The game starts with a top-down map, with you controlling a car. Driving a short distance I found Rookie Roads‐an excellent place to start your UPGA career. Under Par Golf Architect has dozens of options, buildings and all sorts of additions and improvements to enhance your golf course, and immediately feels more like a resource management sim than a golf game.
The game's problems hit you immediately with its console controller-unfriendly user interface (it may play better with mouse & keyboard, but I wouldn't know.) It lacks proper tutorials and... dare I say it? It has utterly rubbish gameplay, simplistic grid-based construction and extremely basic graphics.
At the core of every sim there needs to be a solid game mechanic and Under Par Golf is well named–As long as 'under par' means 'unwell' to you. It uses the oldest methods of controlling your player's swing/power/aim (think: 1986 Leaderboard, but crap), and the in-game visuals are smooth but so low detail that you'll wonder what era the game was coded in. Worst of all, it just feels bad right from the off.
At the start your golfer is a pathetic weed that hits the ball ridiculously short distances, and regardless of how many attribute points you gain I doubt you'll ever feel like the club pro. The course construction and management parts could have been amazing and they wouldn't have made up for the insipid golf game at the heart of everything.
If it wasn't bad enough, it doesn't even have a multiplayer mode for you to share the misery with a friend or relative.
I'm sure Broken Arms Games set out to make a cute, fun golf sim with golf course building abilities, but this really doesn't work on console, it's clunky to use and the actual golf is no fun to play. Under Par Golf Architect is priced at £18.79 for the Deluxe Edition, but it's hard to recommend.
Thanks to Broken Arms Games and PressEngine