Reel Fishing: Road Trip Adventure (PS4)
When it comes to fishing game stories, the most you can usually expect is a standard fishing tournament or a goal of catching all the fish you can find. Reel Fishing: Road Trip Adventure not only tries to tell a tale, but it even devotes many cutscenes purely to fleshing out its three main characters, the player actually coming to know the personalities and life ambitions of a trio of college students between the fairly standard fishing play.
Reel Fishing: Road Trip Adventure kicks off when a college fishing club is looking for inspiration for their next project and they come across a painting at the museum called “The Elusive Fish”. Seeing the artist’s representation of a legendary fish in a small town, the three club members are inspired to look into the mystery and receive help from the painting’s creator named Mr. Shopman. Appropriately, Mr. Shopman runs the tackle shop in town, but he also recruits the college students to clean up the area since the fish are leaving behind the polluted waters. While you won’t ever see any dingy lakes or rivers on your fishing trip, this does pace out which kind of fish are available, but Mr. Shopman also tasks the main fisherman of the group, Sean, with finding and catching certain species and sizes of fish to prove the nearby waters are recovering.
While this supposed road trip adventure mostly just sees the fishing club moving around in the area Mr. Shopman works, they do all at least camp out and travel by RV, the game having many check-ins on the characters as they do things like play with fireworks, discuss their life goals, and reflect on their pasts around the campfire. These conversations are presented in a manner that oddly enough evokes games like Persona 4, anime character art representing the three main characters of Sean, Neil, and Alice with color and patterns to make the text boxes pop a bit more. The three do fit into some fairly archetypal roles at times, Sean having an almost single-minded eagerness for fishing, Neil the more intelligent and composed club member, and Alice tends to be the most reactive so she can lead to little bits of comedy. You’re not going to get deep explorations of their lives and emotions nor do these drag on too long to the point you’d want to skip them, most just a brief check-in while the quest to catch the Legend and its odd connection to Mr. Shopman end up producing the true story developments.
Sean may be the appointed fisherman you find yourself playing as, but Neil and Alice aren’t just there for dialogue scenes. While you’ll be the one reeling in whoppers, Neil will gradually collect trash and scraps over the course of your short but speedy fishing days. These materials are used to craft new rods, lures, and reels, the player needing to make new gear or upgrade their equipment so they can find and catch new fish. While the lures and rods impact your effectiveness in terms of things like line strength and how far out you can cast, many of the fish in Reel Fishing: Road Trip Adventure will only approach designated lures. Coupled with some fish not even appearing in their designated areas until the waters are clear enough (that being whenever the story now says it’s time to go out and catch them) and you will usually end up only able to catch 2 or 3 types of fish at a fishing hole per visit, although since the most species variety they have at a location is 4 you’re not often missing out on much. The lures are labelled to tell you which fish they attract too, but notably there can be times you get lucky and snag a fish that wasn’t marked as liking your lure, this more a surprise than something to potentially rely on when Mr. Shopman wants a fish you might not have made the lure for yet.
Alice’s impact is not as crucial but still quite helpful. She’ll cook a meal for the group at the end of the day, and depending on what you make, Sean can receive certain bonuses the next day like increased stamina when reeling in fish or increased experience gained from the day’s work. Sean, Neil, and Alice all can level up and learn abilities surprisingly enough, some of these straightforward like Neil and Alice learning to make new things or lessening the costs of what they’re making, but Sean’s abilities have a wider range of effects like abilities that increase the expected size of a catch. If you don’t spend scrap wisely there may be days spent fishing purely for materials and experience so at least you’re never casting a line without some sort of purpose, and the experience system is paired well with the cash you earn for each catch. As long as you reel in a fish successfully, you’ll get a little money for it, and Mr. Shopman sells materials for cooking and crafting. Even a day spent catching the most bog-standard fish that don’t even set a new personal record in size will end up benefiting you in the long run thanks to this reward system.
The fishing in Reel Fishing: Road Trip Adventure isn’t too advanced though, much of your tackle a choice of picking the strongest rod and reel and then equipping the lure that actually draws in the fish you want. When you cast your line, you need to reel it in a bit to attract attention from your prey, but it doesn’t need to be realistic and you’ll almost always get a bite on the line as long as you don’t reel it in too quickly. When you’ve got something on the hook, line strength will be your main concern, the player needing to manage their line as it will start to glow red the closer it gets to snapping. If you’re not aggressive enough with the reeling though, the line may go slack and glow green, indicating the fish is about to get away, and by yanking your rod in the right direction, you can sometimes ease or strengthen the pull depending on how aggressive the hooked fish is being.
