Moonglow Bay
Released: October 26, 2021
Game Length: 22 Hours
Grade: C
Problematic
Bad Controls: When I first started the game, it was originally set as version 1.0.2. These changes came out November 3rd, roughly a week after release. The patch notes looked decent enough. They added the ability to auto-save once you sleep (which has become a staple feature in video games) and improved keyboard commands. I did not expect the developers to include the worst controls imaginable. Not only were the controls all over the keyboard, but there was absolutely no mouse support. About a month later, they made more changes in version 1.0.3 that at the very least alleviated the issue of not being able to adjust the keys. By that time, I had already made the switch to the gamepad.
Bad Impressions: When the game begins, it will ask for your name and "your boating partner's name." Don't confuse this as some buddy you hang out with. A scene will play out where you kiss each other. Later, you will also find out that you have raised a daughter in a house on the coast. The block graphics weren't exactly degrading, but the poor frame-rate during the cutscenes certainly was. This will happen every time. I also had to adjust the resolution to Fullscreen instead of the default Windows Borders.
Bad Mechanics
Too Easy? The game does a wonderful job building-up all of their systems. The problem is none of it is really necessary to progress in the game. Does one really want to unlock every fishing recipe, donate meals to people, contribute every fish to the museum, and clean up every aspect of the town if none of those things is required to complete the game? Alright, so you do need to buy up the core buildings and have at least 90 fish in the museum. Nothing else really matters. Let's look at some of the issues:
- The purpose of talking to people around town is severely lacking from a gameplay perspective. Most will tell you of a certain fishing story that will allude to something out in the ocean you can catch. Those you donate meals to will generally chat about something random. After giving them around 6 meals, you will receive a little gift inside your notebook. That's about it!
- The purpose of unlocking recipes doesn't seem to matter too much when it comes to making money. After you open up the market, there are about 5 cooking recipes you can buy. One of them is for Grilled Oysters. Capture a good handful of these little flies on the shore with your net every hour and you can make hundreds of thousands of shells selling those everyday without ever going back out into the ocean.
- There is another reason why unlocking recipes is a pain. Proficiency is based on the number of times you cook, not how many meals you prepare. This is utterly repulsive since the point of making bulk recipes is so you don't have to do the cooking mini-game as often. It ruined my experience in the game because I lacked so many recipes and couldn't figure out how to progress them. Early unlocks require you to cook things 3 times, later ones about a total of 9 times, and the ability to instantly cook them requires you to do the mini-game perfectly about 12 times. The mini-game itself did not change if you were making one or ten meals at a time. If you made one mistake along the way, even if it was a mild (yellow) success, it would be reduced to two-stars and not count towards the unlock.
- Cleaning up the town might be mildly cool to see, but the rewards aren't as great as I hoped. After periodically spending 10,000 shells, you would think there would be more than... a scooter that doesn't move any faster than you, two different flags you can put on your boat, or the option of having a total of two different colors on the side of your boat. At least being able to catch multiple fish at once or unlocking the ability to line-fish mix things up a little. I would have liked it a bit more if they gave me options to decorate my house, added more docks around the shore (which they did in version 1.0.3), or at the bare minimum allowed us to walk inside the buildings when they are built!
- The "tired" mechanic that makes you bumble around at half-speed is merely there to make sure you periodically save your progress (which wasn't added until version 1.0.2). I think you can last about 36 hours straight until this happens. Fun part is that you are fully rested no matter how many hours you sleep. At first, I thought the "blinking" effect that happened at midnight was your queue to head straight to bed, but that too must have been some sort of transitional day thing they added.
- Fishing in general is alright. The aspect doesn't really change no matter what type of pole you are using. Pulling back on a fish the moment you catch one almost guarantees you reel it to the boat instantly. This trivializes the whole experience. I would have preferred something more challenging or offered more variety for a game whose whole existence is based on this mechanic.
Horrible Bugs
Early Access? I am ashamed to say that this game has a horrendous number of bugs in it. A couple were stomped out in the recent patches, but it is clear there is no way for a gamer to simply shrug them all off. And I'm going to name them all:
- Fishing Net doesn't always come back. It sometimes catches on the most unusual spots. Even in the earliest locations on the shore, there are some invisible tilts in the landscape that prevents you from pulling it all the way back.
- It is actually really easy to clip out into the landscape to the point where you can get stuck. The developers have added a /stuck feature in the main menu if this ever happens (since it will happen). I managed to clip off the side inside the boat, off a fence, through the earth, on top of a building, on a garbage can, and on a rock. This can also happen when you are flying over the landscape and land somewhere that isn't water.
- Much of the game does not check on current events. The Bulletin Board will offer you jobs before certain features are unlocked. Certain cutscenes won't happen until you enter a certain area. People will hint towards events that you might have already progressed through. I was offered the ability to catch lobsters before the tutorial. I was able to sail across the landscape before obtaining the sail from the vendor. Even though I cleaned up the whole bay, the quest still required me to clean up again.
- Camera angles are a pain. There is something horrible when you reach an area in the corner of the map to fish and a giant wall covers your view. This becomes apparent especially in the northern ice reaches. This is less of a problem within the coast.
- Some of the features in the game will require you to buy things from the vendor, even if it's free. One of these features is to receive 10% more shells of all the fish or meals in the vending machines for the cost of 500 shells. The problem? I did not realize you can't have both. For some dumb reason, you are able to buy both options at once.
- Before the game begins, you choose on whether your partner is male or female. Surprisingly, there are a couple instances where the game doesn't check on what your choice was. This gets incredibly awkward when they are saying "she was the best" instead of saying "he was the best" in the middle of a conversation. I think all of the times this happened was linked to the same NPC.
- There was this super weird bug I encountered in the middle of the campaign where I couldn't buy fish from the market. No matter what fish I queued up, the game would give me that amount in shells and reset the value when I left. It stopped after advancing the story.
- The price adjustments on items were occasionally set at 0%.
- After you help fix up the town, there comes a point where you get two cute scooters (which supports 2-players). The fact that they don't move any faster than you are on foot and the control scheme is based on the direction you are moving (not by acceleration) doesn't bother me. What does bug me is when a cutscene teleports only you to another spot on the map. There were so many times my scooter was left in some corner of the town because of an event.
- There's a few things I caught floating in the air.
- Area Music tends to infinitely loop no matter where you are on the map.
- There comes a point where you unlock line-fishing. The fish that shows up on the screen will not be the ones you catch. Sometimes, all the fish will turn out to be exactly same. This also created another bug where I couldn't properly pull up fish once switching back to my normal pole. My only option was to release.
Overview
Summary: The overall elements of the game hold together. Cooking your meals, sharing them with your friends, and selling them to the community is all nicely done. The main story of encountering legendary fish while building your town past the brink of collapse is a cool one. The game does a good job giving you descriptions of fish, visual renderings of meals, and creating several biomes to explore. It is too bad that every aspect of the game is littered with lack of features, annoying bugs, and confusing mechanics. These problems and the lacking co-op support makes what could be a wonderful game a forgettable one. The $25 price tag doesn't help matters. In the end, I wouldn't recommend this game for others.
1-13-2022