Games have a surprising ability to make mundane, boring activities surprisingly fun. Take Harvest Moon for example - no-one would have guessed the daily grind of tilling, sowing and watering seeds or feeding, grooming and rounding up cattle could be so engrossing, although the seventy hours we poured into Harvest Moon: Animal Parade suggests otherwise. From the company that bought us the addictive farming/romance simulators comes a much older title on the 3DS' Virtual Console - but this time we've traded our hoes for fishing rods.
Legend of the River King
is a strange fishing/role-playing game hybrid released for the GameBoy Colour back in 1999 that's, unfortunately, nowhere near as addictive as it's farming cousin. When the nameless protagonist's sister falls ill, he's sent off into the wild by his mother, ordered to stay away, and do whatever he can to catch the powerful Guardian Fish to cure her - no prizes for guessing who the favourite child is there then. Without so much as a goodbye, you're thrown into a mish-mash of random battles, confusion and frustration without so much of a tutorial to help guide you on your way. This game's too hardcore for stuff like that.
Our time in the initial town of Torrent was spent wandering around chatting to the villagers to see if we could pick up any tips about quite how we were supposed to get started - they were no help whatsoever, with many demanding you catch them a certain type of fish before they'd even give you the time of day - while occasionally getting ambushed by giant spiders. Switching into a battle mode, these, as with all manner of creepy crawlies, are turn-based and simply involve pressing the A button when the little picture of the fist lines up with the enemy in order to whack it as hard as you can. For each enemy you defeat, you earn experience, which eventually adds up to increase your health, and let you cast out your rod further and further.
Is play a different game an option?
With this being a fishing game, the main hook (ho ho, I see what you did there - Ed) of the title should be it's fishing system - but somehow, we still haven't managed to figure out yet, despite looking in the virtual manual, trawling the internet, and asking a number of friends. It starts of simple enough - all you need to do is add some bait to your rod (there's a pretty big selection of bait to choose from, although we found no-one seemed especially keen on the red larva), before hurling it out into the river and waiting for a fish to come a-nibbling. While your little red float is bobbing up and down, you can see the yellow outlines of loads of fish swimming beneath the surface - when one gets a whiff of your bait, he'll circle it a few times before moving in for the kill, turning your float yellow. That's your cue to press the A button, which then switches the view to below the surface - and this is where things get complicated.
The new view shows your quarry swimming off at full pelt, with your line in his mouth. According to the virtual manual included in the download, you need to wait for it to "slow down and stop. Press A or B to begin reeling in your catch." - but try as we might, we couldn't get it to work. Every time, without fail, each fish would escape with our bait, leaving us with an empty hook and one worm out of pocket. With bait being a commodity you need to buy from the shop, and the only way to get extra dosh being to flog the fish you reel in, we were stuck in a bit of a catch-22 before long.
Taken just before he swam off the bottom of the screen, your bait in mouth...
Unfortunately, you're stuck in the initial village until you manage to catch something - specifically, a rainbow trout, which a particular man will exchange for a raft. We've heard rafts are useful for fishing further out from the shore, and are required for fishing on the lake, although as we've still to catch a fish, we can't say for sure. There's also a rather stubborn man who calls himself 'G.Dad' who reveals he could teach us about fishing, but will only do so if we bring him a char. Which is a bit stupid, as if we can catch a char, then obviously we know how to catch other fish too.
For those of you who can master the fishing mechanic (answers on a postcode please), there's a surprising amount of stuff you can buy to make it easier to catch stuff. Aside from new, stronger rods and hooks of different sizes, lures of all shapes and sizes, flies and several different sorts of bait - every fish has their favourites, and keen fishermen can tweak things to make sure they get the fish they want every single time.
We've heard reports that the game is a bit on the short side, but as we couldn't get out of the first village, we can't really comment on it's overall length. What we can say though, is that within a couple of hours we'd completely ran out of both bait and money, so the game was pretty much finished there for us - which is just as well, otherwise we may have broken something in frustration had it gone on much longer.
Format Reviewed: Nintendo 3DS
