| EVERYBODY'S GOLF: HOT SHOTS | |||
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| Release Date | Gameplay & Story | Pre-Order & DLC | Review |
Everybody's Golf: Hot Shots Review Overview
What is Everybody's Golf: Hot Shots?
Everybody's Golf: Hot Shots, known as Hot Shots Golf in North America, is an arcade-style golf game that blends cartoonish visuals with classic golf mechanics. Players choose from a quirky cast and aim to stay under par on colorful courses using a simple, timing-based swing system.
Easy to pick up but offering strategic depth, the game includes shot types, spin control, and club choices. Winning tournaments unlocks new characters and courses, while local and online multiplayer lets players compete casually or in ranked matches.
Everybody's Golf: Hot Shots features:
⚫︎ Up to 4 players online and local co-op
⚫︎ Multiple character stories
⚫︎ Six single player game modes
⚫︎ Three multiplayer game modes
⚫︎ Character customization
For more gameplay details, read everything we know about Everybody's Golf: Hot Shots's gameplay and story.
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 eShop |
 PSN |
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| Price | $39.99 | ||||
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Everybody's Golf: Hot Shots Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 So Many Modes! There’s a Set of Clubs for Everyone Course Variety is Pretty Insane |
Many Mechanics are Unreliable Currency is a Suggestion AI Is either a Genius or a Moron Absolutely Atrocious Camera Controls Massive Performance Issues on Switch |
Everybody's Golf: Hot Shots Story - 7/10
Let me be real for a second: Everybody’s Golf: Hot Shots has some of the shallowest and most cringe-inducing stories I’ve seen in a sports-adjacent game. But here’s the thing: that same cringe, delivered through its over-the-top cast of caricature characters, gives it a goofy charm I can’t help but enjoy. In fact, I’d argue the story ends up being one of the better parts of the single-player experience considering its technical gameplay issues.
Everybody's Golf: Hot Shots Gameplay - 7/10
On the gameplay side, Hot Shots has definitely expanded its options and mechanics compared to earlier entries. The familiar three-click swing system is still here too—simple to learn, tough to master, albeit marred with its baffling spin mechanics. Unfortunately, the fun is constantly undermined by technical headaches, too, from performance drops to downright atrocious camera controls that can turn a relaxing round into a frustrating slog.
Everybody's Golf: Hot Shots Visuals - 7/10
The series has thankfully held on to its lighthearted charm, even under a new development studio. Characters remain as adorable as ever, the art style keeps its bubbly personality, and the special effects are still hilariously over the top. Unfortunately, it somehow manages to look dated, even by its own style’s standards, with courses, UI, and icons all looking rather bland and old.
Everybody's Golf: Hot Shots Audio - 6/10
The audio here is all over the place. Sometimes there’s voice acting, sometimes there isn’t, and when it does show up, the quality jumps from decent to straight-up awkward. Sound effects bounce between satisfying and forgettable, and while the music isn’t bad, it loses points thanks to those clunky menu noises. Overall, it’s a weird mix (get it?) that never quite comes together.
Everybody's Golf: Hot Shots Value for Money - 8/10
Even with its flaws, the game offers solid value. For just under 40 bucks, you get a casual golf title with enough modes to fill hours of play, plenty of ways to customize loadouts and characters, and, most importantly, the joy of playing with friends. In fact, those frustrating mechanics almost turn into part of the fun when everyone’s suffering together.
Everybody's Golf: Hot Shots Overall Score - 70/100
All things considered, I find myself charmed by this trainwreck of a game. Sure it looks outdated, has the audio experience of a broken record player, and possesses mechanics that’s actively trying to fight you to the death; but behind the mess, there’s a game worth getting together with your friends for. Do wait for a sale, though.
Everybody's Golf: Hot Shots Review: Rough Landing for a Fairway Game
A Hole in One Too Many
Man, I’ve always had a blast with Golf With Your Friends. Get a group together and it’s the best and worst of humanity every time—people yelling, throwing shade, and that one poor soul getting dogpiled on for no real reason. Honestly, there’s something kind of therapeutic about being the target of all that nonsense and still coming out laughing (not that I would know).
That’s the kind of design mentality I look for in golf games. I’m not exactly a hardcore golfer myself, though I do play it in real life, but I know how much more fun the sport feels when it’s spiced up. And that’s what Everybody’s Golf has always delivered: couch play that’s actually fun, controls anyone can pick up, and a style that’s way more inviting than EA’s stiff-as-heck PGA Tour series.
Now with the latest entry out, I’m happy to say it keeps that same spirit alive—just not in the way you might expect.
Everybody’s Golf is for Everyone
But before anything else, what is Everybody’s Golf: Hot Shots really about? At its core, it’s simply people from all walks of life getting into golf. True to the title, it’s meant to be everyone’s, well, golf. That is, instead of leaning on a dry, realistic career mode bogged down by team politics and drama, the series goes for colorful, often ridiculous stories more in line with the kind of shenanigans you’d expect from something like Yakuza.
Take the new character Aile, for example: her story revolves around a growing obsession with golf that she somehow manages to tie into her passion for cheerleading. Meanwhile, the other new character has eight-grader syndrome (many of us still do). That same outlandish flavor runs through the entire cast, each driven by quirks that shape their every interaction.
The story itself isn’t anything groundbreaking. It’s slice-of-life through and through, focused on small, casual, and relatable moments. That might sound boring on paper, and to some degree it is, but the characters’ quirks do enough heavy lifting to keep things entertaining.
