What's good about this game?

1. This game keeps the nostalgic feel of the original Fish Tycoon.

2. Complex breeding charts and genetics. A real breeding puzzle game.

3. A great game to play in the background of doing other things as it works in real life time.

4. They reward regular players with daily logins and gems.



What's bad about this game?

1. Starting off is very difficult if you aren't dedicated enough to try or smart enough to wisely invest your money.

2. I paused the game for a day and it interfered with my daily login. It said the login was paused and after I unpaused it things seemed to continue from the exact day I paused it, but when I checked today the daily login calendar had reset. I was looking forward to reaching the 30 day mark, but now I won't bother trying again.

3. Goals made this game a lot more fun, up until I reached a goal that required me to purchase a 300 gem item from the ingame store. Without a microtransaction I cannot continue with the goals and it pretty much killed part of the fun.

4. NO ACHIEVEMENTS? I bred every variety of Spotanus and didn't get an achievement for that? I earned 1 million coins? I didn't get an achievement for that? I created magic fish, I didn't get achievements for that? I feel as though I'm working to find the magic fish, discover every variety of every species and doing other time dedicated things without reward. Once I complete all these tasks there is legitimately no final reward to show what I've done with my time.

5. It's kind of weird you have to play this game when connected to the internet. I have great internet, but I know a lot of people who might not. If you don't have a stable internet connection you won't be able to play this game.

Releasing the sequel to a beloved realtime fish tycoon in a postapocalyptic landscape of """free""* to play** mobile gaming market, riddled with microtransactions, in-app purchases, daily rewards and other variants of FOMO c*ncer, is like trusting a pyromaniac with a matchbox and a night shift guard job at a fireworks factory with dodgy lighting.

As with any free-to-play game, you're guaranteed to:
1) Being forced to complete a step-by-step tutorial with no wiggle room for player's personal agency, where you're basically REQUIRED to press A, B, C buttons in that strict order to proceed to your designated skinnerbox cage;
2) Waste all your first dose starting arsenal of useful items to teach a gullible idiot on how to waste their cash on microtransactions in future;
3) Being introduced to in-game microtransaction store with flashing, jerking, popping in and out shiny items that will help you to speed up the waiting process, that will start preying upon player's lack of fun the moment they hit the mandatory microtransaction roadblock, kindly provided by the "fun police" timer.

I am no Oracle, mind you, but I foresaw everything above before launching the game, and the moment I accidentally found out about existence of "Fish Tycoon 2" my face went from :steamhappy: to "LOOK HOW THEY MASSACRED MY BOY"™ immediately after I scrolled down the store page to see the "free to play" and "In-App Purchases" tags.
Couldn't predict the black screen on first time new game launch and the "resolution reset" bug, though.

* * *

TL;DR skip this and go straight to developers' official website and get yourself an actual free, full version of Fish Tycoon 1 - it might not have as fancy graphics, but it will respect your time and money while providing the same core gameplay of breeding fishes, maintaining the fishtanks in realtime and earning cash.

I cross bred fish early and everything died. Now I have no money and no fish and there is no way to restart or delete your save game.

Great for newbies, and a nice remake of the original for those who have played Fish Tycoon, like myself. Wasn't sure I was going to enjoy this with all the in-game purchases, and unfortunately these are stupidly overpriced, e.g. who's going to pay $99 for anything in this game, even if you really love it?! If stuff was more reasonable I may have purchased the odd item, but most are not. Luckily, the devs have balanced this quite well with free giveaways, and goals that reward, so I believe it's possible to progress and complete without any purchases. If they ever release a version without the in-game purchases, I would buy immediately if under $15.

Do yourself a favor and play the mobile version. There are optional video ads in that one which allow you to actually progress without spending any cash. And the in-game coins are extremely overpriced for what you can get for them. Everything's designed for mobile anyway. All the screenshots are from that version. There's not even a proper way to close the program here.

