Original Release: Sega, 1991, Genesis
Battle Golfer Yui gets originality points for merging a 2D golf game with RPG and visual novel elements before anyone else, but it didn’t execute any of these things all that well.
Battle Golfer Yui (Genesis, Sega, 1991)
Where to Buy: eBay
How to Emulate: coming soon!
Review by: C. M0use
Battle Golfer Yui is unique in blending up a straightforward 2D golf game with a visual novel and RPG elements. Unfortunately, it’s about the worst of all of these elements and the final product is a shit milkshake.
The story, which unfolds via mostly-still (but numerous) anime cutscenes, is a bit Valis-y. These two random teen girls are identified by a mad scientist as having the ideal “golfer bodies” and are kidnapped, but our titular Yui gets rescued by Dr. Rambo before she can have a Battle Golfer brainwashing chip installed. She then determines to go back to the mysterious golf club to investigate and find out what happened to the other girl. Obviously absurd, but the game takes it all weirdly serious (more on that later).
So you have a visual novel component, as you wander about the golf club premises investigating. What this leads to is many battles with mooks who want to challenge you on the greens. That bit of it is a pretty straightfoward and simple 2D golf game, albeit with the ability to gain EXP and level up. That improves your distance and such, and defeating mooks causes you to learn their “special shot” which can be invoked in matches using your limited stock of SP.
It’s really not an awful concept, but Battle Golfer Yui manages to bungle like every possible step. First of all, you have the typical visual novel bullshit in that you often have to nonsensically and repeatedly click on tons of menu options to make something happen.
Then you get into the golf game, which is basically competent but needlessly perfectionist and frustrating. There is absolutely no distance estimate of any kind, all you can really do is play around and try to memorize how far the ball will go in certain scenarios with certain clubs. Honestly, this is probably unplayable without using save states after a lot of shots to get a feel for how the game’s physics work. Messing with save states reveals that the computer also makes an almost-identical series of shots on each hole, and they usually get at least a Birdie so that’s the near-perfect pace you need to keep.
And as far as the RPG elements go, it’s one of those deals where EXP is very finite and can be missed to put you in a deficit you might not get out of later on. You only get EXP from winning a hole, but you can easily tie a bunch of holes and still win the game while missing vital leveling opportunities. Once you beat a mook you can’t play them again, and there are only so many wandering around. And there’s no grinding opportunity either; lose to any one of them just once and its game over.
So it’s basically an overly demanding and anal golf game with annoying visual novel bullshit between rounds. Even though the Japanese gaming scene was quite masochistic at the time, the press over there still gave this game crappy reviews. Any lasting impression it left was more for its for strange and dark twist ending than anything else. You get the standard choice of being good or evil, but it turns out the “good” choice sees you unwittingly set off a bomb that Dr. Rambo planted and destroy an entire city. Oops! The “bad” choice, to be the new leader of the Dark Golfers, keeps the other girl brainwashed but doesn’t require blundering your way into a historic war crime.
I can’t see this being enjoyable for anyone unless you want an extremely hard, perfectionist golf game that will virtually require save state abuse to get through at some point. It’s incredibly irritating from the first couple of holes, and even with save states is often too arbitrary to figure out exactly what magical combo of clubs and power will make a shot work.
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