Moonglow Bay is a life-sim/town game akin to Stardew Valley or Animal Crossing but with a much stronger emphasis on fishing and cooking. You play as an experienced angler that lost their partner who is now presumed dead. As a result of the tragic accident, the town of Moonglow Bay has forsaken fishing, its primary revenue source, and it's your job to come out of forced retirement and restore the fledgling town while also maybe unraveling the mystery of what happened to your partner.
The bulk of what you'll be doing in Moonglow Bay is fishing, cooking, and selling your hauls. Given that the majority of the game revolves around fishing, I found the mechanic to be far too simple. There may be 151 different species of fish to find with 4 different rods and 3 different lure types, but 99% of all fishing interactions are identical and over almost immediately. The different lure types attract different types of fish, while the various rods offer extremely slight differences in how your line gets reeled in, unfortunately, you'll still just cast a line, get a bite, and reel the fish in extremely quickly with little to no fight or challenge. I think the "strike" command, a forceful pulling of the line that consumes some stamina, is far too strong and effective, trivializing the core gameplay mechanic. The rarer fish are just barely harder to find, not mechanically harder to reel in, you'll just strike them twice and catch them almost instantly, just like every other fish thus far. The entire system is truly shallow and greatly lacks variety. There is also net fishing which just involves throwing a net and dragging it across fish in the water and hauling them in, effective, but again, very dull.
Cooking is a bit more involved. There’s a handful of minigames associated with different acts while cooking, like baking, frying, chopping, or washing ingredients. The minigames are oddly compelling and you'll have to do all steps perfectly to "master" a recipe and get improved versions. However, you will do these actions so many dozens, if not hundreds, of times that they quickly become mind-numbingly monotonous and boring. You can sell your goods to buy upgrades for your ship, but none are particularly game-changing, and given that the game is already dull to play they don't do much to improve on that front. The majority of your shells (currency) will be dumped into renovating and improving the town, which is mostly cosmetic. There are some later renovation rewards that practically break the game making you able to catch multiple fish at once or use a multi lure that attracts all types of fish, which both make trying to collect everything mercifully simpler as the sheer tedium of catching every fish individually might've broken me. So, while the gameplay is too simple, I relished the opportunity to speed up the extremely boring process.
There are quests that act as odd jobs for NPC’s, however, none of the characters are particularly interesting or memorable in the slightest. There are some exchanges with the NPC's that broach interesting topics of loss, grief, and fear but quite a few run out of lines quickly and will repeat themselves only to offer fishing tips on fish you've potentially already caught. The story has you eventually doing “boss fights” that are extremely mundane and uninteresting. I guess there’s only so much that can be done with gameplay in a fishing game, but these major moments are wholly uninspired. Minor spoilers but the penultimate encounter has you tossing your net out at piles of trash, something you’ve probably done countless times as a part of the regular gameplay thus far. The climactic final sequence has you flipping a number of levers with your fishing rod before a timer counts down. In addition to some bog-standard writing and forgettable characters, the story is pretty inconsequential as well and not worth sitting through. It's mostly just you slowly plugging away at improving the town. At one point, a major plot mystery is unfurled because a character “just has a feeling” and it’s quickly dashed off. There feels to be a lack of any intrigue or risk with writing and the story had little to no payoff for me personally.
The game has an isometric camera and blocky, voxel-style graphics that aren't particularly impressive. The camera choice is frustrating because sometimes the environment can block you from seeing while fishing making it impossible to do so.
Unfortunately, I had a lot of problems with Moonglow Bay. Nothing in it is truly "bad" per se but I think this game is pretty standard or mediocre in almost every way and nearly none of it served to satisfy or interest me. It has a pretty standard story that doesn't really do much with its time, a cast of completely forgettable characters that you can barely interact with, and some mind-numbingly repetitive gameplay mechanics that completely lack any depth. This is supposed to be a zen-like experience, however, and there are times when it can be a bit meditative, and it may scratch an itch if that's interesting to you. Ultimately this game's repetitive nature and the absolute lack of heart and charm frustrated me more than relaxed me, and I think you're better served by other similar games in the genre.
100% - 26h 53m 41s
Score: 5/10 (Mediocre)
