Wildly Disappointed. Is There Hope It Will Get Better?

I'm an avid bass angler, having competed in tournaments (including qualifying for a couple at the national level) and for fun for half of my life. Let's just say that in my first weekend of playing the new game I found it to be (at best)...underwhelming. Here are some of my key beefs:

1) Lakes are TINY. There is not way you should be able to drive your boat from one end of a fishery to the other in one minute. Tiny lakes means that there is precious little exploring to be done and you end up fishing the same spots over and over.

2) Physical cover isn't...physical. One of the big challenges in bass fishing is getting/keeping a fish out of heavy cover once it's hooked, whether that be grass, wood, rocks, or docks. In this game fish can run circles around dock posts and you never get hung up. They can run circles around your boat and line never gets caught in your trolling motor or outboard.

3) Lures (mostly) don't behave the way they should. Rat-l-traps sink at the rate of a weightless senko, crankbaits dive too slow, and so on. The only way to fish a dropshop like a dropshot is to just drop it over the side of your boat. It's impossible to work a jerkbait like a jerkbait. If I were on the dev team I would have made it possible to map certain techniques to combos of button or d-pad presses. e.g. double tap a button or a direction on the d-pad for the familiar "jerk-jerk-pause" of a jerkbait). Same with walking/popping topwater baits, which are among the most fun ways that exist to catch bass. It would have been easy to create better mechanics for these, and this is more low-hanging fruit that has been missed.

4) Fish length/weights are WILDLY unrealistic. I caught a largemouth under 11" that weight over 5 lbs, and I caught one fish (can't recall species) that was almost 30" and weight less than two pounds. This is such a basic, dumb error that I can't believe it made it past alpha testing (assuming they did any pre-launch testing, which might be overly generous of me).

5) Electronics play really no role in the game. This is partly a function of the ridiculously tiny maps. A crucial part of fishing, especially tournament fishing, is using sonar to find things like weed edges, areas of deep rock, bottom transitions etc. And once you've found good areas, your graphs help you locate actual fish. The fish finders in the game are cartoonishly bad. I get that the devs probably didn't want the game to require endless grinding time mapping a lake (even though that's an essential part of real tourney fishing) but it really feels like a missed opportunity to not have that present AT ALL. Earning money to buy better electronics could (and should, IMO) have been a critical part of the game.

6) Fish locations make absolutely no sense in terms of depth, cover, or structure. The first time I played the game I caught salmon, trout, largemouth, smallmouth, catfish and walleye - all on the same lure (another problem) and all in the same spot. What makes it worse is that the location was in a small area of shallow lily pads, which IRL would have only held largemouth and maybe smallmouth. Most lakes you will find pretty much everything that swims in the lake using the same area, which ain't how it works. This (again) is at least partly a function of the RIDICULOUSLY TINY MAPS and partly a function of the devs evidently never talking to anyone who has ever fished seriously as part of the development process.

7) Game mechanics in general are clunky and bad. Using the "long casting" is hilariously bad; rather than the fluid motion of an experienced angler, you get amateurish stop-and-go motion. Sidearm (mid-range) casting is slightly less bad, and pitching (short-range casting) is actually passable. Setting the hook is hit or miss. Semi-frequently, even when I know I have no slack in the line, snapping the rod up or sweeping it doesn't result in a hookset. This area isn't nearly as bad as many of the above, but could use some significant tweaking.

What does the game get right?

Thankfully there are a few things this game does well, and they are important ones.

1) Fish strikes are great! Whether it's a smallmouth darting in to grab your crankbait or a largemouth sucking up the t-rig you've hopped into a patch of grass, the strikes look and feel pretty authentic and add a jolt of excitement to the game. The mechanics of using a topwater lure are so bad that I haven't thrown topwater much...I'm hopeful that they did a decent job of capturing the awesomeness of a bass blowing up on a frog or a spook.

2) Fighting the fish is pretty dang fun. Given how bad the rest of the game is, I am thrilled with the experience of fighting fish. Adjusting tension on the line through use of drag, rod angle etc is pretty authentic and makes for a lot of fun, especially when you're in a tourney and you know you have a good bass hooked.

3) Visually, the game is pretty good. Fish species look legit, changing lighting throughout the day is good. It's nice that they've got some actual bass companies in the game (though it would be nice if they'd expand the selection - I want to drive a Phoenix boat like I do IRL, and not having Shimano or Daiwa in the game for rods and reels is an absolute crime!).

This list isn't exhaustive, of course, just a top-of-mind dump after playing the game quite a lot over this past weekend. I'd currently give it 3 stars out of 10, with the caveat that there is definitely potential to get the game to a solid 7 of 10 if some of the glaring issues are addressed. I'd love to year others' thoughts both on what works and what doesn't so far.

Cheers, and tight lines!

 

All I see on your reply is my post quoted. Am I missing something?

 

Uh, Benjamin?

 

His reply is weirdly nestled inside your quote, between points 5 and 6.