Ultimate Fishing Simulator 2

Review

Starting a new game will have you choose which game mode to play in the Profile Section. There are three game modes, but there are only two currently available. The three options are Normal, Realistic and Sandbox; Normal and Realistic are the two game modes which are currently available.  Sandbox mode will need to be unlocked through playing the game. The Normal game mode is for those who want to play for fun and is ideal for new players. Realistic mode is for those wanting a more challenging gameplay; it has separate rankings to the normal mode and some features are disabled, such as changeable weather, underwater camera and the ability to teleport to new fishing areas.

You can enter your name here and it will detail the number of fish you have caught on that profile, along with the level of your profile. You can have a total of three profile saves, so you’re able to play under each of the game modes should you wish too, however, you’ll have to level up each profile as a new game.

Once you’re all sorted you will find yourself on the Home Page, where you will find Profile/Fishing Net, Go Fishing, Settings, Tournaments, Equipment and Shop windows. You will also find Skills, Quests, Statistics and Help, along with some details about you in the top right corner such as Name, Level, Experience Points and Cash.

Selecting to Go Fishing will allow you to visit various locations from around the globe. Also here is the tutorial, which will go over the basics as well as some of the different types of fishing. You don’t have to go over the tutorial but it’s there if needed. You are also able to find advice under the Help section on the Home Page.

To begin with you are only able to visit one location, the others will require your character to reach a certain level. However, before you can visit a location you are required to buy a License. Currently there are a total of six locations: Jackson County, United States, Zalasie Letnisko, Slovakia, Kiel Canal and Russia.

The first place you visit is Jackson County; here you’ll be fishing a Flat Creek which is a tributary of the Snake River. You’ll fish for Brown Bullheads, Sockeye Salmon, Rainbow Trout, Smallmouth Bass, Yellow Perch, Grass Pickerel and more. Other locations will have different fish, such as Barbel, Tench, Asp, Carp, Bream, Huchen, Atlantic Salmon, Eels, Flounder, Zander, Sturgeon, Catfish, Sharks and more.

At each location there are fishing pegs where you can fish from, and you can walk to other places around the water's edge to fish. If you visit the map of your current location, you can select a new peg and teleport to that peg if you don’t fancy walking. However, teleporting to a new peg is not available in Realistic mode, so you’ll have to walk.

You’re going to need some fishing equipment unless you want to try catching the fish with your bare hands, but I’d suggest not doing that and instead heading over to the shop to grab yourself some gear. At the shop you will find a range of Rods, Reels, Lines, Floats, Leaders, Feeder Baskets, Hooks, Baits, Lures, Sinkers and Accessories. Most of the gear you won’t be able to buy for a while as you only begin with two hundred dollars, but there are some free options to help you on your way. You can also buy Packages and Fishing Sets; these could be a pack of lures or a fishing set for spinning or float fishing, but they will be at a cheaper price than if you brought them separately. Sometimes you can get a good discount fifty percent off or something so it’s a good idea to keep your mince pie on them.

New fishing equipment will become available to buy as you level up; you must be a certain level in order to use each piece of equipment. Using the higher-level gear will help bring in the bigger fish but it will take some grinding in order for you to get some decent gear and get your hands on the bigger fish.

I did have some fun on the early locations using lightweight gear trying to get some of the fish in. They weren’t big fish by some of the standards I had seen while playing, but they put up one hell of a fight, sometimes lasting over thirty minutes before landing a three, four, five-pound fish on the free gear from the shop. Currently I have some better gear; although it’s a long way from the top stuff, I’ve been getting fish around the ten-to-thirteen-pound fish in Kiel Canal and I can bring them in with relative ease. I just can’t seem to get the big fish I’m seeing others get, like the twenty and thirty-pound fish; maybe I need to upgrade to better gear for those fish sizes.

In order to buy new gear, you need some pennies, and the gear doesn’t come cheap. You earn pennies from the fish you catch and sell; you also gain experience points for catching fish, although if you keep the fish in your net ready to sell later, you’ll gain less experience points than you would if you were to release the fish. However, releasing a fish back into the waters will not earn you any pennies.

To go fishing you must first have a fishing setup, which you can organise at the Equipment window on the home page. You can have up to five fishing sets; I’m not sure if you can have more than five sets in the future, but as of now that is all that I can see. To build a fishing setup you must choose a Rod, Reel, Line, Float, Bait, Lure etcetera, depending on the type of fishing you’re going to do.

Spinning requires you to cast your lure and reel it back in to you hoping that a fish will take your lure. A lure can be used in a few ways and there are different types of lures such sinkers and top floaters. Float fishing uses a float of some kind, waggler, sliders etcetera where you can set the depth of your line. Float fishing uses natural bait such as worms, bread, sweetcorn and cheese. Different baits and lures will attract different fish, so you’ll have to figure out the best way to capture the different types of fish.