Easy to Learn, Hard to Master
Everybody’s Golf is known for being one of the most accessible golf titles out there, especially when compared to more serious options like EA’s PGA Tour series. Its simplicity comes from the core experience of the sport getting compressed into the classic three-click swing control scheme: one press for the backswing, another for power, and the last for accuracy. That’s all it takes to send the ball flying toward your target.
Of course, there are a lot of finer details to consider if you want to perform well, like wind speed and direction, the weather, tree placement, the shape of the fairway, terrain conditions, and the curvature of the green. But the beauty of the game is that you don’t really need to care about any of that if you’re a newcomer or just someone looking to have fun with friends. Just shoot your shot and laugh at your pals who somehow screw up.
Beyond that, Everybody’s Golf: Hot Shots gives you plenty of room for player expression. You can dress up your character with different costumes and colors, pick from a variety of clubs and balls, and even switch which hand they use on the course (apparently everyone’s ambidextrous here). On top of that, there’s a wide selection of golfers and caddies, from fresh faces to returning guests from past entries in the series.
A Mode for Everyone
Perhaps to keep you from shutting the game off or putting your Switch to sleep, Everybody’s Golf: Hot Shots packs in a staggering number of modes across both solo and multiplayer. In fact, it can be a little overwhelming figuring out where to even start.
Single Player alone offers six different options—Stroke Play, Match Play, Wacky Golf, Challenge Mode, World Tour, and Solo Round—each with its own gimmicks, scoring systems, and difficulty. Multiplayer is a bit slimmer, sticking to the first three, but those still showcase the heart of what the game does best.
Of the solo modes, Challenge Mode is easily the one worth coming back to. Tournaments ramp up in difficulty as you go, rewarding you with money to spend and unlocking new characters to play. World Tour, meanwhile, acts as a story mode for each golfer, giving some narrative weight to your matches that’s rather questionable in terms of necessity. The other modes, meanwhile, share similar foundations and can be played rather interchangeably, but they mix things up enough with different scales and gimmicks to keep them from feeling redundant.
Gameplay Issues for No One
Before you rush to Steam or any other storefront to grab a copy, you should know that Everybody’s Golf: Hot Shots comes with some caveats in its gameplay. These range from minor quirks, like AI opponents with wild mood swings, to major faults that can tank an entire run, such as frustrating performance issues.
The lighter problems are easy enough to shrug off, and sometimes they’re even unintentionally hilarious. I’ve had matches where the AI seemed convinced that the sand of bunkers were somehow better to play on than the smooth grass of fairways, or times when they literally hit the ball backward, despite having no obstacle to detour around. These moments are rare, but when they happen, they’re comedy gold.
The bigger issue lies with the camera controls, which are nothing short of awful. While basic movement down the course works fine, the important stuff—like zooming to check the fairway or studying the green’s curves—ranges from nonexistent to locked behind clunky controls that won’t even let you hold a proper view. It’s a constant, frustrating barrier that makes finely lining up shots harder than it should be.
There are plenty of other issues that would take too long to list one by one. However, one notable standout would be that…
It Drops Frames Like It was Hot
Unfortunately for anyone playing on a weaker system—or in my case, a plain old Nintendo Switch—Everybody’s Golf: Hot Shots suffers from severe performance issues that drag down the experience. At times, the game lags so badly that it affects not only what you see on screen but also how your inputs register.
This is a huge problem because the series’ signature three-click swing system relies entirely on precision timing for the latter two presses: power and accuracy. But while missing power is forgivable, too many things rely on accuracy, and certain mechanics outright fail if you whiff.
Take Power Shots, for example. In theory, they add about ten extra yards to a swing, but that bonus doesn’t mean much when your club ends up slicing the ball sideways into another time zone. Spins also fall apart unless your input is timed nearly perfectly, and lag makes that almost impossible.
What makes it worse is the inconsistency. The slowdown doesn’t follow a fixed pattern, so you can’t even adapt to it. All you know is that your button presses will register some fraction of a second late, and you’ll just have to pray it doesn’t happen on a crucial shot.
There’s nothing more frustrating than blowing the last two holes of a match because your hardware isn’t “modern” enough. One bad stutter can tack four or five points onto your scorecard, and that can be the difference between a win and a humiliating loss. For a game built on timing, that kind of flaw is unacceptable, and even someone like me, who tends to find the most enjoyment in games that I score below 80, finds it dangerously close to a dealbreaker.
Is Everybody's Golf: Hot Shots Worth It?
Only if you wait for a sale
Despite how much I praised its value for money, that doesn’t excuse all the rough edges holding it back. Still, if you can look past those flaws, you’ll find a surprisingly fun game that scratches the itch for casual video game golf with friends. Grab it on sale, and you’re in for a good time.
| Steam |
eShop |
PSN |
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| Price | $39.99 | ||||
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Everybody's Golf: Hot Shots FAQ
Will there be returning characters from previous Everybody’s Golf games?
Yes, characters like Aya and Jasmine, Garuda and Cougar, as well as many other characters become playable later on once you unlock them.
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Everybody's Golf: Hot Shots Product Information
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| Title | Everybody's Golf: Hot Shots |
|---|---|
| Release Date | September 5, 2025 |
| Developer | HYDE |
| Publisher | Bandai NAMCO, Sony Interactive Entertainment |
| Supported Platforms | PC, PS5, Switch |
| Genre | Sports, Party |
| Number of Players | 1-4 |
| ESRB Rating | ESRB E |
| Official Website | Everybody's Golf: Hot Shots Website |
