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StarTopic Sports Story |ST| Arnold Palmer's Xtreme Pickleball

Linkstrikesback

Linkstrikesback

Starman
Pronouns
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Launch trailer/ release announcement:



What is sports story? A Switch exclusive sequel to the game Golf Story by Sidebar Games, a small indie team. In addition to Golf returning from the first game, they've added a number of other sports including Tennis as a new main sports, and a few new side sports including Cricket, Soccer,(Football) volleyball, squash, baseball,- but golf and tennis are the main focus.
Sports story is a sports RPG like no other. Featuring a mix of sports and sporting activities wrapped up in one big story. With a multitude of characters to meet, you will make plenty of friends and enemies along the way. Sports Story isn't just about sports, it's an all-out sporting adventure.

Features:

  • Play and master multiple unique golf courses. Rise through the ranks as a tennis student. Your sporting destiny is in your own hands.
  • Travel by train, helicopter and houseboat as you explore dungeons, abandoned ruins and the mysterious Wildlands.
  • Raise your Sporting Rank to unlock new and varied activities like BMX, mini-golf, cricket, volleyball, fishing and more.
  • Kick back at the mall with its daily attractions, specialty sports stores and mini games.
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Pricing information: $14.99/£12.80/€14,99.
Released December 23rd 2022.
 
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Nice ST.

I have seen a lot of conflicting comments/reports about stuttering in game, and glitches/bugs. How have people in here found it? Was going to buy it over the xmas break, but got Mario & Rabbids: Sparks of Hope to occupy me instead,
 
Jonno394 said:
Nice ST.

I have seen a lot of conflicting comments/reports about stuttering in game, and glitches/bugs. How have people in here found it? Was going to buy it over the xmas break, but got Mario & Rabbids: Sparks of Hope to occupy me instead,
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Started nice, stopped playing because of sequence break bugs.

Very important untill it's patched: If you reach the tennis academy do not speak with the lady at the front office unless the game tells you, othewise the game will update your task list breaking the sequence and making some characters dissapear unable to complete that section
 
I lost hours of progress on the first course when I loaded my save. Not sure how or why, but that’ll do it for me and this game. I hope it gets patched!
 
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Finally finished Mario + Rabbids, and will probably be juggling this and Persona 5 Royal I think for a while.
 
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Jonno394 said:
Nice ST.

I have seen a lot of conflicting comments/reports about stuttering in game, and glitches/bugs. How have people in here found it? Was going to buy it over the xmas break, but got Mario & Rabbids: Sparks of Hope to occupy me instead,
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There is sadly a lot to the point if you don’t have it yet I’m sadly going to recommend holding off to wait for a patch. There are regular hitches in performance (the action pauses, but then catches up) which aren’t usually a big deal, but can interrupt shots. Anytime you have to retry an event, expect it to reload improperly in varying annoying ways (say if you fall off your bike as an event ends, expect to restart it crashing or sometimes a Tennis rematch begins with the other side having points already). The worst though is Tennis is fundamentally broken depending on the arena and challenge. The ball doesn’t leave play essentially when you score, so the computer can score even after you did, or if they score they can even score twice in one turn. This happens in other events occassionally too, like I played a soccer event where I could grab the ball out of the goal and score again and again.

It’s a shame since there is a lot to like here, golf and golf adjacent events are generally great like the first game, the writing is fun, there’s a lot of cool small one off things (mini golf, movies to rent, etc.), and the adventure stuff can be great too. But I sadly can’t generally recommend it as is. Hoping patches can fix it if any come though I’m worried some flaws are fundamental.
 
@Linkstrikesback great job on the thread! Sorry for being pushy 😣

As for the game, I think I’m in the “wait for a patch” camp. I bought it day one, and I can handle bad performance. But game-breaking bugs and soft locks are a bridge too far. What a shame. 😞
 
Luckily, I haven't gone into any game breaking bugs... yet. And I'm quite enjoying the game, even with all its minor glitches (a lot of them).

But I can't clean the gym in the tennis academy. I'm feeling dumb.
 
I'd rate it 6/10, to be honest.

It's awfully buggy and I don't think it fully makes use of any of the sports, even the golf "competitions" are ridiculously thin. But I can't say I didn't have fun. I did, and I think the writing is better than that of the original.

Still, it's very sad to see a game with such great potential deliver such mild results.

PS: I am still hoping someday someone will discover how to trigger the tennis match against the Lumberjack.
 
Earthbounder said:
I'd rate it 6/10, to be honest.

It's awfully buggy and I don't think it fully makes use of any of the sports, even the golf "competitions" are ridiculously thin. But I can't say I didn't have fun. I did, and I think the writing is better than that of the original.

Still, it's very sad to see a game with such great potential deliver such mild results.

