Lets Fish! Hooked On Game Sample - PS Vita
32FISH!! Welcome to Anime Sega Bass!
Okay, that might be a slight stretch, but "Let's Fish! Hooked On" (known in Japan as "Let's Try Bass Fishing: FISH ON NEXT", it's a follow-up to the Nintendo 3DS game "Fish On" which wouldn't get an English release until two years later under "Fish On 3D") is one of only two true fishing titles ever released for the ill-fated Playstation Vita, the other being "Reel Fishing: Master's Challenge". By all accounts, it should've been the best as it had artwork done by the famous character designer, Akio Watanabe (aka "Poyoyon Rock" / Pokopii, who is best known in the video game world for "Akiba's Trip" & "Queen's Blade") and was designed by many of the programmers of the DC/Wii "Sega Bass Fishing". The game as a whole is a microcosm of the elements from both SB1&2 with a small and nonsensical plot tacked on and as an early Vita title for a niche genre, it does quite a few things right, but it has a few glaring problems which shouldn't be overlooked.
The game was published as a download-only title outside Japan by "Wired Productions" and developed by SIMS Co., Ltd... I have strange memories of them through some of their titles such as "Vampire: Master of Darkness" (great action game in the vein of "Castlevania"), "Vay" (one of the earliest RPG games I played published by Working Designs) "J.League GG Pro Striker '94" (a cool, somewhat advanced 8-bit soccer/football game) and many others. The game features a "World Tour" where you get to select one of four main characters and play a long tourney to work your way up the ranks as well as do side tasks to earn skill points needed to upgrade your abilities. As you move up the ranks, the number of tasks you can do increases. In the beginning, you can only do one task, so you have to focus on the tournaments most months, but during the following years, you can do more tasks and develop your character faster. Each character has a specialty (Hooking, Casting, Fighting and Catching) which affects the difficulty a bit starting out depending on who you use.
You want to pay attention to all the categories you can access for each month as some tournaments have bonuses tucked away such as new lures or access to new stages, so sometimes you have to prioritize between getting skill points or doing optional tasks for unlockables. As you move up, the conditions for victory become steeper as the weight class that qualifies goes up, the # you need to catch increases, etc. There's a good progressive curve to the challenge. You can also unlock quite a few things by exploring the game's "Challenge Mode" where you do tasks similar to the main game within a set time limit; missions must be cleared within the time frame specified regardless of how much time you have to get credit for them and players earn extra time for hooking and catching fish like SBF1/SMF, though it's mostly pointless and is more of an aesthetic reminder of its ties to SBF than anything else.
While it's not exactly necessary, the game also has a training and tutorial session to explore... training is somewhat useful as you can visit any stages you've unlocked under any conditions you've unlocked to figure out the best areas and lures for fish. There's also a viewing mode to watch fish pop-in and out of existence while the camera goes by. This game was developed very early in the unit's life and used several features of the handheld's touch and camera interface, so it's somewhat surprising that the game is officially supported on the PSTV despite some games with less ergonomic features needing hacks to play them. The game has quite a few vistas compared to some fishing titles, decent audio/visuals and over 60 lures to collect. It's okay despite the often low scores, but let's get to those issues now.
Like several PSV titles, the game is not optimized. Vita games have a higher resolution than PSP games and devs didn't spend much time testing games on the unit during development. "Let's Fish" has a FPS that fluctuates considerably between ~30-15FPS depending on what's taking place... it stays playable, but the framerate issues and frequent pauses impact the gameplay a bit when it comes to casting and fighting fish. The game is also quite large, weighing in at around 1.5 gigs, which is speculated to be due to audio and voice tracks left in the game that aren't used in the English versions; Story Mode has long awkward pauses where spoken dialogue should be that can't be sped through (unless you hit "Options", where it's skipped entirely), and the game has no real configuration options in which to speak of. The few spoken bits here are mediocre at best. Challenge Mode is also irritating; if you don't get stars on any of the three challenges, you have to play the whole thing (you can't choose the challenge you failed).
The game is dirt cheap and there's a fair amount of content, but you may wanna look elsewhere for a amazing fishing title. This is a video showing various things. Enjoy.