Fishing: Barents Sea Preview

Fishing: Barents Sea is the release that took the PC gaming by storm a year ago and saw a rerelease for Nintendo Switch earlier this month. It is a fishing simulator, set in the Norwegian region, and it provides a gentle entry into the genre with the beautiful locations to escape to when relaxing.

Fishing: Barents Sea shows off with the outstanding simulation of weather, naval traffic, various types of fish with quite developed behavior, day and night cycles, and very well made seasonal changes. The main draw of the game is its system of improving your fishing operations and gradual betterment of the business overall.

The opening of Fishing: Barents Sea reminded us of a Stardew Valley where the player starts off by inheriting a fishing boat from their grandfather. Although, what sets it apart from the aforementioned game is the considerable lack of finesse that is offered in this iteration of the story. While in Stardew Valley the player receives more of an involving narrative with the story tying into late game events. Nonetheless, this is still a very sweet and cute start of the game.

Realistically speaking, It is a very good game to just sit down and relax although it leaves quite a bit of free time. Some of the guys from the Norwegian Fisherman Association have stated that it represents the excitement of fishing without the hours of waiting time, which is usually the case in real life. In Norway and other countries such as Japan, the gambling business is monopolized by the government.

Funnily enough, they stated that online casinos like Vera & John casino have become quite a pastime during the fishing process as they call it in Norwegian “casino bonuser” even being available for people iterested in fishing-themed games. As it was stated to us by a number of fishermen this is a pleasant offer to pass the time while waiting for a fish to bite. This is in the face of fishing becoming popular day by day.

Gameplay

Starting from the tutorial, the game introduces its core mechanics quite well. The quick tutorial only takes a short time and efficiently shows whats and hows of the game starting from the sea lines to gutting the fish that the player caught although what it forgets to mention is the refueling of the boat even though it seems quite logical I totally missed out on this one.

After the fish is caught and prepared for the market the game takes to straight to the shore to sell your newly acquired product. Docks are a cool spot for the player to start managing the fishing firm. Here you can upgrade the boat as well as hire the crew.

Obviously, one of the key features of the game is not only just upgrading the boat but buying a new and better one as well. This is recommended to do as fast as possible as the starting boat is extremely basic. Although, the late game fishing boats are much bigger in size and look absolutely stunning.

The process of upgrading from smaller to bigger ships is very well done in the game and in the end, offers a smooth transition from running a barebone crew to running a fully-fledged fishing operation. The crew helps automate a lot of processes on the ship hence creates the feeling of ascension for the player from just an average fisherman Joe to an actual businessman or businesswoman.

Most of the aspects of the game are handled via playing mini-games. For example, hauling up the fish is done by a simple timing-based game where the catch quality is determined by the player’s ability to press the button at correct times. It’s quite a no-brainer video game to be fair, however, cutting the fish in a straight line has a totally different meaning for this game than it does for me because gutting the catch was a huge pain for me for some reason.

Visuals

Speaking pure visuals here, Fishing: Barents Sea is quite a beautiful piece of art. Nothing that will make your GTX 2080 sweat but it’s not bad to look at. Hands down the most beautiful parts of the game are the vistas.

However, there are occasional graphical glitches with the environment clipping through like water textures going through the ship hull and the animation of fish flopping around isn’t exactly Crysis 3 level of realism. However, the game overall has a good artistic nature, and these things just give the feeling of not enough energy put into the polishing rather than the actual game.

Conclusion

Fishing: Barents Sea is a solid experience for anyone wanting to have a feeling of what it’s like to be a fisherman. It is a simulator to the core and cuts out a lot of boring parts of fishing like hours of wait. However, some of the mini-games can become quite boring from time to time and the clunky mechanics may be a tad bit on the rage-inducing side.

The visual side is a bit of a bottleneck for the game, however, if a new fishing oriented title is something you are seeking – it’s a solid choice. What makes things better is that it is available via Nintendo Store, as well as Sony Playstation Store, Microsoft Store, and the fan-favorite – Steam.