Not quite mini-golf and certainly not with 81 holes.
I bought this game based on it being listed as a mini-golf game with 81 holes. It's not quite what it advertises itself to be.
There are not 81 different holes. There are 27. There are three cups, USA, Asia and Europe, each cup with 9 holes each. There are then three versions of the cups - for example USA Cup, USA Pro Cup and USA Super Cup.
The Pro and Super Cups are the same holes as the regular cup but with extra obstacles.
Many of the holes you can sink in one shot and they come off as filler holes.
And it's not quite mini-golf. Mini-golf involves you taking strokes until you get the ball in the hole. Seems pretty simple. But in this game, you take your shot and if your ball doesn't end up in an area near the pin, the ball is deemed out of bounds and you have to take your shot over again. That's not mini-golf.
You can't adjust the position from where your golfer stands. So if you have a blue pyramid right in front of you (a common annoying occurrence on the Pro and Super Cups), you can't sidestep to the left or right to shoot around it. You have to hit your shot at an angle and once you're figured out the angle, you're set.
Once you get your ball safely to the area around the cup that's not out of bounds, it's a short shot to the cup. Therefore the only real challenge in the game comes from your initial shot. There's really no room to make a spectacular second or third shot.
You earn money and with that money you unlock the other cups, trick shots and a few other things. You'll probably be able to unlock everything in an hour or so without much effort.
The trick shots consist of an area without a cup but with coins. You have five shots to collect as many coins as you can. Each trick shot consists of three holes. It's an okay extra but I wish the effort to make these would have been spent on making some unique holes for regular play.
The holes themselves are rather boring. There's no windmills, no clowns faces, no swinging logs, nothing you'd expect in a mini-golf game.
Once you've unlocked all the cups, I can't really see anyone coming back to this game unless you want to beat your score for each cup.
The controls are pretty tight. You can control your aim and shot with the stylus or with the control stick and buttons. The game remembers your previous aim and power level, so if you just miss a shot, you can easily tweak the next shot.
I didn't really like the 3D and played the game with it off.
There is in-game music that you cannot disable but it's tolerable.
There's no multi-player, either local or online.
Overall, I wasn't that impressed. If the holes were longer and more thought out, if you weren't limited to getting the ball to an area near the pin, if there was some multi-player component, I'd be singing the game's praises. Instead, I'm realizing that yet again, I've been duped by a company that I thought would provide me with that great mini-golf experience.