- 3RD-STRIKE.COM - A La Une - 25/Jun 03:52

Epic NPC Man: Nice Day For Fishing – Review

Comedy troupe Viva La Dirt League’s Epic NPC Man series has come full circle with the release of Nice Day For Fishing. Originally making its debut in 2016, Epic NPC Man started as a series of sketches that lampooned video game tropes. It was successful enough to spawn a crowdfunded film, a comic book, and now… a video game. But can Nice Day For Fishing stand on its own, or is it overly reliant on inside jokes, obscure references, and fan service? Story Central to Nice Day For Fishing is local fisherman Baelin, the lead character from the film Baelin’s Route: An Epic NPC Man Adventure. Like his fellow townsfolk, Baelin is an NPC from the fictional MMORPG Skycraft. Things go awry when a magical item causes all the player characters to disappear from the game. And no, this isn’t the fault of wizard Baradun, stop asking. As it turns out, Baelin is suddenly able to take on quests, so now it’s up to him to keep the village of Honeywood safe. In a world where monsters wreak havoc on a regular basis, that’s a big task for a laid-back character like Baelin, so our unlikely hero sets out on an epic quest to return things to normal. Fortunately for Baelin, many familiar faces from Epic NPC Man are ready and willing to help him in their own ways. Most of Nice Day for Fishing’s humor derives from callbacks and references to the sketch series. However, even with only our cursory knowledge of the series, we couldn’t help but chuckle at some of the jokes. Graphics A surprising amount of detail was crammed into Nice Day For Fishing’s pixel art. The environments are varied, and there are plenty of small sight gags to discover. The fish designs are varied and easily recognizable, despite their simplicity. The retro visuals make for a game that runs as smooth as you’d expect, with a steady frame rate. Sound Given how close the people from Viva La Dirt League were involved with the development of Nice Day For Fishing, we feel like a huge opportunity was missed by not having the game fully voiced. The characters do all get short voice blurbs, but unless you can actively hear the line deliveries in your head from having watched the sketches, a lot of the humor falls flat. Line delivery is important! The soundtrack comprises the kind of cliché medieval tunes you’d expect from a low-budget YouTube sketch comedy series, which is unsurprisingly very fitting. That said, the transition from combat music to overworld music is abrupt and jarring. Gameplay Fishing mechanics are a common sight in RPGs, but typically in the form of a minigame instead of a fully fleshed-out gameplay element. That’s not the case here, but with a title like Nice Day For Fishing, it’s not exactly surprising that fishing is the central mechanic. The game is still unmistakably an RPG, albeit one where familiar elements like combat and treasure collecting are tied to Baelin’s skills as a fisherman. The core gameplay loop is simple but efficient. You set out to fish and use your haul in order to restore and improve the village of Honeywood, which was destroyed in the game’s opening. Gradually restoring Honeywood gives you access to better equipment, like a treasure magnet and new kinds of bait, which in turn means you can fish more efficiently, rinse and repeat. New and more fleshed-out mechanics, like combat, spells, and traveling using water currents, are introduced gradually, making for a game that has a bit more depth than you’d initially expect. Catching fish takes more than just choosing the right type of bait and mashing a button to reel it in. Each fish has its own attack pattern, with later-game fish being a lot trickier to take down. Attacks from fish can be blocked and parried, and Baelin can rely on magic attacks and potions to take down trickier sealife. As you’d expect, rare and powerful fish are worth more and will net you bigger and better rewards. Apart from dealing with aquatic opponents, Baelin can also gather treasure by sticking a magnet at the end of his fishing rod and aiming for sunken treasure, although this is a fairly fiddly mechanic that often sees you miss your mark by the slightest margin. Things never get ridiculously difficult or complicated, but that makes sense here, as Nice Day For Fishing’s main reason for existing is to be a tie-in game. The game sticks to a handful of core features, and does flesh these out well enough. That said, there are a couple of features we’d have wanted included here, first and foremost being fast travel. The map isn’t enormous, but we still had to do more backtracking than we liked. It’s probably also worth mentioning here that there are some simple platforming sections when navigating the forests and caves that are found in the overworld. The tediousness of having to revisit the same areas over and over is likely intended as a jokey reference to the sketch series, but in practice, it wasn’t very fun. Despite all the backtracking, Nice Day For Fishing isn’t a very long game, and can be completed in a handful of hours. If your aim is to complete the fishing dex, then you can probably squeeze some more time out of it. Even then, the €19.99 price tag is hard to justify unless you’re deriving enjoyment from the humor and the references. Fortunately, there’s nothing stopping you from checking out the sketch series on YouTube before you decide to take the plunge with Nice Day For Fishing. Conclusion For what it wants to be, Nice Day For Fishing is a neat little game. However, if you’re unfamiliar with the Epic NPC Man series, or if Viva La Dirt League’s humor isn’t your cup of tea, then the game isn’t going to stick its landing with you. Like so many other tie-in games, you’re expected to be familiar with the source material in order to fully appreciate what’s on offer here. The core fishing-meets-RPG gameplay loop is enjoyable, but there isn’t enough here to make picking up Nice Day For Fishing worth it based on just that.