Thanks to Teyon for the review code

Title: Minigolf Resort
System: 3DS (eShop)
Price: $4.99
Release Date: 12/22/2016

Presentation

I’m going to start the review by declaring that Minigolf Resort is one of the ugliest 3DS games that I have seen in a long time. It’s not the absolute worst when it comes to visuals, but it certainly isn’t pretty. Where to begin?

To start off, the 3D models that are used look downright ugly and outdated, appearing to be ripped from a launch era DS game. Doing some more research, it appears that the game is indeed a port of http://www.teyon.com/games/mini-golf-resort-ds/ an old DS game and from what the screenshots indicate, the porting process made things look even worse in this version, most notably the golf ball which now looks a lot like a cube on the top screen.

When it comes to the score there’s nothing memorable to talk about, with generic tracks for each of the worlds that aren’t worth discussing.

Gameplay

Boasting over 1,000 holes to play on, Minigolf Resort seems like one of the biggest minigolf games for a budget yet! Unfortunately, this game follows the quantity over quality mantra, and while technically there are a ton of holes, each of the 18 hole courses represent one level in each of the stages, and there’s a lot for each world.

Unfortunately the holes aren’t that interesting, with a lot of cramped spaces and open gaps and nothing that’s really cool or eye catching. Some holes can take an insanely long time to even complete, either due to the random obstacles that the developers littered across each stage, the godawful controls or both. Usually, it tends to be both, although I had more issues with the controls than anything else in the game.

You see, being a port of a DS game, the remnants of a touch-heavy experience are blatantly obvious here, considering how the touch screen is used for nearly EVERYTHING. Selecting options from the menu, turning the camera, adjusting the power gauge, firing your shot, nearly everything you do is done with the touch screen, which baffles my mind considering how the New 3DS/Circle Pad Pro could have been used for the camera and traditional buttons could have been used for the power gauge.

By not using those features, the game as it is now is a complete mess to control, as you have to adjust the camera on the bottom screen, touch the ball on the bottom right corner of the bottom screen, choose how much power you want to put into your shot on the bottom screen, before holding back in a direction and flicking upward to unleash your shot, all in that order. It’s obnoxious, very clunky and overall slow and tedious which makes the game a total bore to control. Sometimes I would shoot the ball thinking I had the right amount of power, only for it to go completely out of control or do little movement.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Minigolf resort is a total bore that seems to have been ported to the 3DS eShop without any interest in adapting the game for the hardware. (outside of a cheap-looking 3D effect that adds little to the environments) No matter how many times I tried to play one of the courses in the game, I just couldn’t get myself to complete every last hole in a single course, as sooner or later I’d run into a frustrating hole that took way too long to complete due to the two issues I mentioned earlier.

Even though the game seems to have a lot of content for $5, what’s the point in playing this if the game is so boring I couldn’t engage myself to clear a single course, despite trying all that I was able to in hopes of improvement? In this case, I’d rather have a game with well crafted, engaging courses than what this turned out to be. Case in point, Minigolf Resort is one of the most boring games that I’ve played in a really long time, and I just can’t recommend this to anyone in the current state that its in. I give a Minigolf Resort a 2 out of 10.