LifeisXbox’s Moonglow Bay Review | Welcome to Moonglow Bay! A place with plenty of unique fish that you spent your holidays with your partner in, but that was in the past. Now you live by yourself thanks to your partner’s disappearance, the town is in a bad state and everyone is afraid of the sea. Will you return this place to its former fishing days? Moonglow Bay has been developed by Bunnyhug Ltd and published by Coatsink Software Ltd.
Quote: “Have you ever seen a fish that looks like a rabbit? Or even a fish that looks like a pepper? Well, I certainly haven’t before playing Moonglow Bay”
ℹ️ Reviewed on Xbox One and PC through the Xbox App | Review code provided by PR/publisher. This review is the personal opinion from the writer.
What we liked!
- A Relaxing Experience | Moonglow Bay gives you an overall relaxing experience. Fishing and cooking are the focus here, both make you feel involved thanks to their complexity being just right, talking with other people, and getting to know them and their stories also feel very nice. All of these combined with the graphics, and the relaxing soundtrack feels soothing.
- Comforting Soundtrack | The soundtrack is usually very pleasant and calm, except when something dangerous happens, like a storm, where it feels like there’s a problem just by hearing it. Even when a fish bites your hook, changing to something more intense to give more meaning to your fishing efforts, making you feel immersed in the games atmosphere.
- Fitting Graphics | The graphics are voxel-based, they obviously aren’t aiming for realism, which is not a problem at all, because they do feel fitting for what the developers were aiming for in terms of the game’s atmosphere and its relaxing nature. There are also beautiful hand-drawn fishes and characters, which are shown in dialogues and when a fish is caught and on your journal, which shows the passion the developers had for Moonglow Bay.
- Engaging Gameplay | Just like with other games of its kind such as Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon, Moonglow Bay is not too difficult to pick up, but it does have some complexity to it. There are a few minigames for cooking, where you have to either press a button at the right time, hold a button for the correct amount of time, or keep the cursor in an area to succeed. There are two minigames for fishing, on one of them you have to wait until a fish bites and reel it in with RT while also using the analog stick to pull in the opposite direction the fish is going, you can use LT to use some extra strength for a quick pull, but you will get tired if you use this too much. The other fishing minigame is using a net (which is also used to catch bait on the sand), where you just have to throw your net and push it back, it’s way simpler than any of the other ones but it can only be used in specific locations.
- Creative and Varied | Have you ever seen a fish that looks like a rabbit? Or even a fish that looks like a pepper? Well, I certainly haven’t before playing Moonglow Bay, but there are plenty of unique fishes like these available. You can sell the fishes themselves and cook a lot of different dishes with them, from a simple fried fish to something more refined like a black risotto seafood salad. You can also buy ingredients, recipes, or baits; sail, and invest shells (the in-game currency) to renovate buildings, and upgrade your boat.
- Interesting Story | The narrative and its message are quite interesting as Moonglow Bay is about reconnecting with people and rebuilding, getting back on your feet despite what you’ve been through, which in this case is getting over your partner’s disappearance. It’s not the biggest reason I can give you to play it, but it’s definitely an enjoyable one.
Somewhere between
- Pronouns Issues | Right at the start you can choose one of four available characters, your name, who’s your partner, and what pronoun must be used to refer to the both of you, so far so good. What happened to me here is that I chose my partner as a female and she was called a “he” in a dialogue. So, I think that it may have been better to not have the option to choose pronouns, for the sake of not mixing things up as it did with me.
- Boss Fights | There are some boss fights against very special fishes, such as a barnacle whale and a storm fish. Some of these bosses are annoying to fight, the storm fish, for example, can be pretty annoying if you’re not sure that you’re doing exactly what you’re supposed to. The game doesn’t make it 100% clear what you need to do to defeat all bosses, which is why I think these boss battles could’ve been better implemented.
What we disliked
- Bad Performance | I tried playing this game on my Xbox One for half an hour, but when talking to people or walking the game ran very poorly, it seemed like it was running at 20 fps. I switched to playing on PC through the Xbox App and I was relieved to see that 95% of the time the game ran very smoothly. However, I did see reviews on steam stating that this wasn’t the case with them, so I advise to not play the game on those platforms for now.
- A Few Bugs | There aren’t nearly as many bugs here as in Cyberpunk 2077, but it’s still worth it to talk about the ones that I did experience. Sometimes, NPCs would teleport instead of walking to the places they’re supposed to get to, I sailed through some solid objects with my boat (like rocks and ice), you have a dog and its AI is not that great which can make them get stuck sometimes. Also, while using your net to catch bait on the beach, it can get stuck on NPCs or even on the terrain itself; your fishing line can have visual glitches occasionally. I also got stuck in my boat at the end of the game, forcing me to load a previous save. Thankfully I didn’t lose too much time.
How long to beat the story | Around 15-20 Hours
How long to achieve 1000G | Around 30 Hours
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Hi there, I’m Gabriel Colombo (Hence my reviewer name), I live in Brazil and I’ve been gaming since I was around 5 years old. Xbox became my main platform on the Xbox 360 era, before that I had played a bit on PC, Polystation (basically a skinned SNES), PlayStation 1 and 2. I really enjoy to experience immersive worlds, but I also enjoy playing silly games to have a laugh or just have fun.
