Fishing Legend

Having never gone fishing, I'm not sure if Fishing Legend is a very accurate portrayal of it. Personally I can't shake the image of a happy family of fish going for a Sunday afternoon swim and mum biting into a tasty worm only to get yanked from, condemning her offspring to a lifetime of mental health issues.

Anyway, despite not knowing how easy or difficult it is to do, it always looks quite easy from a spectator's point of view. Far easier than it is to do in Fishing Legend at least.

In this game, fishing is a pretty complex procedure, which involves stopping a bar to determine the direction you cast off in, stopping another to determine the power, pressing '5' at the exact point your bobber, er, bobs, yanking your rod in the opposite direction to the one the fish is tugging in, and then -

- deep breath -

- rapidly pressing '5' to move a bar slowly to the top, which replicates the final phase of getting your virtual fish in the net.

I'm exhausted just describing it. It's safe to say Fishing Legend is about as close to a full on fishing simulation as you're going to find on your phone.

Not only does it require some physical effort in order to catch a fish, but there's also a whole lot of preparation involved. As well as being a fish-catching game, Fishing Legend is also a role playing one.

This means that prior to even reaching the pier and selecting a boat to go fishing in, you'll need to rest in order to replenish HP and buy yourself the best possible bait and equipment in order to raise your fishing ability stats.

Get all of this right and you'll then be able to catch loads of fish to sell at the village's fish markets for money and extra reputation points.

Once you've got to grips with all the game's demands - there's a tutorial to teach you how - and if you can persevere with the lengthy process behind catching a fish, Fishing Legend becomes really quite enjoyable.

Its structure is very simple, but a good driving force - the more fish you catch, the more money you earn, the better rods you can buy, the better the boat you can hire, the more exotic and valuable the fish become, and so on.

And there are various asides to this basic structure too - such as side quests where a character will ask you to catch him a certain type of fish (or a certain item), a mini-game where you can find different types of bait crawling around in the ground to attract new kinds of fish, and special ornamental fish to decorate an aquarium with.

It's all presented nicely too with cartoon visuals and twee music.

The fishing theme might not appeal to everyone. Indeed, the repetition of the fishing won't either. But Fishing Legend is still an accomplished game, and one that'll take far longer than a rainy Sunday afternoon to complete.