, and now Bandai Namco has taken on the license and employed Shinjuku-based developer HYDE, Inc. (Rune Factory 5) to deliver the ever-putting goods to a multiplatform audience. As Everybody’s Golf Hot Shots is also releasing on Nintendo Switch, this isn’t a direct sequel to 2017’s Everybody’s Golf on PS4, nor does it aim to be. Instead, Everybody’s Golf Hot Shots sets its sights on returning to the series’ roots while retaining several gameplay improvements, many staple characters, and classic courses. There’s a few rough patches on this fairway, but the overall package was enticing enough to keep me on the green for well over 40 hours.

A Variety of Courses, Characters, and Gameplay Styles Await

As far as variety goes, Everybody’s Golf Hot Shots gets all of the points for effort. There are over 25 characters to unlock, all of them with a unique blend of passive abilities and special shots, as well as wacky animations and often cloying vocalizations that you’ll probably end up turning off (especially because when playing with CPUs, they will heckle you to take your shot every 5-10 seconds). Most of the cast start out with weak to middling stats, but you can improve each stat from F to S ranks with food you can unlock or purchase, so essentially, you can play whoever you want to as long as you can tolerate their style (straight vs curved drive) and abilities. Passive abilities vary quite a bit, so while some characters are definitely more generally effective, most have some circumstance to recommend them. 

Each of the characters also has a story to grind through in World Tour mode, which consists of 6 or 7 chapters. These chapters have challenges that range from typical Match (first to 3, elimination style) or Stroke (total strokes) tournament games, to Wacky Golf modes where anything goes, to Scramble play where you take turns whacking the ball with an ally. There are several 18-hole tournaments as well, making for some long chapters. The stories themselves are told in a visual novel format, with often very florid writing that will be an acquired taste, depending on your feelings towards visual novels. Each story has its own theme, there’s an evil shadow golf organization, and the characters are consistent enough, but some of their journeys intrigued me, while others had me skimming.

Caddies can also be outfitted, both with unlocked costumes and stickers that can occasionally modify your shots. Using a caddy often levels them up, which gives them more shots for stickers. They’ll also offer side comments and help during putting, if you leave their voices on. 

The other major solo mode is Challenge Play, where you’ll advance through the ranks from Beginner to Professional, unlocking new golfers, clubs, and courses along the way. You’ll need to grind out both Challenge and World Tour modes in order to unlock the full cast, and the game all but demands that you spend your hard-earned cash to improve multiple golfers in order to gain a competitive edge. Challenge Play does have an Easy mode, which is helpful if you’re stuck, but you’ll get no such luck on the World Tour.

Wacky Golf is a fun diversion, as it provides multiple modes that can lead to some serious mayhem, especially for multiplayer with friends. Boom Golf is my favorite mode - on every hole, there are 20 bombs hidden on the fairway. Land on or near one, and your ball will be launched one way or another, leaving a crater on the ground. It’s hilarious and silly, and after every shot you’ll be waiting with baited breath to see if you’re in the blast zone, or totally safe. The fairway often ends up being a series of craters at the end, which is super silly. Colorful Golf is a Mario Party-like mode that litters the fairway with squares that grant usable “items” and can also trigger random elements. You might get mega cups, teeny cups, tornadoes that suck the ball in, etc. There’s also online play, but the appeal is rather limited to me, as I don’t particularly enjoy waiting through lobbies and waiting on my opponents’ shots. The online ran fine in the few matches that I tried.

Pitch-perfect Physics That Can be Mastered

The defining characteristics of any golf games are the consistency and depth of its physics, and to a lesser extent, its courses. Everybody’s Golf Hot Shots excels at both, and even if you will spend a lot of time on the same ten 18-hole courses (often doing either the first or last 9 at a time), you’ll never want for lack of variety or challenge. Whether it’s wind, slopes, obstacles such as trees or buildings, bunkers, small fairways with rough patches and out of bounds areas in between, there’s always some complication to look out for. In later courses, they compound and become a test of both skill and patience. 