PS: I am still hoping someday someone will discover how to trigger the tennis match against the Lumberjack.
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Just curious how many chapters are there?
 
Red Monster said:
I bought it day one, and I can handle bad performance. But game-breaking bugs and soft locks are a bridge too far. What a shame.
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I'm pretty much in the same boat. Hope the patch comes sooner rather than later.

On the bright side, that leaves me free to clean up more of my backlog.
 
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I really hope they iron out the performance or at least the bugs. What I have played there is a truly great game underneat. I already was hooked, but then the problems were just too severe. Now I'm waiting for a patch.
 
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Great ST! I started it briefly and am only in the beach area, but I decided to just wait until the patch is out.

Here's their tweet confirming a patch for the game is coming soon...more than likely in January though:

 
xghost777 said:
There should be paper scraps on the floor. You have to pick them up and put them in a trash can by the second year student to advance.
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Yes, there are. Problem is, obviously I thought I should put them in the can, but no similar command prompted, nor I was allowed to throw them in from distance. Oh boy.
 
SuperCharlie78 said:
Yes, there are. Problem is, obviously I thought I should put them in the can, but no similar command prompted, nor I was allowed to throw them in from distance. Oh boy.
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That’s a bad sign. I’ve had it in this game where prompts don’t display. Try mashing A near it if you can carry them at least.
 
SuperCharlie78 said:
Yeah, I was stupid, I just needed to press A near to the can.
Now to the quest for the chalk...
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Nah don’t feel bad. Some of the prompts are legit not working. Some things you can jump on/over for example and there’s not always an indication.
 
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When you beat chapter 3 the town you visit stops raining…but all of the water around town still has tons of ripples in the water like it is raining…

This game wasn’t properly finished…

Edit: Everyone is still huddled in doors acting like it is still raining buckets outside. This is absurd.

Edit 2: Yo…for the stealth sequence the boat captain is swapped out as a completely different character…suddenly he has white skin…how did they miss this??
 
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How does the wind counter in the UI break. It said it was blowing right and it was blowing left for every shot I just took? This game keeps finding new ways to disappointment me in regards to breaking. I also had a golf ball just…stop traveling in midair and hard drop into the ground.

It’s a shame I’m constantly fighting this game since there’s so much fun stuff here too. The third golf course was great and the stealth sequence was a lot of fun! I’m in chapter 6 now so I should be in the back half.

Edit: Game hard crashed halfway through golf course 4. Lost all my progress. Not my first hard crash, but definitely the most sad. I’ll pick it up tomorrow I guess…
 
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Booted up Sports Story today and I have a clone of myself in the Castle lobby. An ill omen because on hole 1 of course 4 my ball dropped in midair again and then in an all new low for the game the controls locked so I had to reset.

I’m very close to quitting. I haven’t played a game this broken in a long time.

Edit: all of the above just happened again!!

Edit 2: the clone follows me on every screen now including the overworld. I was hoping riding the boat would get rid of him, no luck.
 
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xghost777 said:
Booted up Sports Story today and I have a clone of myself in the Castle lobby. An ill omen because on hole 1 of course 4 my ball dropped in midair again and then in an all new low for the game the controls locked so I had to reset.

I’m very close to quitting. I haven’t played a game this broken in a long time.

Edit: all of the above just happened again!!
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I’m honestly surprised you’re still going
 
Red Monster said:
I’m honestly surprised you’re still going
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I’m finally done as of now. Any time I hit a shot it’ll hard stop over any bunker or rough terrain. There’s no way for me to progress anymore. I can’t shoot around it and clear the challenge. I’m recording a video on my Switch showing the glitch and that’s it. What a disaster.

Edit: I tried one more time, doesn’t matter how I hit it actually. The game will always break after my first swing. There’s no way at all for me to continue progressing.
 
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I stepped away for three hours, but I couldn’t let this game go. I was so excited about this game for years so I had one last idea of uninstalling the game and reinstalling it. For whatever bizarre reason, it worked. No more clone and I was able to clear course 4. Performance seems better, way less hitches.

Will better performance hold? Is anything else working better? Will I actually be able to beat the game? Who knows! I’m in chapter 7 now and the journey begins again.
 
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I completed the rest of the game mostly without incident. Scoring outside of golf was still busted based off a baseball challenge I played, but thankfully performance largely improved (hitches were virtually gone). I’d encourage anyone with a copy to try reinstalling it if you were as determined as I was to see it through. I can not speak of course if any of the numerous issues I encountered otherwise improved. I didn’t have to retry any challenges beyond chapter 6 for example so again I can’t speak to how that fares or in regards to Tennis as I’ll explain next.