I haven’t reached the later fishing locations of Russia and Thailand yet, so I’m unable to say anything about the fishing styles I’ll need to use in those locations. I am creeping up slowly to reach Level Twenty-Two which will unlock Russia, while Thailand requires you to reach Level Twenty-Seven. Currently I’m Level Seventeen and needing around four-thousand experience points to reach Level Eighteen.  The experience points required to unlock further levels will increase with each level increase.

As Tesco’s says, “every little bit helps” and so does every penny earned from every fish you catch, especially at the start of the game. The amount you get for selling a fish will depend on the type and weight of that fish; a four-pound Perch maybe sells for five quid, however a four-pound Flounder may fetch you two hundred quid. Once you start finding some decent fish then your bank balance will start rising, allowing you to invest in new gear thus catching better fish and new fish at new locations.

Each time you bring a fish to shore it will detail some information about it: Weight, Length, Price, Experience Points. It will also tell you if it is a new personal record and be given a star rating from zero to five depending on how big it is. It is here that you can either choose to keep the fish or release it. Releasing the fish will give you some experience points, keeping a fish will give you some experience points albeit less that if you released it.

If you decide to keep a fish it will be stored in your net, how many fish is dependent on the total weight that your net can accommodate. Your net will increase its total weight as you level up, and you can check your net at any time from the home page and selecting Profile/Fishing Net. Here will be a list of the fish you have caught with some details about it just as before. It will also allow you to sell any fish, and there is an option to sell all fish at once should you wish to get rid of them all. However, some of the fish you may want to keep, and they can either be placed in an aquarium or you can turn them into trophies by selecting the option besides the sell button.

From the Profile/Fishing Net page you can also access the Residence, which is where you will find any fish you’ve sent to your aquarium or as trophies. Any fish sent to your aquariums will require you to look after them, so don’t forget to check back on them regularly as they will need feeding and if you don’t, they will perish. Your fish will grow in these aquariums, and should you want to get rid of them at a later date you can sell or release them.

You will earn Skill Points when levelling up which can be used in the two skill trees, Economist and Dodger. Both skill trees have a total of ten skills which you can spend your skill points on.

There are some Quests which you can complete; you have Daily, Weekly and Monthly quests. Completing daily quests will grant you one point, collecting these points will allow you to unlock weekly and monthly quests if you have enough points saved. Upon completing quests, you will gain some sort of reward along with some points which can go towards unlocking other quests.

Statistics is where you can find all the information on your progress, and Rankings is a leaderboard which shows everyone's Name, Total Weight, Biggest Fish, Total Fish and Ranking Points. The Leaderboard is reset at the start of each month but if you happen to finish in the top 10 of a month then you’ll be rewarded with something special.

Personal Records details the weight, length, date and location of your biggest fish caught of each species. Also, under Statistics you will find Fishpedia, where you can find information on each of the fish species in the game. There is also another entrance into your Residence from here.

If you think you have what it takes to reel in those big fish under pressure of battling against other fisherman, then there is Tournament mode. There are Regular, Daily and Players Tournaments that you can enter, and you can also create a tournament. The tournaments will have different goals, such as total weight of fish or the biggest fish caught over a specified time. It usually costs some pennies to enter a tournament, but winning will give you a share of the prize pool.

I haven’t entered any tournaments yet but I do plan on doing so once I start to get some better gear and start reeling in some of the bigger fish that I see people landing all the time. I used to go match fishing most weekends when I was younger, so I’ll be looking forward towards adding some more trophies, only this time I won’t need to clean off that pesky dust.

You can change the weather and the time of the day that you want to go fishing. You are able to choose either Morning, Noon, Evening and Night time, and you also have the choice of weather, from Clear Sky to Cloudy, Overcast, Light Rain, Medium Rain and Storm.

The game is in Early Access currently so there’s always the chance of something not running the way it should, but I haven’t had any problems running the game or any problematic bugs. The only thing that has really stuck out for me is some weird animations after reeling a fish in and holding it up; sometimes the line or fish would go all over the place or spin around like helicopter blades.

The game does seem to get regular updates, which is always a good thing. The graphics are nice, and I’ve enjoyed playing the game so far.

In the settings you’ll find options for Display (Field of View, Fog Intensity, Fish Marker on the Water’s Surface, Rays of Light, Units of Weight and Length, Clock and Temperature), Graphics (Resolution, Display Type, Overall Quality, Texture Quality, Vertical Synchronisation, Blur, Bloom, Chromatic Aberration, Ambient Occlusion, Shadows on Water and Water Reflections), Audio (Master, Music and Effects Volume Sliders), Language (English, Ukrainian, Russian, Germany, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Dutch and Polish), Controls (Mouse Sensitivity, Invert Mouse Axis and Smooth Camera), Key Bindings (the ability to Rebind the Keyboard and Restore to Defaults).

Review written by Piston Smashed™ for Zeepond.com

Ultimate Fishing Simulator 2 Steam Store Page