As for the gameplay, the tank(s) require a lot of upgrades before the rare and uncommon fish cease losing health. Lots of coins needed for this. They will also get sick often. Sometimes you'll use a ton(10 to cure 1 fish?) of fungal and ick treatments to cure all of them. More coins. And selling the fish don't get you very much at all. Not remotely enough to keep the ones in your tank(s) alive. And when they die you can only resurrect them with gems. Fortunately, the upgrades you purchase apply to all of your tanks, even (I think) the sell tank.

The fish are very varied, and you can breed any of the adults with any other adults(other than of the same type) to get many new and unique looking types of fish. The pregnancy period will be quick enough, but the wait for the offspring to come of age will take forever in game terms. Best to breed many, wait for the babies to be born and use instagrow to get all your new species, because none of them can be identified and indexed while they are still juveniles. And you can't really enjoy them like that either.

A word on the magic fish. They are fish that specialize in giving certain bonuses to fish in whatever tank they are in. For example, magic fish of nutrition keeps your fish there from starving, magic fish of spawning make the pregnant fish have more babies. There are 7 in all. Gotta catch em all, y'know?And you want to fill your Pokedex- I mean Findex with every other kind of fish entry. There are about 400.

Buying tanks gets progressively more expensive. Best to make do with as few as possible, because they'll require a lot of real cash to purchase. Gems are at a premium, and you can't exactly convert coins into gems, either.

So if you are thinking of playing this version I would give it a pass unless you're ready to spend a lot of rl money. If you are playing mobile then try it out if you like virtual fish. You don't really have anything to lose both ways other than time.

No restart game feature

Something really "Fishy" going on here...
Really slow starting game, but a nice little tutorial.
Graphics are ok.... wait a second... this looks a lot like the first Fish Tycoon... lets play more.... well..... yes... many things if not 80% are all the same....

So far the biggest bug in my first hour, is that on initial startup I got a black screen.
***Force closed it and restarted seemed to fix it.

If you want to accelerate and get going faster your going to have to pay for coins and gems.
(Free but if you want to accel without spending months, then pay up.)
The best stuff to get is to spend money but if you grind it can be done without... but they made it VERY difficult to force the issue. Read on...

Click on the link;
https://ldw.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115001453903-Babies-Breeding-Death-Tank-Space

Great answers to questions in breeding and how long the babies take to age to 20 so they can be sold or used in new species breeding.

Over 400 species and after two days of playing, only have 67. Did we say grind?
It's like a person with no hands trying to install a shower head... uuugh.

A nicer shop to upgrade system in version 2 for sure.. Like watching fish... in a tank... for hours on end... waiting... waiting... but nice visual improvement.

Worth free, because I certainly would not have paid for this. But now that I have established more than one tank, and have accomplished the breeding of a few well paying fish, I will mine them until I unlock everything and then go for the rare fish.

****Rare fish will not survive in your tank until all updrades are purchased. We have everything level 4 in research and all tank accessories and still they do not live long. So its a must to own everything it seems.

Nice little time killer just the same.
Window mode you have better looking graphics but doesnt seem to work consistantly.

Be sure to rate our review. Thanks for reading.



Discalimer; The Review Crew's evaluations are based on paying close attention to forum response and activity, system demand, fun of the game genre, position of originality in respective genre, growth of the project in its current state at time of review, graphics as a whole for end user, presentation of the game and display, replayability, patch/tweak progress, beginner friendliness & gameplay direction, content & depth, attention to detail on small things(polish), lag and multiplayer application if applicable, badge card availability, with a minimum 1 hours of gameplay and interaction with customer base after release. We are not affliliated with any specific brand or entity or on any payroll. All views are based on positive only feedback as we are in no position to criticise anyones craft, just current states of development and progress at the time of our participation. If we offend anyone with our content, it was not us! Our review was hacked!

i love fish

prepare to either sit for 3 hours while your fish grow up or sink some cash into the game through micro transactions...

Fish Tycoon 2: Virtual Aquarium is an alright game, it's got some minor issues but is kinda funny.
I was actually enjoying this little game.
The game is pretty easy to pick up.
This is an extremely fun game and is good as it is but it is not perfect.