Nice Day For Fishing Review (Nintendo Switch) – Baelin’s RPG Route

Viva La Dirt League have been making sketch comedy videos on Youtube for over a decade, and in that time they’ve had several series, mostly involving a direct parody of a specific video game such as Red Dead Redemption or PUBG. However, its most lucrative series is Epic NPC Man which has over 300 shorts, and parodies RPGs such as the Elder Scrolls or The Witcher, and more so MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft. Viva La Dirt’s small team along with FusionPlay have now pushed Epic NPC Man a step further and helped develop an entire video game around one character, the Fisherman Baelin, and named it after his catchphrase Nice Day For Fishing. But does it actually stand on its own as a video game? I’d say that it most certainly reeled me in.

Game Name: Nice Day For Fishing
Platform(s): PC, PS5, Nintendo Switch (Reviewed)
Publisher(s): Team 17
Developer(s): FusionPlay, Viva La Dirt
Release Date: May 29, 2025
Price: $19.99 (USD)

From NPC to Adventurer

For those unfamiliar with the Epic NPC Man series, it takes place inside an MMORPG called Skycraft and set in the world of Azerim, the starting town, Honeywood, is where all of the series main characters are from and Baelin is a Fisherman NPC that literally walks around saying the same phrases over and over. The basis of Baelin’s narrative in Nice Day For Fishing comes from a short film Viva La Dirt made around four years ago called “Baelin’s Route.” Where Baelin goes from a simple NPC to being literally pulled into the action by a random player character. In the film he gets to show off that he actually has combat skills and isn’t just a bumbling guy that says “Morning! Nice Day For Fishing Ain’t It?.”

In the game, we get more of a traditional RPG tale with an evil Octopus being accidentally revived by high sorcerer Baradun when he opens the Chest of Abandoned Souls and it creates utter chaos in Honeywood. Essentially wiping out everything and taking all of the adventurers (player characters) out of the game. Baelin happens to be wandering into where this is happening and becomes enraptured by the baddies powers and to the shock of the entire town, Baelin becomes the defacto adventurer being the only individual that can take quests from his other compatriots such as Greg The Garlic Farmer and Bodger the Blacksmith. Eventually Baradun begrudgingly takes Baelin to begin the quest of saving Honeywood.

The Fishing Battle System

Being that Nice Day For Fishing takes place in a pixel version of the video series setting, it means the game takes a similar gameplay loop to that of an MMORPG. Baelin takes one quest at a time, you complete it, and then move on to the next one, and outside of a few sections that require you to do some light platforming, virtually all of them require Baelin to go fishing for something.

The actual fishing is a literal battle against various creatures of the water as you have to play offense and defense to make the catch. In attack, you button mash A on the controller, (as you see damage numbers appear on screen,) until the fish changes direction signaling that its about to attack and then you have to press B at the right time to block or possibly even parry the move. Each fish has its own timing for attacks, so larger fish may pack a bigger punch but attack only once, whereas a smaller fish may attack more times before switching back to its non-attacking mode.

The system is like a delayed real-time, where you have your obvious period of when to attack and defend. However, you need to be careful not to over button mash, as attacking during the fish’s attack phase will cause Baelin to receive those attacks as damage to himself. So the battle system creates this interesting push/pull dynamic that makes encounters pretty intense, especially at first when you may still be getting the hang of things.

Although parries don’t behave the same for each type of specimen, with the smaller fish, especially in the early game it will completely remove damage taken. Once you progress further into the game though the parry serves more of a way to significantly lessen the damage taken from attacks. So there’s always this aspect of managing health and stamina to make sure you are sufficiently capable of continuing the fight. This is certainly true in the case of the boss battles which are much longer encounters and even later fights with stronger fish. I had a quite a few normal fish encounters in later sections that really put my management skills to the test and I lost quite a few times until I figured out the best strategy against them.

The RPG of Nice Day For Fishing

In typical RPG fashion, each battle helps Baelin gain experience and level-up and each level-up improves his base health, attack, and stamina stats. These stats directly effect how well Baelin does in battle with stamina being most important because it directly correlates to how many skills you can use. Stamina also replenishes on its own during the attack phase, or like in any other RPG, you can use items to help Baelin in a pinch as well.

