Moonglow Bay Reviews
Moonglow Bay offers an experience that starts off incredibly engaging, but becomes monotonous and tedious before its conclusion. Throughout the campaign, its deficiencies and lack of a minimum of depth become increasingly evident, resulting in the limitation of the game's great potential.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Moonglow Bay is a good game for those who want a fishing-heavy simulation game with a cute story. That said, the game would benefit from some large updates to improve minigame controls and shopkeeping mechanics, creating a more intuitive experience for players. As it stands now, it's difficult to recommend outside of the very niche audience described, and while it has good ideas, its execution makes broader appeal an impossibility.
Living in an idyllic seaside town situated along the Eastern Canadian coastline, where your job is to go out on your boat, catch fish and sell them with your trusty dog Waffles by your side… sounds like the perfect retirement plan! Now what if someone told you mysterious creatures lurked out at sea, frightening the island to the point where no one will dare ride its waves? What’s worse, you rely on the fish out there to avoid bankruptcy! Well, this is the adventure that awaits you in Moonglow Bay. But, is this title a catch or was I baited? Find out in this Rapid Review.
Moonglow Bay starts strong with its emotional story and initially solid gameplay loop of fishing and cooking. Unfortunately, bugs and the lack of variety quickly become its downfall, resulting in an experience that grows more bland and frustrating to play the further you progress.
We really wanted to like Moonglow Bay. It has the bones of a great fun cosy game: collectibles, a heartwarming story, fishing! Unfortunately, between the bugs, bland characters, and unnecessarily frustrating boss battles, the meat is a little thin. We enjoyed collecting the fish and restoring the town for a spell, but even the fun quests didn't have the compelling pull of many other games. If you really love fishing in your cosy adventures, this could be worth dipping your toe in. But if you're just in the market for a cosy game, there are plenty of fish in the sea.
Moonglow Bay has a lot of promise; it’s easy to spend hours with it when it’s working properly. But when it’s not, it turns into a nightmare you don’t want to revisit. The cosy vibes of the gameplay, fun characters, and enjoyable fishing and cooking mechanics don’t make up for fundamental errors with the game that really mar the rest of the experience.
A super-calm mix of fishing, cooking, business management, and town-restoring RPG, Moonglow Bay is a decent idea that wasn't executed that well, and is thus very boring and repetitive. It also struggles with making you care about anything. Players do things just to do them, with the tiniest sense of progress possible. Take your fishing rod and fish somewhere else.
You wouldn't think a fishing game, of all things, as being cuddly and cozy and inviting -- but Moonglow Bay proves that it's not just possible, it's also pretty fun.
Moonglow Bay tells a tale of a quaint town, with people afraid to go into the sea mixed with a story about grief. But, it also has lots of feel-good themes of resilience and community spirit. While the game could do with a little more work in some areas, it is still an enjoyable game to play. And the icing on the cake is, yes, you can pet Muffin the dog as many times as you want to!
If game quality is represented by the depth of the ocean, then Moonglow Bay goes down deep, without quite touching the seafloor.
The slow pace and gentle yet solemn storytelling — with lots of bright, joyous moments, too — is delightful, and I’m eager to learn more about Moonglow Bay and its people, in a town shaped as much by fishing as it is by grief.
A little frustrating in places, but Moonglow Bay is mostly a chill fishing RPG that digs into its themes of community, resilience and rebuilding in surprising and consistently interesting ways.