Sports Story is the Most Disappointing Game of 2022
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- čas přidán 27. 05. 2024
- It crushes me to say that Sports Story was the most disappointing game of 2022.
Back in March of 2021, I made a video detailing 7 affordable games that I felt were worth your time, and among those games was Golf Story, a very fun indie golf RPG that captivated me when it was released back in 2017. Wearing its handheld Mario Golf influences on its sleeve, Golf Story managed to surpass its inspirations through refined golfing mechanics, clever writing, and really unique and entertaining scenarios that push the sport of golf to its limits. I loved this game so much that I bought a vinyl copy of the soundtrack. So, as I’m sure you can imagine, I’ve been eagerly anticipating the release of Sports Story, the much more ambitious follow-up to Golf Story. The game had been unfortunately delayed a few times over the next couple of years, but when the game surprise launched on December 23rd, I purchased it frame 1. And, having played it, it absolutely crushes me to say that Sports Story is one of the most disappointing games that I’ve played in a while. I hope that this Sports Story review is helpful to you. Thanks so much for watching!
00:00 - Intro
00:51 - Sports Mechanics
05:02 - Fetch Questing & Progression
09:06 - Tennis Academy & Pacing
10:14 - Leveling & Stat Customization
12:04 - Sports Licenses
13:57 - Golf Ball System
14:47 - Writing & Presentation
15:41 - Glitches, Performance Issues & Softlocks, Oh My!
18:25 - Conclusion
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#nintendoswitch #review #sportsstory - Hry
Thanks for watching! Did you play Sports Story? if so, what did you think?
Excellent review. By the way, you were more right than you probably knew about cut content. We found entire sections of the games sitting around in out of bounds, finished but unplayable. Although it sounds like you didn't make it there, the final area of the game is weirdly skipped over in game, but can be accessed by the use of some glitches. Things like that really bum me out, as I think Sidebar either was forced to push out this game before it was ready or gave up on finishing it after it grew too big for them to hold together.
Yo thanks so much!! Yeah it’s so unfortunate, this game could have been so much more but it does seem like the game was either rushed to be released or the project’s scope grew too much and was unable to be fully realized. either way, it’s a real shame because there’s hints at a great game here. I didn’t even know about all of the out of bounds stuff that’s hidden, but that’s a real shame to hear. Thanks so much for watching!!
Very nice review! I totally agree with p much all of your points in here.
I was one of the fellow unfortunate souls who originally played golf story, loved it, and had to endure the agonizing 3 year wait for sports story, only for it to turn out the way it has.
While obviously an issue that should be addressed, I could’ve ignored the game’s countless bugs. And while a better/more comprehensive story sure would’ve made the game more fun, it’s something I still could’ve liked it well enough without.
The thing that really ruined the game for me, and something I’m glad you talked in depth about, is how much of a lie the name “sports story” is. While golf (despite being so much worse than it’s predecessor) and tennis get their fair share of appearances and have actual playable matches, I hate how every other sport in game is saved exclusively for generic minigames. Just taking a look at the games original trailer makes it obvious that they intended more, and the games files/oob content confirm that theory (countless references to things like an entire soccer career mode).
Also without going into much detail, because I truly believe this is something you need to experience first hand, the ending to this game is one of the most bewildering things I’ve seen in a game in a long, long, time. I recommend picking the game back up just to fully experience it.
The worst part to me is that I don’t know what sidebar can do to make this right, and I’m not sure if they’ll be able to recover from this hit to their reputation. Ideally they’d fix all major bugs and reimplement any cut content, but that’d take at least a year of extra work for no real gain business wise.
gonna have to stop myself because I could write a 30 page essay on how I feel about this game lol.
Dropped a sub! Looking forward to your next post.
Thanks so much for watching and subbing!! yeah i agree with a lot of what you said here, it wasn’t even really the bugs that made me dislike this game as much (although that played a role in it lol), but rather just a lack of focus, charm and pushing ideas to their creative limit that made me walk away from Sports Story disappointed. And yeah, while it is super hard for developers to come back from rough releases and projects that don’t turn out well, we have seen developers who released disappointing games turn around and make something great that people wind up liking. (see: Yooka-Laylee to YL & the Impossible Lair) However, I totally agree that swaying public opinion can often be really difficult, especially for small indie developers who don’t have the benefit of decades of goodwill and dedicated fan bases like triple A studios have. It’s an uphill battle for sure, but I’m hopeful that in the future Sidebar will be able to release a project with a more feasible scope and fans like us will be able to celebrate. Anyways, sorry for the long reply LOL but thanks again for watching!!
