Everybody’s Golf Hot Shots review for Nintendo Switch

System: Switch
Release date: September 4, 2025
Developer: Hyde
Publisher: Bandai Namco

Whoever originally coined the phrase “comparison is the thief of joy” must have had access to a time machine solely built to show them 2025’s Everybody’s Golf Hot Shots. The latest in a string of first-party Sony franchises shorn of their exclusivity, Bandai Namco and development studio Hyde have created a game that seems overtly reliant on players having no prior experience with the series. Seeing as it’s been eight years since the last Everybody’s Golf, perhaps there are players out there who won’t have had the pleasure of hitting these hallowed links – but fair warning: this review is going to read more like a PSA than an objective deconstruction of Hyde/Bamco’s work.

Originally created by Camelot before they went off to make golf games for Nintendo centered around Mario and his pals, Everybody’s Golf (Hot Shots Golf in the US) has spent most of its life under the stewardship of Yokohama based dev Clap-Hanz. Across the span of six mainline entries and a slew of handheld spin-offs, Clap Hanz spent literal decades curating a deceptively deep golf sim, wrapped in a charmingly kitsch style all of their own making. The central emphasis of Everybody’s Golf has historically been a gradual mastery of its three-click swing system – one click to start, one to set your power, and then a final tap to determine whether or not the ball goes toward the target, or on an embarrassing side-quest toward an innocent onlooker’s head. Leveling up either pre-made characters or your own custom creation, and equipping them with a dizzying area of irons and wedges has typified the series’ progression loop.

Quick-fire history lesson aside, it feels as though Hyde received an even shorter brief prior to attempting a follow-up to Clap Hanz’ work. Everybody’s Golf Hot Shots primarily aims to replicate the series’ quirky tone and past mechanics, with little deviation beyond that. Given that returning to older games in the series is still a blast, this isn’t an entirely bad idea – but Hot Shots’ shoddy execution is its Achilles’ heel.

Let’s start with that classic three-click swing swing system. The once limitless satisfaction of nailing a three click swing has been dulled to the point of frustration within Everybody’s Golf Hot Shots. Past games would render their 3D visuals at 30 frames per second, but present the swing meters and timing-based UI at a snappy and responsive 60 FPS. This time around, Hyde has opted to run everything at a single, uncapped, and wholly unreliable framerate. Playing the game on Nintendo Switch 1, performance hovers anywhere between a creaky 20-ish frames per second, and a jittery 40 FPS. You can add a 20 onto those performance figures if you’re playing on Switch 2 – however this doesn’t do much to improve things. Higher than average input latency, and the aforementioned coupling of the swing system’s frame rate to the game’s woeful performance is a knife through the heart of Everybody’s Golf Hot Shots.

Truthfully, I could end the review here. The act of swinging a golf club is literally the main mechanic of every good-walk-spoiled simulator out there – but the emphasis the Everybody’s Golf series has historically placed on the nuance of this mechanic has long been its ace in the hole. Meticulously lifting the swing systems from past games in the series, only to botch them so ruthlessly, is enough to merit the score I’ll ultimately be applying to Everybody’s Golf Hot Shots.

If you can push past the game’s dreadful controls (I dare you to try, honestly), you’ll find that much of the game’s overarching framework mirrors that of its predecessors – only with a curiously grindy spin layered on top. You start with access to just two golfers and a single, returning course. This catalogue eventually grows to a respectable collection of ten courses and thirty golfers, but the time and effort – along with the pain and suffering – it takes to unlock that extra content is asking a lot, to be frank. Each golfer has a loyalty level that is increased by using them, which in turn increases their stats and unlocks additional shot types. A thorough yet droll tutorial guides you through the intricacies of how each golfer’s stats affect their usability on the course, but again – with the underlying mechanics so thoroughly busted, you’ll be battling against inconsistent framerates far more regularly than your golfer’s statistical shortcomings. You can boost a golfer’s stats temporarily by stuffing their faces with sweet treats, an addition that – coupled with the game’s slow progression – furnishes me with the suspicion that Everybody’s Golf Hot Shots may have at one stage been destined as a free to play, live service title. Pure assumption on my part, but the similarities to low-effort, mobile gacha-slop don’t end there.

