Monday, December 14, 2009

Played Lately: Pangya: Fantasy Golf

  • It's been five months of off-and-on gaming on my PSP, but after 155 hours of play time I have finally completed all the tournaments available in Pangya: Fantasy Golf. That essentially completes the game. Sure, I can keep grinding experience (it's a offline MMO, remember?) but that's not going to happen. If I play any more, it will be just for the fun of it.

  • That last tournament was a killer. It was 18 holes at the highest difficulty level on the hardest course in the game, Deep Inferno. This place is so insane that you don't avoid water. Instead they have Magma Hazards. Sand traps have been replaced pits of ash. Your shots are obscured by volcanic mountains and the skeletons of dragons. And all of your opponents can shoot a ball something like 300 yards while you are limited to about 260, even with the best gear.

  • It took seven attempts to complete, three of which I gave up half way because of too many bad shots right from the start. You have to play a flawless game to have any chance. On my first full attempt, I placed 13th out of thirty. That's as bad as I've even done in this game. On the second try, I got up to 12th and packed it up in frustration. Yesterday I worked my way to the top score, but lost the tiebreaker based on total Pang (the in-game currency) collected. Today, I gave it one more chance. It wasn't a perfect game. I had one bogey on the 10th hole, but I still made it to the tiebreaker. I ended up winning by a single Pang.

  • Overall, I can't help but think that my initial impressions are still correct. Pangya is a better game offline than it is online. Ntreev, et al, got all of the money out of me they can once I bought the box, so there's no reason to string the game along for extra cash. Unless they decide to release a sequel, in which case the chances of me giving them more money is directly related to how humanely they treat me in the first game. The MMO version feels like a money grab. The PSP version feels like they want me to like it so much I'll by Pangya 2, is such a thing existed.

  • And I would by Pangya 2 if I had the chance. I haven't enjoyed a golf game this much since Links 98. Damn, that's over ten years ago. It's about time someone made golf fun again.


© 2009 Marty Runyon. All rights reserved.
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2 comments:

  1. Did you ever try Shot Online? I found it pretty fun, and at free the pricing is right (or at least it used to be). The only gripe I had with it (and it is a major one) was that the putting was too difficult. It was very hard to tell which way the green was sloped when putting.

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  2. @ Yeebo - I did try Shot Online for a little while. I never got far in it before I was used to Asian cash shop centric games. I might have to look at it again some time.

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