I had a couple hours in this game already, but had a marathon finish of the last 5 or so hours. I finished Metaphor: ReFantazio and worried that I’d once again find myself with nothing to play despite the plethora of options. Instead, I booted this up around 4pm and suddenly it was 9, the credits were rolling, and I hadn’t eaten dinner.
The premise is simple. You’re replacing a fisherman who went missing. You catch fish to earn money, find parts to unlock upgrades, use that money to purchase upgrades, and complete quests. The main story involves traveling to different islands surrounding your starting town to find relics for a collector. Traveling kinda sucks at first with how slow your boat moves, but after upgrading it’s easy to get around.
The main twist of the game is how scary it gets at night. You start to see things and your character get anxious. The higher the anxiety the more tense the game gets. Red globs will follow you and stuff will slide aboard your ship. Monsters will rise from the depths and chase you down. Thus, it’s usually the right move to rest at a dock till dawn. It’s a really cool premise although it started getting annoying when my brain always thought “oh it’s 11am I should just rest at a dock before going anywhere else.” I still had plenty of daylight left, but I’d waste time resting just to be safe.
Another cool feature is the inventory system. Your boat can only hold so many items and you have to arrange things to really maximize your space. Catching fish is done through timed button presses and each catch has a unique shape to fit in your cargo. Then you either sell the fish to make money or turn it in for a quest.
The story isn’t anything crazy and there’s a lot to infer out of the world. When I beat the game I was incredibly confused how I had helped the collector unleash a monster into the world. After doing some research it turns out I got the bad ending. There’s a good ending to unlock, but at that point I felt content with the game. Looking it up and seeing the twist of us actually being the collector was cool, but I didn’t feel like I missed out by not experiencing it myself. It was starting to stagnant and I hated dealing with those piranhas at the last island. That feature took the wind out of my sails and luckily I was close enough to shore to land ho.
Rating: 784/1000
Alex Reviews All 