Bottom line after clearing it, beyond all the bugs this game just wasn’t finished. I’m glad I saw all of the golf courses (they were the best part and you can play all of them right from the start in multiplayer, there is nothing more unlockable despite what the menu suggests) and I saw the Wasteland chapter which was pretty solid, but the game basically just hastily ends there. The final event is absolutely not at all what they wanted it to be from the challenges to basically the complete lack of cutscenes. There is virtually no story resolution for the big plot threads the game built up. But perhaps most disappointing there straight up isn’t a Tennis tour at all. Like you graduate the academy, it says do the Tennis Tour and take on the Lumberjack as your first stop, but there is no Tennis Tour at all. There’s one Tennis court beyond the first one and the academy, but there is nothing there. You never play Tennis against anyone except for a joke challenge at the end of chapter 7. There’s parts of the map you don’t go to and a suspicious empty space in the top half of the map that suggest more existed, but it doesn’t.

One last thing, the game never lived up really at all to its announcement trailer. There is virtually no crossover between sports (which given they couldn’t even nail the fundamentals of Tennis is probably for the best). There’s maps here that didn’t make the cut and there isn’t a soccer match at all either (again probably for the best). But yeah other maps are mostly there as in the final game. I wish for what we did get, you could at least retry certain challenges again for fun beyond golf. The only rematchable opponent is the baby on the baby Tennis field iirc.



There’s more to say and I’m eager to hear what any of y’all think out there if you ever play it, but for now at least I’ve said enough. It was fun to dream about the game that could have been and I’m disappointed it barely lived up to its promise when it was actually working, but yeah oh well it is what it is. Sports Story is broken and unfinished. I’m at peace now that I’ve seen it through.
 
Yes, finally! Also that some big list of bugs to advance the quest when you are not supposed to
 
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Hailinel said:
The game was made by like two people.
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There are lots of games that are made by one or two person and they still weren't this buggy at launch. What I particularly ment with my comment was that the game is full of common bugs that should be obvious if you actually tested your game.
 
Discokuningas said:
There are lots of games that are made by one or two person and they still weren't this buggy at launch. What I particularly ment with my comment was that the game is full of common bugs that should be obvious if you actually tested your game.
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OK? It's not like they didn't playtest it. Yes, it shipped with bugs, but being such a small team, it's not necessarily the case that they found those bugs earlier or were aware of them because it seems a good number of these bugs are resultant from doing things in an order that the devs just didn't think to account for.
 
Hailinel said:
OK? It's not like they didn't playtest it. Yes, it shipped with bugs, but being such a small team, it's not necessarily the case that they found those bugs earlier or were aware of them because it seems a good number of these bugs are resultant from doing things in an order that the devs just didn't think to account for.
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I think it's pretty impossible to not be aware of most of these bugs if you really test it. I don't wanna argue if they tested it or not. Either way they released it way too early. And the team size is not a defense.
 
Discokuningas said:
I think it's pretty impossible to not be aware of most of these bugs if you really test it. I don't wanna argue if they tested it or not. Either way they released it way too early. And the team size is not a defense.
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It's easy for you to say that as Joe Blow Couch Developer. The reality of their situation isn't necessarily as clear cut from the outside, and insinuating that they were lazy or stupid or in any way wilfully malicious in releasing a game with progress-halting bugs is really unnecessary.
 
Hailinel said:
It's easy for you to say that as Joe Blow Couch Developer. The reality of their situation isn't necessarily as clear cut from the outside, and insinuating that they were lazy or stupid or in any way wilfully malicious in releasing a game with progress-halting bugs is really unnecessary.
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I didn't say any of that. You shouldn't release games when they aren't ready. What else should we think? I have paid full price of this game which doesn't work like it should. You write like the developers are the victim here.
 
Discokuningas said:
I didn't say any of that. You shouldn't release games when they aren't ready. What else should we think? I have paid full price of this game which doesn't work like it should. You write like the developers are the victim here.
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I'm not saying they're a victim. I'm saying "release only when ready" isn't always clear-cut. Especially for an indie studio that had already been working on this game for years and have probably been tamping down bugs for a long while.
 
Hailinel said:
I'm not saying they're a victim. I'm saying "release only when ready" isn't always clear-cut. Especially for an indie studio that had already been working on this game for years and have probably been tamping down bugs for a long while.
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I think it is. What they are winning here? Some sales early on. What about the sales they could get later? They are losing the trust which they gained with Golf Story. That affects also for their future products. I don't care if they had hard time developing this game. Why should anyone buy this if it isn't the state it should be when released?
 
Discokuningas said:
I think it is. What they are winning here? Some sales early on. What about the sales they could get later? They are losing the trust which they gained with Golf Story. That affects also for their future products. I don't care if they had hard time developing this game. Why should anyone buy this if it isn't the state it should be when released?
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Then wait for it to get patched. They're patching it. Or if you're really that put off, don't buy it at all. Either way, the devs are surely aware of the consequences of softlock glitches in their game, they're working on fixing them, and hopefully it'll be a better game in the near future.

