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Harvest Fishing’s
arrival on the UK market provides a welcome distraction from the more traditional
fishing games, such as SEGA:
Bass Fishing, Rapala Pro
Fishing and Natsume’s own earlier console releases; Mark
Davis’ The Fishing Master and the Reel
Fishing series. Tapping into the legacy provided by the cult Harvest Moon series Harvest
Fishing seeks to broaden the appeal of the series to a wider
audience.
Harvest Fishing is
more an Adventure game than a Fishing Sim. From the outset the
player has to set his own targets and find ways of reaching them.
The player is given the choice of four different characters from the
same family with individual storylines; each introduced by equally
melodramatic Intro Sequences. The player has much more to choose
between, not least the selection of three distinct varieties of
fishing method; Bait, Lure and Fly - each requiring a different
style and approach.
After the Intro Sequence, each of the characters sets of into
the wider world, each needing to master the basic skills of fishing,
cooking and sourcing Bait. Your character starts out with basic
fishing equipment, only capable of Bait Fishing. The character must
utilise these to earn money by selling fish to unlock other methods
of fishing later in the game. Money is also required to obtain
recipes to improve your cooking skill, and therefore allow you to
regain the health-loss inflicted by the one which got away. But you
can’t bait fish without Bait. Bait can be purchased, and has to be
at first, it is however a serious drain on cash: the sooner you can
find you're own Bait the better. The acquisition of various tools,
such as the Shovel (no spades in this game), enables the player to
find several different types of Bait en-route to fishing. The
differing Baits allow the player to target desired species of fish.
The Auto-Re-Bait action triggered by a tap of the Square Button
eliminates the need to use the Menu each time the player needs more
Bait, however, this doesn’t work if you desire to change type of
Bait. In addition the Re-bait command doesn’t work once Lure
fishing is first used. Bait Fishing, simply dropping the Bait
upriver of fish in the hope of drifting near enough fish to catch
their attention, is simple enough, but timing is needed to reel the
fish in without breaking your Line. From this point you are on your
own with no clear defined targets, however various Cut-Scenes and
resultant events are triggered by unidentifiable actions. This
allows the player to work on their own technique before being 
required to use it in any task. Tasks vary from answering small
furry animal’s questions, through catching a lady dinner, to
proving to a junior college student that yours is bigger than hers
(your Ayu that is). The player is very much immersed in an
adventure, and the game doesn’t allow the storyline to interfere
with that.
You begin in Water Drop village, by the stream. You are free
to roam the village and its surrounds as you wish visiting the
houses and shops as well as heading off to the stream to catch some
fish. The stream is dotted with fishermen who will give you advice
on where and how to fish. The different areas of the stream are
populated by different combinations of the fish available on this
Stage. Although all the fish appear the same from above size is a
good marker for breed identification. Once you have identified an
area to fish you cast using the Cross Button, holding it for length.
If you are  fortunate enough to hook a fish then the screen will cut
to under the water, where the player has to interpret the fish’s
movements and counter its struggles by timing using the Cross Button
to reel the fish in without breaking the Line. Under water the fish
look good, and different species can be identified. This effect is
really spoilt by the way the fish rise rather ridiculously out of
the water, horizontally, and in doing so re-write the whole physics
textbook. The fish are reasonably intelligent; they would have to be
given that they swim through rocks on occasion, and act in a variety
of ways. The smaller fish scatter when cast near, whilst larger fish
will investigate. They even compete to grab the bait if two or three
are nearby. Once the fish is good and caught your character holds it
up to display its size. This is entered into your records, so you
can keep tabs on what the biggest of each species is, and even check
the running total of catches of each species. Also displayed is the
Experience you gain with each fish caught. The player advances his
Level, Fishing Technique and oddly walking speed by gaining this
Experience. After you have caught each fish a record is placed on
its file including basic information, much like the Pokedex files in
the Pokemon series. Once
you learn other methods of fishing and start to complete more tasks
the storyline becomes clear, and you spend less time simply
fishing for money.  It is through completing these tasks that the
player is able to move to other Stages, such as The Lake.
As far as graphics are concerned the Polygon Count is
relatively low, and so the game runs smoothly and there are no
Texture Mapping problems. There are a few things that look rather
odd however, the water effects seems more like smoke than water, and
appears to be a Single-Layer Texture rather than have any depth. The
graphics don’t do the game any harm but don’t do anything
particularly special, whilst the characters are typically Japanese
and are charming in their own way.
The sound is relatively limited and irritating at best. The
characters make continually loud and profoundly annoying noises
whilst walking and doing any other activities. The music during the
Cut-Scenes is overly dramatic, which adds to the sense of the
ridiculous already created by the conversations. The sound is a real
downside to the game, enough that by playing without volume you are
not only not losing out, but enhancing the enjoyment of the game.
The game presents a differing experience to that offered both
by other fishing games and the rest of the Harvest
series. The combination of adventure and fishing , with a loose
storyline to pull the player along, makes this a reasonably an
original release. The compulsive element of the game, provided by
the variety within it ensures that Harvest Fishing should find itself a comfortable niche in the UK.
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