Love these videos. ❤️ Always have a blast listening to these because its very informative and you put alot of effort into these things.
Golf Story tho might give it a shot
Thanks a bunch for the support man, I greatly appreciate it 🙏 here’s to seeing our channels grow this year!
also yeah if Golf Story seems like your type of game you should try it out!!
Loved the Review Mark! and Early congrats on 1k Subs!
Thanks a bunch for watching!! I greatly appreciate it, and thank you hahah - we’ll hopefully get there, slowly but surely lol 🙏
This video encapsulates ALL my feelings about this game. God I loved Golf Story so much, but the constant progression breaking bugs and the weird cut content that doesnt make sense to the overall story just hurt my soul. It is making me want to go back and replay the original game all the way through since I havent replayed it since it first came out, so itll be a fun fresh replay.
Thanks so much for watching!! you should go back and play Golf Story again if you get the chance. Going back to it for this video was really enjoyable and I remembered just how clever and interesting it was when i played it for the first time
I wanna ask, did Golf Story really surpassed the mechanics of Mario Golf Advance Tour on the GBA? Because that game and Toadstool Tour have the amazing button combination for Topspins, Backspins and their Super versions that give more depth to the game than just an 2 A presses in the marked spots that I see when looking at footage of Golf Story and Sports Story
Thanks so much for watching! You actually can add topspin and backspin to the ball in Golf Story by holding L or R when hitting the ball. It’s super intuitive and easy to use - that’s where I feel that Golf Story surpassed its inspirations. Advance Tour is a phenomenal game though and I highly recommend that golf story fans play it!!
Great review! But oh man... Hearing this, well, is disappointing in itself. Golf Story is one of my favorite golf games ever and I had pretty high hopes for this one. I was waiting for a physical release like Golf Story because I don't get digital and held off checking out reviews to not be spoiled (Until this one, obviously, lol!), but now I wonder if it's even worth getting if it ever has one. I guess I just never considered that a semi-sequel to a legendary game could end up this way, but the issues they must've had in development may have just been too great. Hence the delays. But even so, I never would've guessed that there would be such major issues as delays don't necessarily mean it'll flop, especially having such success before. Nintendo's games have had a ton through the years for instance and a ton of games turned out fantastic. Maybe what'll happen is as time goes on, they'll update areas with more content or maybe with cut content they tried to get in but couldn't at first. Plus nuke more and more bugs.
Bought this on 12/23, got stuck after 8 hours and multiple crashes. Couldn’t play again until 1/6 when they patched it, which was met with tons of glitches, crashes, and parts I had to force quit and restart. Finally beat it tonight and it was extremely underwhelming. As a huge fan of Golf Story, this was such a disappointment. I want to love this game, but the bugs and glitches make it so hard to enjoy it fully. That and just the complete lack of polish and direction.
Thanks so much for watching - I’m sorry to hear this. I can relate though, I found myself getting softlocked and needing to close and reopen my game way too often for comfort. I wanted this game to be good so bad, but it sucks to admit that Sports Story was such a disappointment.
Great video essay Mark!
Thanks so much for watching!!
One year later, has it been patched up to the point where the "unpatchable" issues are fixed and its a good game?
Totally agree, and it really blows that this is the follow up to the near perfect golf story. The fact they made the golfing worse in this, is just so disappointing. Also love the channel, it is like a good version of mine lmao
Thanks so much for watching!! yeah i totally agree, it sucks to see the follow up to a really fun indie game from 5 years ago miss the mark in tons of ways.
Just found out about this. Loved golf story and was looking for a similar game. Thrilled when I heard this was a thing but hesitant based on the title. Stupidly bought without any review other than self hope. When it starts with tedious missions compared to its predecessor I want my $15 back
I had golf story the moment it released and have been waiting for this game, I’m still gonna try it, on yuzu
At least we still have Golf Story. what a great game!
I was just going about my life and was like hey did sports story ever come out and now im sad.
This is tragic news. I hope their patches improve the game.
