2022 Game Beat #9: Everybody’s Golf (PS4)
Date Beaten: August 30th, 2022
Time to Beat: 28 hours, 38 minutes
Completion Status: Just beat the main campaign and not much else.

I love how I complained about my lack of any progress in the last post, and the same day I beat Everybody’s Golf. Turns out I really didn’t need to play much more to beat it lol!

Anyway, hey, it’s golf! I have enjoyed golf video games in the past, but hadn’t played one in a long time. Since I found out that the servers for Everybody’s Golf will be shut down by the end of September, I thought that I better get going on playing it! Sure, you can play a majority of the game offline just fine, but you know what you won’t be able to get once they close? A few trophies for the platinum, that’s what! I’m not really a huge PS trophy hunter or anything, but I do like getting them when they line up with games that I like. I felt like I would I enjoy this, so here I go, working for that platinum!

But trophy stuff aside (which I think I’ll lay out what else I need to do in a separate post), I beat the main campaign so I guess it’s time for a review!

The Review

General Gameplay

Everybody’s Golf is one of the latest entries in the long-running Everybody’s Golf/Hot Shots Golf series. No idea why America needed the series name to be changed to Hot Shots Golf, but regardless, this is the first entry in America to have the Everybody’s Golf name. Kind of confusing but whatever. This is also the first Everybody’s Golf game that I’ve played, so I won’t be able to compare it to previous entries lol.

By the title it’s pretty obvious that this is a golfing game. You go through various courses hitting your golf ball around the place, and try to get a good score. I can’t really explain on how the mechanics themselves feel, but apparently this is a more of an arcade style golf game, rather than a more realistic one. I haven’t played a realistic golf game before (I mostly have experience in Mario Golf and Pangya lol), so I myself can’t really say for sure other than the characters are all cartoony I guess.

You can play courses either offline or online. I haven’t touched the online at all (and I probably won’t be spending much time there anyway), so I’ll only be talking about the offline stuff. I think there’s a few extra modes in the online mode, but I don’t know much about them anyway.

Offline you can play whatever courses you’ve unlocked (with various different options such as where you tee off and the weather conditions), but to unlock them in the first place you’ll need to go through the tournament, which acts as the campaign mode of the game. To progress in the tournament, you pick one of the available courses (with pre-selected conditions), and go hit that golf ball! Each time you do a course, you’ll be up against a number of CPU opponents. How well you do against them will determine how much EXP and gold you get. Get first place, and you get the most amount, and the worse you do, the less you get. EXP lets you face rivals (which are required to beat to rank up) and then progress in the tournament.

During each rank of the tournament, you will need to face up against three different rivals. These guys often act as tutorials, as they will frequently talk about various mechanics before you start the battle against them. It’s pretty similar to what you normally would be doing, but it’s just you versus the one rival. You basically golf as normal, but sometimes extra conditions are added, such as a penalty to your score if you land in a bunker.

Once you beat the third rival in your current rank, you go up a rank, unlock some a new course(s) to play on, and the cycle repeats! Once you beat the last rival in rank 6, you’ve beaten the tournament and you unlock a sort of post-campaign mode. It’s not really that much of a mode I guess, but each of the rivals you fought up against in the tournament will return to have a rematch. You’ll only be able to rematch against one rival per real-life day, so it does take some time to defeat them all again, but it does add a bit of extra content there.

Some other things here are a shop where you can buy various items to change up your character, and fishing where you… fish. I haven’t tried the fishing yet, but I’m honestly a bit confused on why that was added. I do often like fishing in games but it just seems odd here. Is this a series tradition or something?

Conclusion

Overall I think this is a fairly enjoyable golfing game. There’s maybe not quite as many courses as I would have liked (many of the DLC additions don’t really do much for me either), but I did enjoy hitting the ball around the courses. The rivals were also a nice change of pace, even if you’re still essentially doing the same old thing.

My biggest issue with the game, however, is that the tournament feels way too grindy and repetitive to get through. At first you go through the ranks very quickly, but then it starts requiring more and more EXP, so you have to do a lot more of those courses to progress. This wouldn’t be an issue if you just took it at your own pace, and just casually went through the courses when you felt like it (which is probably how it was meant to be played). However, I didn’t really have that option!

I’m trying to get those online trophies before the servers shut down, and the one mega problem trophy requires online access AND that you beat the tournament so you can have a rematch with one particular rival. I wish I could have taken it at a slower pace, but it is what it is. The funny part though is that that the mega problem trophy is centered around FISHING. Of course it had to be fishing, and not something related to the golfing, aka the main point of the game! But I digress lol.

Overall I think I could recommend this to someone looking for a chill golfing game. I can’t think of too many more modern golfing games anyway, so it’s worth a shot. Especially so since the game tends to be pretty cheap (at least physically). If you’re not into golfing games, I doubt this will change your mind though.

HOWEVER! If you think you want to get the platinum for the game, you need to get on it stat! I think the servers shut down on September 30th, 2022, which should be enough time to at least get the online trophies, but definitely look up some tips. I think you could still get those online trophies without them (as of writing anyway), but you might be a little tight on time. There’s a few things (such as resetting which random daily rival you get) that will help a lot and save you some headache. There’s also a few trophies that can be done offline, but are (apparently) easier to do online so keep an eye out for those sorts of tips as well.

That’s about it for the review, but coming up I’ll be doing a post for what trophies I still need, and my plan of attack!