Today we’re talking about the sequel to a game that I really liked: “Another Fisherman’s Tale” is the sequel to “A Fisherman’s Tale”, and it came as a complete surprise to me. The first part wasn’t too long at around two hours, but still very entertaining. Can the second part also convince me?

First of all, I would like to talk about a few things in the first part, as we will definitely be comparing some aspects here. “A Fisherman’s Tale” is a VR game that mainly takes place in a lighthouse. In the middle of the main room is a model of the lighthouse itself, and every change here is also reflected in the “real world” – we also know this principle from “Maquette“, for example.

Using this mechanic (and the usual possibilities in VR), we now have to solve various puzzles that become increasingly more challenging over time. We are told an interesting and emotional story, which I don’t want to go into in detail in either the first or the second part; Suffice it to say that I found both of them very good, but the second one was told a little better thanks to certain techniques.

However, the second part takes a different approach: instead of us as humans interacting with a model house, we play the doll itself, including special abilities that let us play puzzles in new ways. For example, we can now throw our heads away to get a new perspective on things and throw our hands to grab distant things – definitely a fresh idea!

The story takes place in different places that we visit on our adventure, so there is a lot more variety here than in the first part. This variety comes with some advantages, for example a level takes place completely underwater, which opens up completely new possibilities. On the other hand, there are also corresponding disadvantages: if I had known beforehand that there was an underwater level, I would have thought twice about buying it, as this environment in particular leads to severe motion sickness for me.

I really liked the rest of the game though. The graphics were simple but attractive. The controls took some getting used to, but after the first few tries they responded exactly the way you wanted them to. The new mechanics were sometimes explained in a laborious way, but they still brought a breath of fresh air to the puzzles. The levels sometimes took on very strange traits, but none of this was annoying, just very funny; I wasn’t sure at first, but overall this definitely lightened the rather gloomy tone of the story. It seemed a bit inappropriate or even silly at times, but it was still fun to watch – I think that’s the most important thing.

Despite all of these points, I have one major criticism of this game: the expectation management. Personally, I often don’t like it when games in a series (even if there are only two parts so far) change their basic properties so much. As with the third part of “I Expect You To Die“, I expected a calmer kind of game that remained relatively stationary and didn’t involve much movement. Above all, the levels with diving and driving a boat are the exact opposite, namely strong triggers for motion sickness. It was bearable for me, but still a rather unpleasant experience in some places.

I’m definitely not saying that I don’t like the game or that I didn’t find the new features interesting; They were unusual if you remembered the first part, but definitely funny and nice ideas. I can’t say how I would have done it better, as the story fits in with the first part well. Nevertheless, I would have wished that they had taken things a little easier in one place or another in order to not leave the players of the first part behind – especially in the VR area, a game like this can otherwise quickly become unplayable for some people, and with this emotional story in the back of our minds, that would be and is a shame.

Some parts were very tiring for me, but I still played through the game and overall I liked it. The atmosphere is right, the controls take some getting used to, but are coherent and the story was definitely worth it. We had a lot of fun for about 5 hours and I’m really excited to see more installments from this series or maybe a completely different story in this kind of style.

What do you think? Did you like the game, are VR games not for you at all or have you even played it yourself? Should we play more VR? Feel free to discuss on Discord!