Don’t worry, not a fore out of ten.

Camelot is a studio that has, for many years, dutifully churned out mascot sports games for Nintendo. Players often go back to the retro days when pinpointing the company’s best efforts, though if you go by most recent form — Mario Tennis Aces — the studio is still doing good work. After serving up court-based action it’s now back to the golf course, though Mario Golf: Super Rush feels more like a spiritual successor to Aces than an actual sequel to Mario Golf: World Tour. That’s fine, but Super Rush leaves us with some mixed feelings.

When writing about any game in this series the first task is to assess the story mode, in this case ‘Golf Adventure’. This mode is the ideal starting point and also continues the recent mini-resurgence of Nintendo’s Miis, as you take your little avatar — in this writer’s case an unnaturally chilled out, healthier version of the real person — on a quest to become a pro golfer; there are three save slots, too. There’s actually a story of sorts here, albeit one that goes from being mundane to utterly goofy at the drop of a hat about two thirds of the way through. There’s a very sudden flipping of the script, which is more throwaway than clever. That said, we think young gamers in particular will enjoy the silliness, and we went with it and had fun.

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Confusing, but charming.

It’s interesting to see how the Mana series has been treated over the years, both by Square and the general public. Secret of Mana was widely considered one of the best RPGs of its time and even today carries quite a bit of clout, but many of the other titles either didn’t get localized or arrived overseas years after their initial release. Legend of Mana—the fourth entry in the series—was one of the earliest to be localized, but it was met upon release with middling reception. Now, over twenty years later, and following on from 2019’s Collection of Mana and the Trials of Mana remake the following year, Square has finally seen fit to bring this misfit classic back into the light, and while many aspects of it still hold up, it is unmistakably a very weird game.

The narrative of Legend of Mana is… confusing, to say the least. You begin as a nameless, self-insert character, and you’re tasked with effectively creating the world as you explore it. The story goes that the legendary Mana Tree burned down centuries before the events of Legend of Mana and the world of Fa’Diel was subsequently broken up into fragments called “Artifacts” which were then scattered. Broadly speaking, there are three ‘arcs’ to the story, but they can be experienced in any order you choose and are each comprised of a series of sidequests that can also be played in a very loose order.

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