If there’s a general genre of games that have continued to be poorly represented on the Switch, whether in the form of AAA or indie games, it’s sports. Given the fact that in the earlier generations a wide variety of sporting titles tended to be pretty reliable for coming out on a regular basis, it feels like they’ve really dried up over the years, and that’s a shame. Now, with the release of Everybody’s Golf Hot Shots, Switch fans can at least get a taste of a well-known series that’s been around for quite a while, but has never come to a Nintendo system.

Feeling like it falls somewhere in between the likes of Mario Golf and more serious options, this features more realistic courses but includes characters with some personality and a few play modes that get a little more ridiculous. You’ll initially be limited to choosing between two characters, the perky Aile and more angsty Mizuki, but with time and effort you’ll be able to unlock many more characters, caddies, courses, and more. With everyone having quite a lot to say, and a variety of poses they’ll get into when either doing well or poorly, the game can’t be accused of lacking in personality, even if you’d perhaps prefer an early choice that was a little more down-to-earth. 

If you’re serious about unlocking things solo you’ll want to hit the Challenge mode, which will slowly continue to expect you to get better with repetition, winning mini tournaments, leveling your character up, and accumulating some cash to buy things in the shop with. If you’d prefer to take a stroll through each golfer’s backstory that continues to include playing plenty of golf you’ll instead want to go on the World Tour, but be warned that when it gives you the option to make the storylines a little quicker to go through you may want to choose it, since they put a somewhat odd amount of effort into fleshing out each of their pretty unusual storylines. Local multiplayer and Online play are both available and work well, though I would say if you’re playing with more than one person online you really may want to consider having a good book nearby, because you’ll typically be doing a fair amount of waiting. The game’s Wacky Golf modes may also be worth a mention, though I tended to find them more irritating than fun as they just felt entirely too random in how they worked, rewarding some and punishing others. Perhaps with a larger group they’d be a little more fun though.

While all of the above proves out that the game has plenty of content to enjoy, and a load of things to unlock, there are also some stumbles it runs into on the way to the green. The first is that even on the Switch 2 the performance can sometimes feel like it drags a bit. Ranging from the response time on your 3-click shotmaking that you’ll need to learn to account for, to some periodic performance hiccups, it feels like the game could still use some patching to sort everything out better. While I can appreciate that the developers would like to give you plenty to unlock and keep returning for, I also think that the rate things unlock at is on the stingy side and can be discouraging. If you don’t find the 2 initial golfers to your liking you’ll unfortunately be stuck with one of them for a while, and then the fact that you’re able to buy gear in the shop that you may not even be allowed to use yet is also quite irksome and feels unnecessary. None of these issues may be crippling, but they do feel like unforced errors that hold the overall experience back. If you’ve been looking for a lighter and enjoyable golf game on the Switch, this may be just your thing, just be sure to go into the experience with your expectations set properly so you’ll be less likely to be disappointed.