You are Alex, a university student working on a school project where you need animal samples for research.  Your mom suggests visiting your grandfather on a small island for a fishing trip.  This game allows you to explore a little island where you can fish in ponds, streams, and the ocean, earning money to buy better gear so you can catch more fish.  Isle of Jura: Fishing Trip is available on Switch and PC, but reviewed on Switch here.

When you start, you can first pick your gender but change it at any time at the title screen.  Upon arriving on the island, your first task is to meet your grandfather and get a fishing net.  This island is very small and only has a few houses.  Your grandfather’s is one and you’ll visit him to buy more gear and get fishing tips.  Another house holds a small collection of artifacts and when you catch something that isn’t a fish, donate it here to add to the collection.  Finally is a restaurant where you can sell fish to earn money to buy more gear.

Now armed with a net, you can explore the little 3D island and catch creatures in shallow water with your net.  While in shallow water, press the R button to get in a catching stance, then wait until you see something to catch.  When you do, a mini-game will play where you must press the R button again when it’s over a green bar.  Do this successfully to catch something.  As soon as you earn enough money doing this, you can buy a regular fishing rod for angling in the ocean and ponds.  For this rod, you must press the R button to cast and hold to cast further.  When you hear water sounds gurgling, keep an eye on your bobber and when it sinks, press the R button again.  Now you must hold the R button but release it when a meter gets too high and press again when it gets low so you don’t break your line or let the fish escape.

After that you can buy a fly fishing rod for the streams.  Here you’ll hold onto the R button to slowly reel in, and when the bobber sinks, you’ll play a different mini-game where you must press L and R to keep a line inside a constantly moving green bar.  After that you can buy weights for deeper ocean fishing, but I didn’t notice any difference with those.  Finally you can always buy a one time use magnet for catching artifacts.

My first problem with the game is when you get the fly fishing rod, as the mini-game you play for it is nigh impossible.  I hit a roadblock there and stopping playing shortly after that.  Also the graphics could’ve been better.  Looks like something you would’ve seen on the PSOne or N64.  I wish you could change the camera angles around and the island is just so small.  I like the idea of a game where you do nothing but fish on an island, as that’s one of my favorite things to do in Animal Crossing.  But this game could’ve used a lot more polish in that regard.

Kid Factor:

Isle of Jura: Fishing Trip is rated E for Everyone with an ESRB descriptor of Alcohol Reference.  I really don’t remember anything, but they probably just mention it in the text only very sparingly.  Reading skill is helpful for the text, and younger players may get frustrated at the difficulty of the later half of the game.

Tags: Game Reviews