Mario Golf: Advance Tour

Mario Golf: Advance Tour is the fourth game in the Mario Golf series developed by Camelot, the folks known for (other than Mario sports games) Golden Sun. Immediately upon playing Advance Tour this became evident to me as the visuals of the two games are strikingly similar. The graphical style hasn't aged particularly well, but the detail put into the bright and colorful environments is still apparent to this day. The style could be considered impressive for a GBA game, but it looks much worse when zoomed or stretched. The characters are cute and emotive just like they were in Golden Sun, but don't worry about getting reams of text - the narrative here is light and breezy, and it's easy to quickly get golfing.

Although the similarities to Golden Sun are mostly superficial, this Mario Golf [マリオゴルフ] game's story mode does feature a leveling system. Winning events and completing minigames earns the player points used to level up and increase various attributes like drive length and spin. This encourages exploration of the game's small open world where NPCs and minigames can be found. Some of the side games can be frustrating, but the golfing mechanics are solid enough for these diversions to work. It's not a particularly long game if you speed through it but its story mode can easily last six to eight hours. Not to mention the extra hard post-game content for hardcore fans. It never feels like too much of a challenge, and as the difficulty ramps up it manages to feel both fun and fair.

Like many great games, this one is easy to learn yet difficult to master. It has rather standard golfing mechanics (survey the hole, then choose trajectory, power and spin) but its learning curve allows player skill to improve along with the character's stats. As the player learns the layouts of each hole, getting to the green in a fewer number of strokes becomes intuitive. The final story mission in the game is difficult, but not unfair. It's impressive how the developers were able to provide clarity in the visuals while still preserving a colorful and stylized aesthetic. The great thing about Advance Tour is that even without the fantastic story mode and side content, its core golfing gameplay is addictive. All in all it's well worth a playthrough.