I'd like to thank Ultimate Games for the review key to this title.

Some game developers try to make a quick and dirty "pick up and play" game for a beloved activity. Unfortunately, sometimes they bungle the execution of this horribly. Pocket Fishing, to my regret, is one of those games.

In real life, I enjoy fishing. My late and still sorely missed father introduced me to the joys of fishing. While I haven't done real-world fishing lately, I like to occasionally play fishing games as a means of keeping in touch with my roots, as it were. Unfortunately, Pocket Fishing is a game I'll have to pass up for better ones.

It is basically intended as an uncomplicated "pick up and start fishing" game with few frills. You just boot up the game, select from one of five fishing locations, and start fishing.

Unfortunately, it's got several glaring issues. The interface bizarrely uses a mouse cursor (and you have to use the right analog stick to move it) to select play options on the main menu and even the main fishing area interface. This is something that makes sense on PC, not on a game meant for a console. Worse, there is no tutorial even for the admittedly boiled-down mechanics, and the fact that they explain nothing means even the button prompts they do give you are a bit confusing. Finally, this game soft locks every time you get a fish that beats a previous record.

With this in mind, I can't say I had a lot of fun.

Graphically, this uses a colorful if basic-looking, arcade-style interface, which is fine given it's a game for a real-world sport. Nothing looks particularly bad, but nothing stands out either.

Sounds and music are very minimalistic. Given this is a game that simply wants to emulate the real-world fishing experience, that's well and good. Aside from the sounds of casting the line, reeling it in, and the sounds of fish trying to fight being reeled in, there are not a lot of sound effects. Again, I can't fault that.

This is a fishing game meant for the Nintendo Switch, but the weird use of PC-style mouse control makes it come off like a very badly done port to console. You have to use the L and R buttons while reeling in fish with the left analog stick, and while this is simple enough to figure out, the game does throw the player in without any explanations to figure it out on their own.

Stability is terrible. While it boots up and load times are not unreasonable, the game will soft lock (as in, you cannot progress) after catching a fish, forcing the player to reboot to fish again.

Morally, this title is suitable for any age. It's a simple game about the sport of fishing and has no objectionable content whatsoever.

Overall, this game has a strong not recommended by me. Technically, it's terrible. Morally, it's clean. There are many other fishing games out there, and I recommend any of them over this one.