There are three different gauge options for hitting your ball. The first two offer a bar within which you’ll stop a moving line that determines the accuracy of your shot, with the chief difference being whether your gauge is on a bar or a curve. The two standard gauges have stricter timing than the more instinct-based Advance Shot, in which you’ll rely on visual cues from your golfer’s movements to determine your shot power. I struggled with the strict timing and punishing misses on the other modes, so I mostly utilized the Advance Shot, which takes some getting used to but which I found to be more consistent in delivering results. One of the biggest criticisms I have of the game is that if you’re even slightly too fast or too slow, you can suffer quite a bit as the resulting discrepancy often feels unfair and random. But if you can nail down the system and upgrade your spin and side-spin stats enough, you’ll feel totally in control of your shots. At the maximum level, you can use spins to deftly get out from behind obstacles and backspin on the green. Even putting, which is usually an issue for me in these types of games, feels fair, although I wish that we could alter the contrast of the visuals of the putting grid, as the lay of the slope can be hard to see accurately in certain lighting conditions. 

Bugs on the Fairway, and Performance Issues

Unfortunately, Everybody’s Golf Hot Shots infamously launched with bugs and some pretty glaring performance issues, including frame drops while your power meter is active, thus directly affecting gameplay at a basic level. There have been patches since to squash bugs and improve the framerate. I’m playing on Switch 2, and teeing up to a shot has always been smooth. However, when playing against a CPU, and especially against the shadow golfers or in areas with a lot of geometry or particles, the framerate can occasionally slow to an absolutely painful crawl. I’ll go to grab a drink and the CPU will still be taking their shot.

The most painful bug I encountered was a full-on game crash during a critical story sequence. During Aya’s World Tour, there’s a chapter where you have an 18-hole tournament against three other characters. The first time I did this, my game crashed on me near the end of it and I had to launch the game again and redo the whole thing, which took well over half an hour. Other minor bugs include the CPUs sometimes messing up on their initial drives, CPUs’ balls sometimes failing to clip through objects, and what feels like general jank.

Also, the graphics are nothing to write home about. They harken back to an older era and are perfectly serviceable for the purposes of communicating the course, its hazards, the wind speed and direction, and most especially the very expressive character models. One can forgive the simplistic graphics, because a golf game needs to calculate for the physics of each of the massive courses. The music, on the other hand, is pretty great. I pretty much never got sick of the main tracks. 

But perhaps my biggest complaint about the game is its grind, which is amplified by little things such as having to wait for rival CPUs taking their shots in some modes (thankfully, you can skip watching actual shots). Unlocking characters and courses, not to mention upgrading and filling up your shop is slow and tedious. Even after 50+ hours, I have only unlocked 21 characters. This isn’t a game that’s fun to rush through, as you want to be able to take your time to get your shots just right. But often I felt impatient, as I was grinding away just to be able to unlock Pac-Man, who was available as an early unlock only for fans who pre-ordered the game.

Par for the Very Long and Windy Course

Everybody’s Golf Hot Shots hooked me hard, but it will not be everyone’s favorite sports game. Performance, though improved from release, could be better. Progression is slow, and unlocking characters isn’t always straightforward. But everything else here is a delight. The courses are challenging and balanced. The unique characters have a lot of personality, and it’s fun to mix and match sets of clubs, outfits, and caddies.

Bandai Namco and HYDE, Inc. have done right by the fanbase. Everybody’s Golf Hot Shots hits a solid drive with great customization options, ten diverse 18-hole courses, 25+ characters, a plethora of Wacky Golf modes, and even online play. It is a grind, and presentation is janky at times, but the physics are solid and consistent, and the constant challenge spurs you on towards mastery. In terms of raw physics and the game feel, this is the best arcade golf game I’ve ever played.

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Verdict: 4 / 5 (Fantastic)

PROS

• Excellent and solid golf physics with upgradeable characters and fair putting

• A wide variety, with 180 holes over 10 courses, 25+ characters, multiple club loadouts, golfer and caddie customization, and many multiplayer game modes

• Dozens of hours of content and some very challenging gameplay

CONS

• A fair amount of jank in the presentation, with framerate drops at times, and CPUs sometimes taking a while to hit their shots, plus some bugs 

• Graphics are decidedly last-gen

What I’ve Played 

• 50+ hours of golfing

• Finished 16 World Tours

• Unlocked 21 Characters

• Got to the end of Challenge Mode

*This review is based on a PS5 review copy provided by Bandai Namco

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About the Author - Joseph Choi

Filipino-American gamer, professional shepherd and farmer, author, and filmmaker/videographer living in Central California. First consoles were the Game Boy and Sega Genesis, and I've been gaming since then, with a focus on Nintendo and Sony consoles.