Reel Fishing: Road Trip Adventures - Review

Fishing games can take a few different forms such as rpg, simulation and arcade. Hell I even remember the old LCD games that had a screen on a physical reel! One kind of fishing game I’ve enjoyed in the past were RPG fishing games like Legend of the River King. Hearing that Reel Fishing: Road Trip Adventures combined the genres definitely caught my attention. So was I caught hook, line and sinker?

Neil, Alice and Sean are members of their college fishing club. While looking for something to write a report about they come across an art piece at a gallery. The painting is called ‘The elusive one’ and with the offer of talking to the artist, the group find themselves out in the country hoping to find the same fish depicted in the artwork. The group start camping, catching fish and cleaning up the once-pristine waters in hopes of bringing the elusive one back. 

Gameplay feels basic for what you’d expect from a fishing simulator, but then would this game even be classed as that? Reel Fishing keeps the story up front and centre, there’s no real incentive to fish outside of trying to meet your goal. Once you choose the fishing spot you’re plonked down into a small area with limited space to move. You control how far you’re going to cast out, then once the lure is out there you control how slowly/quickly you’re going to catch a fish. When a fish bites you have to try and sync up two rings, one that is expanding and contracting so it’s not too easy. Then there’s moving and reeling while trying to keep tension out of the line, reeling and pulling against a fish depletes your stamina bar. You can carry items to boost your stamina, and the meter also refills when you stop fighting the fish. You only have so much time in the day to catch fish, then it’s time to head back to camp. At the campsite is where Neil and Alice have their time to shine. Neil collects scraps through the time Sean is fishing, and before and after fishing he can turn the scraps into rods, reels and lures. Alice cooks the meals. With hopes of becoming a chef, Alice makes delicious meals which are so good they can provide the group with a boost. 

There is a levelling up system for the group, points are put towards leveling up as each person does their task. Sean gets points for fish caught, Alice for meals made and Neil for scrap collected and items crafted. When a character levels up they’re then given points for upgrading their skills. Sean gets improved stats for fishing, Neil can upgrade his crafting skills to make higher rank gear or use less scrap doing it. Alice gets more recipes that have better buffs for the group. I found it an interesting approach to make all three characters vital in different ways. But if only they all leveled up more evenly!  Alice gained the least experience because there’s only so much that can be cooked, Neil’s experience skyrockets initially, but with the less you have to craft as the game goes on it begins to plateau. It’s also vital that you keep leveling up Neil because without points to spend on crafting, you won’t be able to make higher level rods, reels or lures. 

At first I felt I was able to move quickly through the requested fish without really having to do anything else to earn money and scrap. A few hours in and you'll become familiar with the same old song and dance of having to grind previous locations for money before you can make the right lures. I completely understand why they need you to do this, it can’t be all given to you straight away. But it turns out that there’s no real incentive to catch fish that don’t directly progress the story, you can aim to beat your biggest catch, but you’re still stuck catching as many fish as you can for the the experience points and the money at the end of each day. The deeper you get into the game, the more the game shows off the real grind. You’re given two different fish to catch, and they also need to meet a certain size. Then you actually need these fish to show up, through the in-game day sometimes you’re lucky to even see one of the required fish. Then the bigger the size of the fish, the more likely they are to break your fishing line, and this isn’t a tug of war leading to the break. You will hit a point in the game where the line almost instantly breaks. This is made more confusing when you’ve actually spent the time upgrading and crafting better rods and reels. This leads to more grinding, made worse by the fact to get better rods and reels you need to get more experience points for Neil. These experience points are gained by crafting items. Eventually you’ll run out of things to craft, or the materials needed become to high. Often you’re crafting just for points. It would be more tolerable if the gameplay was fun, but it’s not. 

Visuals feel as basic as the gameplay. Each small area you fish in is interchangeable with one another, and there aren’t that many areas. They’re peaceful scenes, water lapping away against the shore. Combined with the ambient sounds of the water and the great outdoors, it’s all very relaxing. For a fishing game it’s hard to go too wild on where you can go, so it’s hard to know if there should be more. There is a big variety of fish to catch and there’s a noticeable difference between catching a smaller one and one that you struggle to hold up to show off. Overall presentation feels a bit barebones. It does what it needs to, but it wouldn't have hurt to have more character art for the conversations.

The friendship between the three main characters is the main driving force of the game. The fishing itself just isn’t enjoyable enough to keep you hooked. If you keep meeting goals, the more conversations you’ll have amongst each other. There’s no conversation choices so you are just seeing a story play out, luckily I found it to be an interesting story. The trio joke around, reminisce, wonder and worry about their futures after college. It was a smart idea to focus on the story, although in doing so they have very obviously drawn inspiration from the Persona series. This is seen in the character portraits and even the dialog boxes and background music. It’s unfortunate though because all it does is make you think of better RPGs and how they could’ve done more with this premise.

Reel Fishing is a tricky game to recommend. If you’re looking solely for a fishing game then you’re going to find a lot of conversations to have to read through. If you’re there for the story and RPG elements then you’re going to have to deal with some pretty bland fishing combined with some RPG grind. This is a shame, personally I enjoyed the story parts. The characters and their friendship are endearing and I genuinely wanted to see how it all played out. It wasn’t so bad when the fishing parts could be done within one to two visits, but the more you have to grind the harder it becomes to stick with.