1. EXTREMELY SLOW TEXT
2. Fetch quest, walking around the HUGE MAP instead of... playing sports
are the reasons why I dropped the game.
If Golf Story was a 8/10 game, this is a 2/10
What a disappointment.
they should've released a FOCUSED game like Tennis Story, Football Story, Cricket Story, Baseball Story, Bowling Story or whatever. 1 type of sport, but extremely polished is the way. like Golf Story
I think all this video did was make me put Golf Story higher on my backlog priority list. This game seems like another example of doing so much that you do so little. It's normally better to focus on the one objective, because then you'll have a better chance of doing it right instead of doing a little of everything and having them all come out subpar.
Thanks for watching! Yeah if Golf Story seems like something you’d be interested in, I definitely recommend it. It’s a focused, charming game that harkens back to those classic Game Boy Mario Golf games in a neat way. It’s unfortunate that I can’t say the same about Sports Story, but you’re absolutely right - I wish they would have focused on refining the mechanics and reeling the scope of the project in rather than spreading everything too thin.
I’m playing through it now and it’s…fine. I’ve fortunately had no game breaking bugs. Whenever I’ve thrown stuff that I need to place it has always respawned…although maybe the patch fixed that. It’s no Golf Story and it does feel disjointed but I’m having a decent time so far.
Thanks for watching! I’m glad to hear that your experience with the game has been positive. I can certainly acknowledge that there are good ideas and things to enjoy within Sports Story, even though I personally felt that the game was overall very disappointing. I’m glad to hear that you haven’t experienced too many bugs, hopefully it stays that way for you and the performance keeps improving!
I feel like they should've included less sports for sure. The story could've worked too, based on that. They could've gone to a resort island and learned to play Volleyall on the beaches and tennis at the academy, while still occasionally golfing. That would let them polish the golfing which would be mostly lifted from the first game, and then focus on developing and polishing 2 new sports instead of a ton.
Perfect review of this game honestly!
Thanks so much!! I’m glad that you enjoyed this video!
7:12 What game is that? It looks interesting.
Shin Megami Tensei IV for the Nintendo 3DS! If you like challenging RPGs I definitely recommend it!
Do you think this game will have free DLC and more patches in the future? If so, would they fix the issues painfully present in the base game?
Thanks for watching!! I hope the game does, but to be honest outside of the performance issues getting patched i’m a little bit doubtful of the idea that the larger issues with mechanics and cut content will return through free DLC just because of how much would need to be brought in and how that might be way more work than it’s worth for the developers. Obviously if they do wind up rolling out patches and free DLC that fixes issues and improves the game i’ll be first in line to praise them for it, but i’m not holding my breath.
Just so you know, you're definitely not alone thinking you had to throw the TV's
thank you for watching and making me feel validated for throwing the TVs in hahaha. At first I felt like an idiot for messing that up but in retrospect after watching the footage i definitely blame myself less for that mistake lol. Thanks for watching!!
I don’t have much to say besides that I also really hoped they followed through on the promise this game had. I heard that it was really rough from someone who bought the game early, and it gave me pause to wait for possible fixes or a price drop down the line. After seeing the full scale of how the game turned out from this video, it’s made me lose interest in picking it up at all, and I think that’s a real shame. Seems pretty clear the production of the game had too many hiccups after the radio silence in the initial delay into basically releasing it with zero fanfare.
thanks so much for watching! yeah, it’s certainly disappointing how this game turned out. If you haven’t played Golf Story yet, I’d highly recommend that you do so because it is a really charming and enjoyable game from start to finish, but Sports Story unfortunately was really disappointing. Who knows, maybe in due time some more unused content will be patched in and the game will be better, but for now I would definitely advise passing on it.
i liked golf, i wanted more golf, why did they have to jumble it up with all these other sports? i don’t care about cricket or fishing or baseball or tennis. they added so many things and stretched themselves so thin that even a AAA dev would’ve found it hard to give depth to each of the sports in the time they had to develop it.
this hurts to hear :(
I know right, this game was easily one of my most anticipated indies and it sucks to see that it wound up being so disappointing. If you haven’t played Golf Story though, I definitely recommend trying it out if Sports Story seemed interesting to you!
The only thing can sabe It is Lara in a small bikini :P
"Promosm"
The disappointment in this game is immeasurable D:
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