Newest new Edit:
I don’t really even need to play it again to know there’s still not a reason to buy this. Just reading about the update has made me certain this game is meant to fail.

The community has almost unanimously agreed that the ‘questing’ or ‘lore’ objectives are atrocious and lead to the player spending more time driving around and looking at rocks than actually fishing.

So what have they done?

They’ve made questing an essential part of the game to progress your gear and equipment.

They just want your money, they don’t care about making a fun game.

Newest Edit:
I've felt it was time to try this again with the first DLC coming out. (and the multiple dev reply's I've recieved) Needless to say they've made many performance improvements and bug fixes since I last played. The game hardly ran at 60fps and now seems to run smooth as can be for me but I know that may not be the case for everyone. This I'm very happy to see.

The improvements I've seen:
-Performance
-Fish Speed/AI (It has been tweaked, still not perfect but much better than Day 1)
-Multiplayer adjustments/fixes
-Water look (they water doesn't look perfect yet either but the physics still suck in a lot of instances)
-Reel speed adjustments
-Fishing animations fixes
-Day and night cycle SEEM to be fixed... (no in game clock)

And that's where the good ends.
The missing:
-Lack of fish variety (Don't be fooled by the DLC. They did not add 13 all new fish. Most are rehashed form the base game with some variations or all new ones sprinkled in)
-Can't net fish
-No fishing equipment (tripods, cages, etc.)
-Can't move while casted
-No action camera (This isn't quite a fishing sim so why not a close up camera for the hook/fish?)
- Nothing to do that are fishing related
-Still fetch quests and lore pages

The bad:
-Bugs everywhere. Multiplayer bugs, fishing bugs, lure bugs, fish spawn out of thin air to bite your lure (sadly, I wouldn't be surprised if this was intentional)
-Useless multiplayer. There is nothing to compare between others, no place to gather, no challanges to compete in. It's pointless and should be turned off.

If this game wasn't 65% driving around in a busted jeep, it'd be OK at best. There is still so much to work on and add that the fact they've already got DLC #2 lined up is quiet frightening. The goal clearly isn't to make a functional multiplayer driven fishing game. It's to crank out DLC after DLC like CotW does and soak in the profits.

Add fishing tournaments or a fishing HUB. There feels no need to have multiplayer on as you can't DO anything together other than experience countless bugs like floating lures and missing catch animations.

With DLC (currently free to own as of writing this) this game is worth at most 15$. This isn't a good fishing game quite yet. They'd need to remove the fetch items, dumb lore dumps and forced map exploration then add the other half of the fishing game for this game to really be worth the money.

Original Reviews Below:
Edit
10 hours in and I'm still not convinced. The game loop is BAD. The three most important things in a fishing game are just so far off from being ready that it's really sad that the game came out like this. The fishing animations (casting, reeling, inability to move, no netting), the water quality/physics and the fish animations/AI are all atrocious. The only things this game has going for it is the map. Until you start exploring and realize how empty and useless it is. The open map style from Hunter:COTW just doesn't translate well into a fishing game. It's hard to say how much time will be needed to flip this game around but, sadly, my review still stands. If you're hesitant, stay away from this until the core mechanics are fixed.

Edited Original review. Toned it down a bit and made some more concise critiques:
2 Hour Review:
Picture this. You're an avid fisherman looking for a fresh experience. You've spent half of your pension and abandoned your wife to travel thousands of miles to fish at the Golden Ridge Reservation with none other than Wal-marts hardiest Wonder Woman hunting & fishing rod with included Batman themed bobber.

You're greeted by a woman on a walkie-talkie who does their best to man-splain how to cast your mint condition rod and reel. Fine. You cast Batman a few times to appease this radio-wench. But casting is not enough. She forces you to Assassin's Creed climb the nearest fire watch station. She explains that although fishing supplies are abundant, maps are only given to the elite 0.1% of gamers. You must explore the map by foot or by Jurassic Park jeep to discover anything meaningful.

But at last. You've made it to the first small outpost in the center of the reservation. You can finally start what you came here to do. Your batman bobber weeps tears of joy. You cast Wonder Woman as far as you can into the Lake. You wait. And wait. And wait. Nothing bites. You move spots and cast again. You wait longer than before.

2 hours have gone by and you've spent the majority of your vacation in a jeep listening to the local game warden complain about all of the ecologically devastating corporations that operate freely throughout the worlds emptiest reservation. You pick up notes, trinkets and report sparkling plant life along the way, only attempting to fish only once or twice along the way.

It's finally hit you that your newly broken marriage and 30 years worth of your pension may not have been worth doing fetch quests for the worlds worst park ranger and extortionist bait shop owner.

You load a 12 gauge shell into your Wal-mart Wonder Woman hunting & fishing rod and pray there are more than 12 species of fish in Heaven.


Serious Review:
This is by far the worst fishing game ever made. PS2 fishing games function better than this. This is 80% exploration, 10% reloading the game, 5% Googling questions, 4% searching for the Steam refund policy and 1% actually fishing. I am greatly disappointed to see so many people give the pass to this game. It may have the POTENTIAL to be good but by golly is it so far away from it. There's practically nothing good going for it in it's current state.

The BAD:
And the actual fishing part of the game could not be any more shallow.
No moving after casting
Only 2 reeling speed animations. You could be at 1x speed but your hand looks like it's reeling in 500yrds a minute.
Mulitplayer just doesn't work the majority of the time
The water quality is HORRENDOUS
Fishing rod animations are broken/unrealistic
Fish animations and AI are very unrealistic. Some fish must be broken because I have google how to catch a few diffrenet kinds and have gotten 0 after IRL hours of trying. I check what location, bait/lures to use and time of day and get the same 4-5 fish every time.
No real sense of progression besides a Lvl number and currency. You can have maxed out gear in less than 3 hours without trying that hard.
Can't pass time for some ungodly reason. I've also noticed that the time of day doesn't cycle correctly the majority of my play time.
No special equipment (tents, tripods etc)
Animations instead of netting fish
Only 12 species of fish on a map more than large enough to house more fish.
The map UI simply doesn't work. It is extremely non-user friendly. Mini map is needed badly.
The majority of the 'quests' expect you to explore rather than fish. Some quest are outright broken/buggy to complete.
These are just things I've noticed in the first 10 HOURS of playing.

The unfortunate truth however is that this will likely go the route of HCOTW and all meaningful content will be behind a pay wall. Only pick this up at $5 or less. I will not shill for another dev/game but there are PLENTY of better and fully functioning fishing sims out there. This one adds nothing new while being incredibly regressive in the fishing sim genre.