Which brings me to the game’s presentation. Past Everybody’s Golf games always had a specific look to them – and an appealing one, at that. Cutesy anime golfers, caddies slingshotting themselves into a sprint in order to meet your ball as it lands, even rally cars skidding around the outer edge of a desert par-4 – it was always a treat to see how each new entry would toe the line between studious depth, and the off-kilter goofiness that lent the series its eye-catching appeal. Hot Shots gloriously fumbles this aspect of the series’ identity by regurgitating many of its core aspects in a really cynical and unfulfilling way. Yes, the cutesy golfers are here – but they look, well, weird? There’s a garish, motion captured clumsiness to the design of the core roster that feels out of step with their past incarnations, and while they’ve always been known to be chatty – by crikey they simply won’t shut up this time around. If I have to hear Aile begin another round by screaming “GO BALLLL!!” at the top of her lungs, I’ll unfortunately have to take a 9-iron to my Nintendo Switch 2.

The game’s selection of courses doesn’t do much to improve its standing in this regard, either. In preparing for this review I replayed both Everybody’s Golf 5 and 6 on my trusty old PS3. Both of these games contain many of the same characters and courses that feature in Everybody’s Golf Hot Shots – and you know what? These locales look a damn sight better within those older titles. Visually, the new game lacks cohesion – courses look unlit, foliage awkwardly juts out of the ground, and golfers/onlookers alike look as though they’ve been photoshopped into any given frame. Artistic direction and technical makeup have both come to loggerheads within Everybody’s Golf Hot Shots. It’s catastrophic to have a twenty year title readily outperforming its great-great-great grandchild in this regard, but this is where we are nonetheless.

Some merit has to be awarded for Hyde’s sparse few additions to the standard selection of available game modes. Outside of the returning Challenge mode, an ill-conceived story has been tacked on to Hot Shots’ rendition of “World Tour”. To no-one’s delight, awkwardly crafted visual novel-esque dialogue sequences have been squished between very standard rounds of the substandard golf experience. These vignettes aren’t fully voice acted, they present the characters as one dimensional archetypes, and perhaps most damningly, the game gives you a blanket option to skip them entirely should you wish – what’s the point in that case? The other, meatier addition to the roster of available modes is Wacky Golf, which adds a decent variety of light-hearted distractions for you to enjoy. The centerpiece of Wacky Golf, and perhaps the entire game, is Colorful Mode – which equips you and your opponents with tickets that you use as you play. Each ticket triggers an event that ranges from devious (like hiding your opponent’s shot bar), to ridiculous (actual animal stampede). If this mode were present in any other Everybody’s Golf game it would be an absolute blast – here however, it’s an oasis of fun amidst the world’s biggest bunker.

With its shortcomings rooted so deeply, there’s little that Everybody’s Golf Hot Shots could ever do to redeem itself over the course of its grindy, long-winded campaign. Attempting to justify the greatest-hits-esque breadth of content in the midst of broken mechanics, tepid visuals, and awful performance is like recommending a toddler to run a marathon because they “like to run around”. A storied, long running franchise like Everybody’s Golf deserves much better than what Hyde and Bandai Namco have hastily rustled up on this occasion. Rather knowingly, Clap-Hanz own Easy Come, Easy Golf – itself a spiritual successor to Everybody’s Golf – received a performance update on Nintendo Switch the day that Hot Shots released. If you’re looking for a breezy, good-looking and accessible golf title, you’ll be better served there – that’s an excellent game, and this one very much isn’t.

Everybody’s Golf Hot Shots copy provided by the publisher for the purposes of this review.