At times during the struggle the fish may leap out of the water, a few button prompts appearing that you need to press in time. If you fail it doesn’t harm things, but a success is not only easy most of the time but it will give you a short grace period where you can reel in the fish without it fighting at all. A nice touch about the fishing leaping out of the water is it will accurately depict what’s on the line, the player able to get a good idea about size and species although rarely is there a good reason to let a fish go thanks to the rewards for every catch and how swift reeling in even the strongest fish tends to be. Besides managing your stamina so Sean doesn’t get so tired he can’t reel in the fish anymore, these are the main considerations when out by the water, it not even mattering much where you cast or where you stand on the coastline. As a result, the fishing can get pretty repetitive and almost automatic at times until you get to some of the harder catches.
The fishing spots in Reel Fishing: Road Trip Adventure mostly look rather nice and have a good range of real world fish, the game going from things like bass and groupers to hammerhead sharks and mahi mahis. Some fish only really become available near the end and there is a size challenge to be found if you want to go for the game’s true ending, although there’s not much you can do to influence the size of a catch beyond upgrade Sean’s abilities and hope. There’s still usually enough fight involved in catching the fish you need to progress the story, enough so that getting the big whoppers you need at times feels like a satisfying payoff to some rather tough line management, but it’s hard for these battles between man and fish to feel too tense since even the toughest catches can be completed rather briskly.
THE VERDICT: Reel Fishing: Road Trip Adventure’s story and characters definitely give it something to remember beyond what feels like a pretty standard approach to video game fishing. The fishing cub trio are likeable enough to warrant the little interludes about their lives and search for the Legend, so they don’t pull you away from the action for nothing. Snagging a fish on the line and reeling them in goes by rather swiftly so there’s little downtime, but the limited depth in finding and catching your prey can lead to most fishing trips feeling samey. There are some stronger fish that put up a bit of a fight so success isn’t a given and even a plain catch rewards you with resources towards developing the trio’s skills that pay back into your efficacy, so a reasonably decent gameplay loop is formed for people looking for a casual fishing game before you factor in the small story bits that give it a bit of personality.
And so, I give Reel Fishing: Road Trip Adventure for PlayStation 4…
An OKAY rating. Reel Fishing: Road Trip Adventure is definitely meant for the casual fishing fan, happy to provide quick gratification as rarely will a cast fail to catch the attention of a hungry fish. Even the strongest fish can be worn down in a reasonable amount of time, and thankfully when they are putting up a fight, the line management does actually require you to be attentive and gauge when to press your luck. Everything feels very zippy, and while it sacrifices some of the excitement that could have come from particularly strong prey or more advanced methods for finding your target species, it also makes it easy to keep casting and not feel disheartened when your line does snap. Being able to craft something new with Neil, make some food with Alice, and figure out which abilities to buy each in-game day also leads to a fairly decent gameplay loop where you’re always working towards something even if the game only has 30 fish species in total to find. More variety at the fishing holes and less dependence on specific lures could spice up the searching process some and it could be interesting if fish had individual habits or temperaments that could make trying to pull them in sometimes involve learning their behaviors instead of just managing line strength, but Reel Fishing: Road Trip Adventure keeps things clean, quick, and casual so it keeps things active enough that your time doesn’t feel wasted.
Appending a story that spends its time looking at the lives of its main characters is what makes Reel Fishing: Road Trip Adventure stand out even though its a fairly simple addition, but like a lot of things in this game, it does its job fine enough. A lot of what is present could be more involved or more robust, but appropriately enough for a game with a story, it also feels like the kind of game you can play through once and feel content with what you experienced. The fish can put up a fight when they need to and it’s easy to work towards your goals for a sense of accomplishment, but the individual parts feel pretty simple so you’re not getting the kinds of thrills that could come from something that delved deeper into any one component of this game. If you want a quick casual fishing game it does that job well enough, and sometimes it can be nice to have a low stress simple fishing story to while away a few hours on even if master anglers will want to search elsewhere for a challenge.