Wizard Golf RPG Review: A Tin Cup

Wizard Golf is a free iOS game with a great premise that should have dropped the Golf or hired a course pro. Why? In order to progress, you're required to do more than simply make par on a given course. In fact, the majority of objectives on a course involve throwing your score out the window in order to defeat all enemies, open magical chests, secure all the gems, and so on.

Without the challenge of shooting for a good score, you putz around a level until you hit or collect everything you should, with no real challenge or strategy - it's single player Go Fish. There's no point because there's no thrill or challenge or tension. Multiple objectives are great, adding variety and an incentive to replay past levels, while extending the amount of value you get from a game. But objectives need to be enjoyable, otherwise they're just filler - if these secondary objectives came with a minimum shot requirement then we'd be talking..

But first impressions are great, and you'll have a quite a bit of fun before you're required to violate the very spirit of golf itself. You're given control of a 16-bit wizard and his magical wand that shoots either a fireball or ice ball, depending on if your shot has full power or not. You aim, hit the power meter at the right moment, and watch your shot plow through enemies, bounce off walls, occasionally a power up, and land in the hole, ideally under par. 

Which like real-life golf is easier said than done. Hitting an enemy can slow your momentum and re-direct your shot, you can fly off course into water, and various other hazards are more than happy to ruin your score. A lot of this is naturally by design, with various dungeon enemies and other gaming tropes serving to replace your typical water hazards and sand traps.This lends the game a aggressive undertone that's thus far only been seen on the SNES classic Kirby's Dream Course and that one time things got out of hand between me and my buddy on the driving range. 

But there are also unintended hazards and obstacles. The fact you can only plow through enemies with a fully powered shot is troublesome because this kills your momentum dead in its tracks. The lack of a third dimension is tricky too, and the lack of lofting ability is missed. You'll also occasionally clip a wall you shouldn't, and think you're solidly in the hole when it turns out you're just on the edge - though you won't ever 'overshoot' a hole, much to the delight of power-putters everywhere. Golf is frustrating. It's one thing if you miss a shot because you screwed up - that's arguably the whole point of golf. It's a whole other thing, a bad thing, even, if you miss a shot and the age-old notion of "the computer cheats" starts creeping into your frontal lobe.
How long Wizard Golf holds the attention of your frontal lobe, depends on what you want from your golf games.  WGT Golf, Golf Star, Stickman Golf, and Let's Golf cover a wide range of difficulty curves and accessibility levels. Of them, Wizard Golf is the least golf-like. Perhaps Wizard Billiards RPG would have been a better choice.

Regardless, this game is colorful and bright, confident in its visual presentation and RPG-esque progression;  offering numerous upgrades and skills and spells for paying and non paying players - and passes the poop break test - you can get in quite a lot of Wizard Golf in under 10 minutes. If you have a friend or relative or spouse or child that you demand become a fan of the sport - there are worse ways to ease them into it. At the very least they'll understand the glorious triumph and bone crushing defeat of the sport, and be complaining like an old pro in no time.