Hours of golfing fun presented in an interesting, fantastical way you won't soon forget!
Developer: Ntreev Soft
Available On: PSP, PC, Wii
Released: June 2009 (US)
~~ The Good[+], Bad[-], and Neutral[~] ~~
+ Loads of stuff to do including a lengthy story mode, masses of 18-Hole tournaments, license challenges, online play and unlockables.
+ Slick controls and the interesting addition of using power-up items work great.
+ Story is incredibly lame, but never takes itself too seriously and makes jokes at itself. The characters are also terrific and hilarious.
~ Art is generally excellent, but the character models used during gameplay can look a little off. Particularly their giant hands!
~ A good range of courses and some beautiful fantasy areas. However it really could have benefited from one or two more diverse courses.
It's not often I import a game from the United States, but I went with my intuition and decided to grab this one. I'd already briefly played the version available on the Wii and PC, but had never really gotten into them. To be honest, I partly got this game just because of all the unlockable costumes for the cute girls! Well, i'm glad to say the game has a lot more going for it than that! Read on to find out...
-- Story: 7.9/10 | Good --
Okay, when I classify the story is 'good', it certainly isn't in the traditional sense. Basically, the story revolves around this island, called Pangya, that exists in another dimension. People from Earth are brought here to compete in the Pangya tournament to celebrate the defeat of the Dark Lord years ago. How did they defeat the Dark Lord, you ask? They sealed him away by putting 'Aztecs' (golf balls) into holes of energy to stop the source of his power. They then went about creating a game to honour this victory that's pretty much identical to golf.
Now, it seems like the Dark Lord is being resurrected and only the newest Pangya players can stop him! This group is a ragtag team including two teenagers, a loli pirate looking for her father, a middle-aged policeman who loves fried chicken, a female navy officer who calculates everything, a pro tennis player who rides a motorbike, and a cute magician.
Sound completely insane? Well, it is. Luckily, the creators also realize how silly it is and the storyline is rarely taken very seriously. It's completely lame, but there's actually some surprisingly fun and funny moments guaranteed to make you laugh out loud. As long as you don't go in expecting a ground breaking plot, you'll enjoy it.
-- Gameplay: 9.1/10 | Excellent --
I have never played a golf video game before and sports is not a genre I like, but the fantasy twist to this game makes it a real joy to play. The controls work wonderfully well and inclusion of items you can buy in the shop, such as changing the wind speed, improve your curving ability or make your shots more powerful, can really mix things up. There's also a few 'special shots' you can perform to do some pretty crazy things with the golf ball!
There are heaps of different things to do across a number of different modes and quite a number of different 18-hole courses, so I'll briefly go through them now so you know what to expect.
The primary part of the game is the story mode. You get to play as each of the eight main characters through twice on different courses that are separated by short, and usually humourous, cut-scenes. It takes a surprisingly large amount of time to finish and is generally pretty enjoyable. Swapping between the characters gives you a nice change of pace, even if they aren't awfully different.
The next mode is the tournament mode. Here you can acquire licenses to play in each 18-hole tournament. To earn a license you must complete enough challenges to achieve enough experience. These challenges are varied and fun and are made up of: collecting a certain amount of money on a course, clearing a course with a certain score, performing a successful chip-in and a hole-in-one as well as hitting a ball as close to the hole as possible.
Then you have the last two modes: multi-player and the Collection. Multi-player allows for local or online play, but is otherwise pretty self-explanatory. The Collection is where you can use the money you've earned to buy new costumes, clubs and items. There's also a room with bonus music and art that's unlocked as you progress through the game. Basically, it's stuff that adds some extra replay value to the game. It's a great addition, but the only disappointment is that costumes don't give you any extra abilities or stats. They just look pretty.
My last little gripe is with the different courses. There is quite a good mix: ice and snow, lava and volcano's, traditional grass, lakes and beaches... but a couple more variations wouldn't have gone amiss. A couple of the courses seem a little too similar to each other at times.
-- Graphics: 8.7/10 | Great --
The graphics are generally pretty terrific. All the courses are nicely detailed and provide plenty of things to look at as you hit the ball towards the hole. The grass and water are particular standouts and really help to bring you into the world of Pangya. Likewise, graphics during cut-scenes are brilliant. The characters have been drawn in a beautiful style that make them really nice to look at.
Character models during gameplay is the only place this section takes a bit of a hit. Generally they look pretty good. Costumes are varied and faces are fairly detailed for a hand held game. However, for some reason I can't understand, their feet and hands are horribly over sized. It's not always obvious, but when they stick a hand up during an animation, it really is horrible to watch.
The best graphics the game puts on show is during the opening cut-scene. Here you see fully rendered characters in all their multi-polygonal glory. They're really beautiful to watch as they jump and dance around. If you buy this game, don't skip to the title scene! Watch this opening clip!
-- Sound: 8.4/10 | Very Good --
The sound is generally more or less what you'd expect from this kind of game. Peaceful background music accompanies most of the courses that is generally good, but tends to get a bit boring. A couple of the stages, Deep Inferno especially, have much more interesting soundtracks. Sound effects, on the other hand, are a real plus. Clubs connecting with golf balls and balls hitting the ground all make very realistic noises, as does the ball shooting through the air.
What I really liked about the sound was the opening and ending music. As I described the opening in the graphics section, it has a really nice theme song that accompanies it. It's good enough that you'll overlook the rest of the music the game generally has on offer.
One last thing is about voice acting... there is none. I thought that was a real disappointment. It's not really required, but it would have made some of the story scenes even funnier. But, in the end, no voice acting is better than poor voice acting (which would have been likely).
-- Value: 9.4/10 | Excellent --
As you probably gathered from the gameplay section, there is an absolutely massive amount of stuff to do! The story mode will take you around 10-15 hours to beat assuming you don't have to retry too many stages. After that you have the licenses to unlock. Getting them all will take another few hours at least. Then you're onto the tournaments. There is a series of tournaments for each course and if you really want to complete them all you'd be looking at at least another 10-15 hours, assuming you don't have to repeat any of them.
Once you've done all that, you can still try and unlock and buy all the available costumes. If you haven't reached the top ranking level, you can do that to and unlock all the artwork. Seriously, there's a massive amount of stuff to accomplish.
-- Tilt: 8.9/10 | Great --
I was very pleasantly surprised as I played through this game. It was very enjoyable and quite funny at times. I still have a few tournaments left to beat and some more art to unlock and i'm sure earning all the money for the costumes will still take me a while. I got a lot of fun and value for the fairly minimal amount it cost me to import. Oh, and to all you Arin lovers... Kooh for the win!
-- Overall: 8.7/10 | Great --
It's just loads of fun. If you've got a spare bit of cash and are looking for some enjoyment to pass the time, then this would be a good choice. It's not going to change your life, but it is a pretty enjoyable play. Pretty graphics, good sound, varied gameplay and the surprising length make this game at least worth a try.
Thanks for reading!