Call of the Wild: The Angler™

I spent several in-game days going back every night to the one lake where you're supposed to catch a Gold Rank Sauger. I know, because there's no way to skip time in-game. You literally have to exit out of the game and come back at night. Over those several nights, I caught at least 20 Gold Rank Saugers. Except I didn't, apparently. Every Sauger was gold rank, but it wasn't triggering the completion for the mission. So I assumed it was just a glitch in what counts as a gold rank for the Confirm Catch screen versus what counts as gold for the actual mission. The saugers I was catching [i]were[/i] pretty small. I just kept grinding for at least 3 real-life hours, hoping the correct fish size would eventually be caught and trigger the mission completion. Nope. Finally I just quit. This was after grinding for several days just to get up to level 12 so I could buy the jerk bait I needed to even start this mission. This game suffers massively from [b]selective realism[/b]. Sometimes it's realistic, like having your line snap if you've hook a fish too big for any amount of reeling with your current line gauge. And yet, other times realism is completely ignored. Why won't the store sell me certain equipment if I have the money, but I'm not high enough rank. What store ever told somebody "You want to give me $500 for this advanced fishing rod? Ha! Get lost newb! I don't want your money!" It's realistic about fish not biting if you have the wrong bait or lure, but not realistic about the lures being lost if the line snaps. Nope, that lure you bought got taken away by a huge fish, but there it is, back on your line again. Hooks and lures never get snagged on the weeds and rocks, because that would not be fun. I agree. But at least abstract the snags a bit. Make the reeling get stuck until you jiggle your rod or whatever. Realism! They allow you to adjust the depth of the bait on floats, but there's no way to know how deep the water is at any point in a lake. So it's basically moot. Just leave it at the top every cast. It doesn't seem to make a difference anyway. I get it. It's game mechanics. You have to fudge [i]some[/i] things. You have to abstract putting your tackle back on the line after a line snaps. That would be annoying to have to do every time, even though it's realistic. But can we at least have some consistency? Boats and trucks cost nothing, so why do you have to spawn them in? Why not just have the boat always there? And if you walk away to another another part of the map, you have to walk all the way back to get your boat or truck. Nah. That wouldn't be fun. Consistency in realism? Nope. Not in this aspect either. Maybe let the shop sell you whatever gear you want to buy, regardless of level, but you just have no luck with it until you level up properly. That would be more realistic, less frustrating/annoying. And for twitching and jigging, there's a hot key you can hold to do it automatically. But for stop-and-go, you have to physically let go of the mouse over and over. Consistency be damned. And maybe have the ability to skip time in-game. Time does pass. If you load in at night, dawn eventually comes. You can fast travel across the map, but you can't fast-travel through time. You have to exit the game reload the whole map and reset the time to night or whatever. Dumb. And the UI is silly. On the load screen, when you're choosing the map, you just have to mouse-over it to select it. No click required. So then you have to select your map, and then very carefully move your cursor around the other icons to click Go at the bottom of the screen, or the map you selected will be changed to whatever map you last moused over. Did nobody test this? I bought this game on the Steam sale for $30, including all the DLC. I had a lot of fun with Hunter: Call of the Wild, so I assumed this would be fun, too, based on the trailer. I honestly tried to enjoy Angler. It was fun for a couple of hours until you hit the wall where you have to grind, catching piddly little fish for real-life days just to advance to the higher tiers of gear. On the plus side, the hiking is nice. They've set up some nice trails in the world, going past scenic waterfalls, through tunnels and around picturesque lakes and through mountain passes. It's all a lovely experience. They didn't need to add all that. Nice job. I just wish they'd put as much work into the actual fishing, what people presumably came for. The boating is nice, too. It actually feels like boating. Driving a truck, not so much. I kept ramming into the trees when road suddenly turned sharply (no damage to the vehicle of course, because realism is selective). But apparently, development on this game has been abandoned. They're no longer working on it. So it's the equivalent of an [b]Early Access[/b] game where they just gave up on fixing things and started selling DLCs instead. As a fishing game, it's more frustrating/boring than fun, even for casual players (like me). I can only imagine how annoying this thing would be for more serious or professional fishing enthusiasts. This could be good. Hunter is. If they just put some more work into ironing out the little glitches and clunky game mechanics, it could be great! But apparently that's never going to happen. Sorry. Not recommended.