On the budget-priced end of the Switch spectrum, in general the expectation is for games with reasonably humble hooks that will hopefully align with your tastes. Yes, there are some that are more elaborate, but the majority are based on a central simple idea or mechanic that you’ll then continue to work with. In the case of Soccer Golf, it’s taking a pretty basic aiming mechanic, where you’ll plot your general direction and power, and then try to knock your ball to the hole. While it may be simple in concept, in practice at least there’s a bit of challenge to it.

Starting out, you’ll get a small number of stages where everything will be more simple. These will help you get the hang of how you’re setting your direction and the fact that you’re able to adjust how much power you’re using. While you do need to be concerned with the fact that you only have so many shots you can take, in terms of the star-based scoring system what you’re really fighting against is the clock, so even if you may be a bit of a mess getting to the hole, the real goal is just to do it quickly. Tied to that fact, the critical thing to understand is that you’ll have the ability to hit the ball again while it’s still in the air, at least getting a limited benefit of slowing time while you’re aiming as well, though the ball will continue to move so you’ll need to get used to making your plan and then executing quite quickly.

The challenge here is that this isn’t a novel idea, with a few different variations on the same concept out there already, most notably the multiplayer Party Golf which was released a number of years ago. While this is more happy to keep the essential play the same, though with different environments and elements, its competition in this case really tries to up the ante on pressure and has some varied modes as well to amplify the challenge. In the end, given the budget price, this is still quite an excellent overall value, it also just has a very narrow and not entirely unique appeal.