So I woke up around four in the morning to get a chance to try out Eastern Valley that has launched in Japan. It's disappointing that Korea did not release this course earlier than Japan. Korea is probably busy finishing up the Pangya Championship beta that is now down to 16 players remaining.
I managed to record a video of myself playing the course. However... I ran into a lot of difficulties such as:
- I did not have a capture device with me, so I recorded using Fraps on the lowest settings so the Pangya bar wouldn't stutter much.
- My microphone did not pick up my voice clearly to talk about the new course.
- At the end of the round, Fraps ended up crashing so the last 3 holes got cut off.
- And video quality is poor
So I didn't feel like recording it all over again, so I'll give you whatever I managed to get so far. You can expect people to post their own videos sometime soon, but at least you get to see how the course is like way earlier. Enjoy the video of me playing Eastern Valley for the very first time while I'm half-awake.
Eastern Valley Walkthough #1
Eastern Valley Walkthough #2
Eastern Valley Walkthough #3
This course plays relatively easy. Almost too easy. This course does not deserve a ☆☆ at all. I suppose when you have 5 ☆ courses and 2 ☆☆ courses, you might as well make it balance.
Most of the greens and ball slopes are evenly flat so you can achieve a backspin chip-in pretty easily. Even though the course is vast as they say, you can pretty much reach the hole with a 250 drive like how I did in the video. Of course, I didn't play that well because I'm not used to having a low drive, and fraps was messing around with my Pangya bar.
The waterfalls and rivers was another concern I had. I figured they were going to use them to give this course a challenge. Since this is a 2-star course, they could have at least made it where you had to water bounce to get further in this vast course. I never ran into any holes that you had to do such a thing, it's just for show.
Well that's about it. Sorry that the video didn't turn out well, but I'm sure there are people making videos of their play-through right now that you can check out later. At least I got mine out of the way to enjoy my long weekend.
So what's my overall impression? It's decent, but nothing extraordinary. It's very easy since there are no obstacles in your way. The course is huge, but that's because of the environment. You can reach the green relatively easy even if you think you cannot. Visuals are good, and the NPCs are all over the place to make the course look lively. I believe a majority of players will be playing this easy course all the time so you won't be seeing nothing but Ice Spa and Blue Lagoon only. I suppose I expected more from Eastern Valley, but there's always another course for Season 5 to look forward to. Eastern Valley is fun and relaxing to play nevertheless, and sometimes we need some of that to keep playing.
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