Another thing that Baelin also gains after each successive capture is gold, which can be used at various shops around Honeywood to purchase new rods, hats, or accessories. Once you progress further into the story, the woodcutter also helps with upgrading these shops so that they can offer better equipment. However, unlike these other shops, the item shop runs on resources, which also double as the bait for catching fish. Thankfully, these resources replenish on a cool down so you can just wait around for literal seconds and there’s more garlic, worms, berries etc that instantly become available for Baelin to pick up. Then it becomes a bit of a mini-game to manage these resources between both necessities.

Ultimately, it all comes down again to the fishing itself, as the only way to gain more skills for Baelin is to catch a variety of fish. Nabbing at least one sea creature per area grants a new skill or upgrade to an existing skill. These skills run the gambit from powerful special attacks, healing buffs, or big debuffs like bleed or burn, which come in clutch during tough battles, especially against the game’s major bosses.

Not Built For Long Excursions

Nice Day For Fishing Actually does a good job balancing its progression. It always seems like there is a new area to delve deeper into, or another resource to go and gather, it will even change up the quest giver here and there to help keep things fresh.

Unfortunately, due to pretty much every single quest being some form of a fetch quest, it can begin to wear a bit thin the longer you play. Especially if you can quickly adapt to how the parry works, you can start nailing it pretty consistently and the battles start to feel like going through the motions. This is why I found myself enjoying the game when I was able to play it in shorter spurts. I could just catch some fish, explore a new area, cash that in and look forward to the next one. Making it a perfect Switch or Steam Deck game.

But playing in longer sessions it felt like I was just being sent to go get me this fish, or go get a certain amount of this item over and over. A prime example is with the optional quests from the Honeywood Mayor, it became rather annoying to realize I was missing just one fish he wanted, or having to go battle the same fish three or four times in a row because he needs a certain number of them.

Ultimately, the biggest issue with the game, is that all of this questing feels absolutely necessary. There’s really not a way to fast track through it. You have to continue to gain experience and level up so that your stats keep going up, especially because this is really the only way to keep up with how much more damage the fish and bosses do later in the game. Compound that with not being able to purchase health potions until about the third time you upgrade the item shop, and it winds up feeling like an arbitrary way to pad out the length of the game.

The Epic NPC Comedy

The other benefit of shorter spurts is that the gags and jokes from the various characters hit better. I played a majority of the game without knowing anything about these characters, so reading the same joke over and over without context started grating on me, but once I delved into 150 or so of the Epic NPC Man episodes, I understood it much more. This is something that the team definitely hit on very well. Serving as a great entry point into Epic NPC Man itself, as many of the storylines and jokes are taken directly from there such as Bodger’s gag about losing his grandfather’s hammer or Baradun yelling portal away. Even the Honeywood theme from the series plays in-game when you are in town as well. I do think you can certainly enjoy Nice Day For Fishing without any prior Epic NPC Man viewing, but you may not appreciate all of Nice Day For Fishing‘s neat easter eggs which are littered all throughout the adventure. The only sour note is that there’s no voice acting in the game, which may have put the cherry on top for fans of the series.

Viva La Journey

Overall, I enjoyed my time with Nice Day For Fishing, as someone that’s always wanted a fishing RPG, the developers nailed it on that aspect, albeit maybe a bit too literally. Adding in an active battle system provides a fun way to simulate what a fight with a fish can be, while also keeping the game challenging throughout its runtime. Completing quests may start feeling like old hat if you play for too long, but it does a wonderful job of showcasing the setting and series its based on, putting Baelin front and center as he should be. Not sure if Viva La Dirt have plans of centering a video game around another one of their major characters, but for their first attempt Nice Day For Fishing is a great achievement.

Review Disclosure Statement: A copy of Nice Day For Fishing was provided to us for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy.

Affiliate Link Disclosure: One or more of the links above contain affiliate links, which means at no additional cost to you, we may receive a commission should you click through and purchase the item.