The Fisherman: Fishing Planet Review

With the transition into colder weather, it becomes harder for you to want to go outside and do fun activities like fishing because coincidentally you don’t want to be freezing. Lucky for you, The Fisherman: Fishing Planet releases today! Developed by Fishing Planet LLC and published by Big Ben. The Fisherman: Fishing Planet is a premium version of the regular Fishing Planet game, and it includes all the DLC and Content packs that have been released along with a new location, new boats, new techniques, and new fish.

So first off when you spawn, you immediately get to customizing your character. Picking from male and female, making your face, and picking your clothing. The options for this are relatively limited however, so don’t go in expecting a robust character creator. Honestly, though, that is not what this game is about and you rarely see your character anyways since it is first-person mainly so the limited options do not matter.

If there is one thing fishing planet is, it is in-depth. I have played many fishing games in my life and this one is without a doubt the most in-depth one. From your line and rod to the weather and what type of day the fishes bite most. Everything here is built around fishing, and it is just so incredibly vigorous and a little daunting at first with how in-depth the game is. For example how many types of fish do you think there are in the game? Think about your answer, I’m guessing you guessed around 80-100, well wrong. There are 143 types of fish in the game total. So you will likely almost always be going after that next type.

The games name “Fishing Planet” is no Hyperbole either. You fish *all around the world* with many different locations. You unlock all of these locations from leveling up, which you get by fishing. Locations matter more than just different change of scenery, as weather plays a big part in things as well, and different types of fish are found in different parts of the world. As you would expect you will find easier to catch fish in easier to catch locations and harder to catch fish in later locations. A caveat to having so many places around the world you can go to is you need to buy a fishing license, of which there is a standard one and a more advanced one which both let you do different things.

Along with all these new locations you get from leveling up, you unlock the ability to buy many new items. The store is gargantuan as there are so many different things you can buy from bait, poles, lines, licenses, etc. The only issue I have for this is that the store UI feels very hard to navigate and I would often find myself clicking on the wrong things just because the UI isn’t good. It is set up like a computer screen, however there is no mouse and you must use the D-Pad, right stick, left stick, and functionally it is just not good. The same goes for the inventory screen, I would encourage them to just make a cursor similar to games like Destinys inventory or GTAs phone UI rather than everything being contextual.

Another minor issue I have is that there isn’t any controller vibration when I fish grabs on to a line, you have to watch it, which makes sense as this game was originally made for mouse and keyboard however I wish they would add vibration to the controller. The graphics in the game are pretty good, they aren’t spectacular but they get the game done especially since this was originally a free to play game. Graphics are why you play a fishing game anyways.

Luckily as well, for the most part, you won’t be wondering what to do next as the game has a very nice mission system which leads you on to what to do. The tutorial is also very helpful, as the game is super in-depth and it may seem overwhelming at first with how much stuff there is to buy or places to go and such. The tutorial teaches you all you need to know so don’t worry about going in and being confused. Money is a big part of the game and you get money from fishing and completing missions, better fish give you more money which you can use to buy a very wide variety of things.