And yeah, it sucks. But again, there are any number of reasons it shipped the way that it did. Further, they're a small team and may never have found these issues on their own. That doesn't mean that they didn't test their game or that the public are serving as QA.
 
Hailinel said:
Then wait for it to get patched. They're patching it. Or if you're really that put off, don't buy it at all. Either way, the devs are surely aware of the consequences of softlock glitches in their game, they're working on fixing them, and hopefully it'll be a better game in the near future.

And yeah, it sucks. But again, there are any number of reasons it shipped the way that it did. Further, they're a small team and may never have found these issues on their own. That doesn't mean that they didn't test their game or that the public are serving as QA.
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Have you played the game to completion? The launch state of the game was far more than just some quest markers not working. Goals do not score properly across events, restarting events always leads to unique disasters, the UI didn’t always display and didn’t always function, multiple hard crashes, multiple times the controls locked forcing you to reset the game, objectives that didn’t actually have content attached to them, weird collision stuff that could trap you in place or prevent your golf ball from traveling in mid air, bad performance that can actually interrupt gameplay, and more beyond this. All of that is before you can even discuss more subjective content quality.

There’s not being mean to small teams and also a line regardless of the struggle to put this out they should have held it back a little longer and Sports Story is definitely in the latter camp. I’m less sympathetic as well since they shadowdropped it right before Christmas which meant there were no reviews and less content creators to warn people that the game wasn’t what it was pitched as and the dreadful state the game launched in.

All of that said, there’s a lot to enjoy about Sports Story. It’s more than a story of just the bugs (the golf is fun, the writing is fun, the golf dungeon is cool, there’s cool touches here and there like the video rentals) and they are hopefully turning this game around one patch at a time. I want them to succeed.
 
xghost777 said:
Have you played the game to completion? The launch state of the game was far more than just some quest markers not working. Goals do not score properly across events, restarting events always leads to unique disasters, the UI didn’t always display and didn’t always function, multiple hard crashes, multiple times the controls locked forcing you to reset the game, objectives that didn’t actually have content attached to them, weird collision stuff that could trap you in place or prevent your golf ball from traveling in mid air, bad performance that can actually interrupt gameplay, and more beyond this. All of that is before you can even discuss more subjective content quality.

There’s not being mean to small teams and also a line regardless of the struggle to put this out they should have held it back a little longer and Sports Story is definitely in the latter camp. I’m less sympathetic as well since they shadowdropped it right before Christmas which meant there were no reviews and less content creators to warn people that the game wasn’t what it was pitched as and the dreadful state the game launched in.

All of that said, there’s a lot to enjoy about Sports Story. It’s more than a story of just the bugs (the golf is fun, the writing is fun, the golf dungeon is cool, there’s cool touches here and there like the video rentals) and they are hopefully turning this game around one patch at a time. I want them to succeed.
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OK, I haven't finished the game, and that's actually a better summary of the issues. The scope of the game being what it is, and with the time they had already put into it, I do wonder if the devs found themselves up against some sort of deadline.
 
Hailinel said:
Then wait for it to get patched. They're patching it. Or if you're really that put off, don't buy it at all. Either way, the devs are surely aware of the consequences of softlock glitches in their game, they're working on fixing them, and hopefully it'll be a better game in the near future.

And yeah, it sucks. But again, there are any number of reasons it shipped the way that it did. Further, they're a small team and may never have found these issues on their own. That doesn't mean that they didn't test their game or that the public are serving as QA.
Click to expand...

We have no guarantees they are patching all the issues. I already bought it. Maybe I was stupid. But either way it was released when it wasn't ready. I don't get why you are defending them so much. I don't care what are the reasons. Games should not be released until they are finished.
 
Discokuningas said:
We have no guarantees they are patching all the issues. I already bought it. Maybe I was stupid. But either way it was released when it wasn't ready. I don't get why you are defending them so much. I don't care what are the reasons. Games should not be released until they are finished.
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I took issue with your comments suggesting they hadn't playtested the game themselves and threw the patch out as though they were treating the public as QA.

I'm not going to make excuses for the state the game is in and I don't blame anyone that looked forward to it for being disappointed with its state. At the same time, game dev is hard, and indie game development has its own set of challenges. I don't think "they didn't test their game" is a fair or accurate criticism, snide comment or not.

Many games go through rigorous QA where bugs are documented and are summarily ignored because the developer or publisher doesn't believe they're important enough to stop shipment, and that decision is never QA's fault. We don't know what this game's bug log looks like, but someone did test this, and if they reported even half the bugs that the game shipped with, well, someone other than the tester said "good enough". That's all.
 
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