I'm glad everyone is having fun with this one, but I'm gunna post my steam review for the small percentage of people who didn't fall in love with this game:

Hehhhh....It's okay. I don't know. It's like everything is good about it, but nothing is "great" about actually playing it? The visual style is fantastic, and I love the blend of pixel art and 3D, and the art in the sushi making cutscenes is exceptionally well done! But other than that...

The plot isn't very interesting and frankly is quite derivative. The characters are all eccentric and aloof, which makes everything seem not very serious or important like a children's cartoon.

The fishing is OK, but marred by some irritating development choices. You can't aim directly up or down, for one. Getting attacked by a fish decreases your oxygen meter because there is no health meter, which can REALLY f*** you over if you're deep and frankly makes no sense. There's also a bassy Matrix-style bullet time slowdown sound effect every time you pull out your harpoon. This sound gets really irritating when you're pulling in 30 tiny fish quickly.

The restaurant mechanics are more of a required chore than a fun section. They only last about 2 minutes tops, and the only things keeping them from being challenging and easy is how many other staff you've unlocked because it's virtually impossible to do anything by yourself (it takes your character quite literally 4-5x longer to pour a beer as it does any of your other staff), so doing the restaurant sections is less about time management or making recipes, but more about seeing how your current staff perform and trying to sell the highest price fish you can to make money. The money is used to decorate your sushi bar but decorating it doesn't change anything at all. Once you get 2-3 staff hired and upgraded (only takes maybe 15 hours) the only things you have to do anymore during the restaurants section is clean up dishes and grate wasabi for the cooks. Why can't we learn how to cook?? Why can't we upgrade ourselves so we can work as fast as the servers we hire? Why do you get DEMOTED (to a bus boy!) the longer you play?? I don't know...this section just seems really strange and unnecessary gameplay-wise, which is interesting because it's literally the entire reason the rest of the game exists.

I wasn't going to type so much about this game, but here I am. I was on the fence, but I'm going to not recommend this game. It's too far into development for much to change, and I don't think there is enough originality or payoff here to justify the cost for entry and time required to play.

P.s. People need to stop f***ing eating sharks. There is a lot of shark murder and eating in this game. It physically makes you deliver a shark head on a plate after murdering it to a guest who has a positive emotional experience and cries over how delicious it is. It's pretty gross. I don't really care if it's culturally acceptable, STOP MURDERING SHARKS.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/shark-hunting-harms-animals-at-bottom-of-the-food-chain

[–] GreenAlex@kbin.social 5 points 10 months ago

Generally agree here. Makes me feel not so crazy having seen almost everyone gush about it but I'm also not sure how to fully articulate my issues with it. To me, I think the biggest thing is that it feels like the game knows the diving mechanics don't have that much going for them and so is constantly throwing distractions at me. Stardew Valley works because your quest goals are things you probably wanna do anyways to develop your farm. Meanwhile, I feel like stopping to fish in Diver Dave actively detracts from my ability to complete the constant stream of quests.

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