Ultimate Fishing Simulator is one of the best fishing games currently available on PC and developer Bit Golem and publisher Ultimate Games S.A. decided to release this game on Xbox One as well. This is our review of the Xbox One version of Ultimate Fishing Simulator in which we wear our fishing boots and head out to find the biggest catch of the day.
Similar to the PC version, you start Ultimate Fishing Simulator by selecting a difficulty level. If you prefer casual fishing, you can opt for Normal but if you are looking forward to a more hardcore fishing experience, you can go for the Realistic setting. With Realistic selected, you do not have access to the underwater camera, hunter vision, bait indicator or any other aid in the game. It is aimed at players who want the most realistic fishing experience that they can have while sitting inside their homes. For me, I prefer the normal setting since I appreciate a little bit of UI in my games.
Ultimate Fishing Simulator is not a game where it would tell you what to do and how you should do it. It gives you all the gear, locations, and skills. After some brief tutorial notes, you are on your own. It is the ultimate fishing game where you are completely on your own. There are no objectives or anything. Your main goal is to catch fish as much as you want at any given location. You can play for an hour or you can play for ten hours, the game does not mind. The more you play the game, the more XP you earn by catching fish and then you level up. Leveling up gives you access to more locations and better gear in the shop. You also earn Skill Points that are used to purchase or upgrade certain skills in the game.
These skills range from new skills such as getting access to boats for fishing or simply getting some boosts such as XP boost or distance boost while you cast your bait in the water. Each of these skills makes your game better and makes you more efficient in certain tasks. Like I mentioned earlier, leveling up also gives you access to more locations and better gear. The gear can be purchased from the shop which can be accessed right from any location where you are currently fishing. This ensures that you do not have to quit your game if you run out of bait or need new gear. If you need to catch a specific type of fish, there is a detailed encyclopedia where you can find all sorts of information about that particular fish.
Catching fish is not really hard either. You simply cast your line, wait for the fish to nibble and then reel it back in. I’ve seen some really advanced mechanics in certain games where they make fishing really complicated for players to understand. That is not the case here. Even if you’ve never played a fishing game before in your life, Ultimate Fishing Simulator will allow you to quickly get up to speed with its mechanics and you will be catching fish in no time. Once you’ve caught something, you can sell it in the market for money or release it back in the water for additional XP. Since both of these are essential resources, you can have a balance in the game or follow my strategy. During the early stages, focus on XP and once you’ve unlocked everything, grind some money and then go for the best possible gear in the game.
There is a separate trophy room where you can relax and look at some of the best trophy fish that you have caught in the game. For fishing, you have a lot of pretty locations in the game. Some of the locations come with different variations in the game as well. For example, certain maps give you a ‘Winter; variation where the water is frozen and you have to work your way around this little problem to catch fish. Some of the levels come with the ‘Ocean’ variant where you are on a boat and you have to catch the fish in the middle of the water. There is no land access in such areas. These variations keep the game interesting and you can quickly switch to a new location if you get bored at your current location.
Despite the game being excellent on PC, the Xbox One port is a buggy mess. Starting with the visuals, the game at certain times looks pretty weak especially the water textures. One of the things that I liked about the Steam version of the game is that the water in the game looks just brilliant. On the other hand, the Xbox One version of the game suffers massively in this regard. It feels like a mess of pixels and textures during certain times of the day and it just kills the overall gameplay experience since you need to be on the water at all times to fish. Apart from the poor water textures, there are notable FPS dips as well here and there. While moving the camera around quickly as well as simply moving the camera around drops the frames a lot.
The gameplay of the game is not short of bugs either at this point. For me, at the end of successfully catching a fish, my character would be holding an empty line with the fish still visible in the water and the game asking me to sell or release the fish. Apart from this, a few times my line broke while I was taking the fish out of the water right at the end and it glitched the game out for me. The screen was stuck at sell or release screen while there was a message on the screen that keep saying your line got broken. I even tried changing places but nothing worked and I had to quit my day to fix it.
It also feels like a rushed port to the console as the game still feels like it is made for PC. From my screenshots, you can see that the game is out of my screen as well and no matter what I tried, I was unable to fix the overscan of this particular game. Navigation in the main menu is annoying as well because you have to move a cursor like on PC to click on menu tabs. It just does not feel like a proper console port. The game did receive an update ever since I received my review copy and I was really looking forward to the glitches gone from the game but until I wrote this review, the glitches and bugs were still there. As much as I like the simple, time-killing mechanics of Ultimate Fishing Simulator, the rushed console port really makes it hard for me to like this particular fishing game on my Xbox One.
Final Verdict:
Ultimate Fishing Simulator is probably the easiest fishing game I’ve ever played. There are no complex screens here or mechanics involved while playing the game. If you love fishing, Ultimate Fishing Simulator will offer you plenty of fishing. The amount of gear and fish is brilliant. Personally, the ability to change time on demand makes the game even more accessible because you can play it however you want. Simulation does not always mean complexities and Ultimate Fishing Simulator proves it. That being said, the Xbox One version suffers from some performance issues that need to be worked on asap. The visual stutter and gameplay glitches are not good and will annoy a lot of players. Get rid of the bugs and you have a great fishing game for your Xbox One console. Until the developers fix the game, I can’t really recommend the game. It is playable and chances are that you might not even get these bugs or glitches but they happened to me more than once so I will say that get the game once some patches have been released for the game.
Final Score: 6/10
