I came across this game in my search for contemporary fishing sims because some folks who played ultimate fishing simulator prefer this one. I too, am now inclined to suspect this due to these recommendations and my own experience with this game that this is possibly the best fishing sim made. While I'm not THAT big into F2P i like several and this one is up there among the ranks of Path of Exile, PUBG,Destiny series and Genshin Impact. at the larger levels it is satisfying to plan out a day of fishing at a new location (each location has different fish and the game tracks your progress if you've caught at least one in each new location or not). It's addictive and really hooks you despite there isn't a lot of depth (huhr huhr). It's a fun game to play with a friend, but the main strike against it is while you can play this in private servers, it's tough to have to actually engage social interaction with other players. and a lot of the game feels like it was meant to be 'taught' from one player to another. It also seems like the community is kind of small for the sort of game it is. The game also doesnt really strike me as a game you can play on a daily basis in the long run, but it's fun to do once a week or for a day trip every so often (it's perfect for that.) You can also only play something like this for so long, but i keep going back to it.

My friend has experience fishing (I don't) and he picked up on the game very quickly and enjoyed it. It's a chill one to rotate in our multiplayer session nights.

the game has a bit of an RPG like progression design. You get xp and gold and with the gold buy equipment. the equipment is locked by level and by price, and your ability to access it requires a lot of saving (or paying to win) however as you get better you catch fish that pay for it and you can climb through the progression tiers quicker by solving quests that reward you with xp, money, premium gold money (for more special-type items, hey this is F2P remember) and gear! The bad thing is some of the UI is clunky and if you aren't careful you can waste money in ways that are unnecessary or useless. It took me a while to get the knack of how to go about skipping time in the game, and i sometimes still forget about it, but the most important thing is to know that you have your gear at home, can take so much with you when you 'travel' to a location, so you have to 'plan' your gear loadout for the fish you will be looking for in that location. every location you 'travel' to has a local bait shop, but options are limited and prices are high! you also have limited space so it is important to plan accordingly! The game has minimal hand holding and sometimes its really tough to know what to do different. But hey, that's fishing.

Would recommend this to people who like Pokémon or 100%ing things, or are looking for a chill sim type game (Euro Truck sim 2 is next on my list) you'll have tons of different fish to catch of different ranks, have quests open up that are very challenging and if you ever get the confidence there are even player-ran competitive tournaments.

four star game, extra star for being free. YMMV.

note: logging what you catch, where and what using is helpful when playing this game. real world methods helps. Very geeky i know but worth mentioning. Very helpful especially if you play the game once or so a month