While virtual reality is still in its infancy, it’s managed to excel in two key areas: allowing players to experience the absurd and allowing players to mimic real actions. Monster of the Deep: Final Fantasy XV combines these two key experiences perfectly, as the mundane act of fishing is paired with fantastical monsters in a highly entertaining fantasy world. In those aspects, this strange FFXV spin-off is a perfect fit in the current VR landscape.
As far as fishing goes, Monster of the Deep mirrors its real-life counterpart rather faithfully (besides having to wait forever for a bite). Due to that, I won’t go deep into how it plays mechanically much here (it’s detailed in my preview, though). However, I will say that I found casting to be more difficult than expected, as I often found myself casting short when I was going for a far target, and vice-versa. At first, I thought there was just a learning curve, but I never really got much better at it. Eventually, I settled on doing large motions to go short, and short flicks to go long, despite the motions not making much sense. It’s a slight annoyance, but players can always reel in long casts, so it’s not much of an issue. The actual fishing winds up being one of the true stars of Monster of the Deep, as it feels really satisfying to reel in a huge fish. VR also has the extra icing on top of the cake of getting to hold up your catch, and admiring its fishy glory afterwards. Players have t...