Dave the Diver Review (Nintendo Switch)

Dave the Diver Review (Nintendo Switch) - Gameffine

Dave the Diver is a complete package of exploration, management, RPG, and survival at one place. With a thrilling story and cozy setting, this is definitely your next pick!

Operating System: Nintendo Switch

Application Category: Game

Editor's Rating:
8.8

In our Dave the Diver Review, we discuss how impactful the game is, all the while being as simple as hunting fish in the day and serving sushi at night. Or is there more to that? Published and developed by Mintrocket, a branch of Nexon, the game has finally docked on the Nintendo Switch after its initial release on Steam.

Does Dave The Diver uphold all the talk around the Internet? Let’s Dive.

Breathe in, Breathe Out

Diving is Dave the Diver’s most pivotal mechanic in the entire game. Dave is a very humble diving specialist hired by his old friend, who once used to run a weapon shop – ‘Cobra’. Cobra always has the idea of turning everything into a business, and he sees the remote and unexplored deep sea as a beautiful opportunity to turn it into a business. But what will you possibly do with fish on a tropical island? Well, how about – SUSHI?!

You can set up your evening sushi shop with the master chef – Bancho. Bancho is one of the best chefs the world has to offer. But he needs to learn how to entertain a customer properly. And also, if all he focuses on is cooking, who will manage and serve the customers? This is where your second job comes in; you get to be a manager and a server to fast-track things at the restaurant. Of course, you can hire more hands and increase the scale and productivity of the restaurant, but how well and fast you can manage it all is the real question. And can you catch the treasured fish and hunt shark heads that customers demand?

That’s all I had expected from Dave the Diver, thinking I would progress next to explore more regions, find more fish and build my business more prominent. While all that is also true, there is more to see and experience in Dave the Diver. The game also has a mysterious story to uncover, exploring a species never studied before that has hidden itself from humanity for centuries. You work with a researcher in the game, which helps and encourages you to find and learn more about the sea people as it could be society’s most significant find yet.

Exploring ever-changing depths, challenging fishes to catch and defeat the deadliest predator to later sell them as delicious sushi makes Dave the Diver sound like one of the most bad-ass games after Red Dead Redemption 2. This light-pixel art design game has excellent visuals, details and dramatic animations to keep the experience cosy and fun.

Dave the Dungeon Raider

Dave The Diver’s Day part of diving is a roguelike adventure. While major POISs are always in the same direction, the structures and spawn locations of fish always rotate around. This keeps the game fresh as each day passed in-game makes you dive twice, which means two runs, before closing the day managing your Sushi restaurant.

Your day job diving sessions aren’t restricted, and it is always up to you if you want to chase quests or make your Sushi business boom and rake in that good cha-ching. As for side quests, you’ll meet more people around the island who will connect you via Apps, and specific side missions will just come across you during your explorations; as for your main tasks, you follow a linear progression.

The game’s main storyline will ask you to explore depths, discover the myth and secrets of sea people, and hunt down sea monsters and certain things that we’d like to keep secret for the sake of spoilers. Overall, a tonne of content awaits you in the deep seas. The only thing we found inconvenient was that you’re instantly called back to the surface after completing a particular objective. While you’re not forced to leave the sea, you must end your particular run to progress your story further. While it is easily understandable that the game wants you to balance out both the aspects of diving and management, the game, by doing this, obviously drags further the hours spent towards the game. Sometimes, this was okay with us, but it broke the game’s flow other times.

For combat/catching fish, your primary weapon is a harpoon. The harpoon does moderate damage, so the fish for your level will always require to be harpooned twice or thrice. The other option is to upgrade your spear with a hefty amount of money that can be spent on other upgrading options. After a few levels, you can start with an underwater rifle for your secondary weapon. During your dives, you may receive other weapons and harpoon upgrades. Since this isn’t an escape from Tarkov, items found in your run will be lost once you return.

But you will bring back blueprints of that particular weapon so you can finally craft it and take it with you each run without spending anything anymore. This is great to plant out your runs since difficulties and more predator species are found in greater depths. Since the game is roguelike, you may lose everything you see if you’re prepared to survive until the end.

Catching fish, however, has its conditions. Each fish is ranked and rated. Ranks are numerical, showing how common they are; as the level increases, it indicates the depth they are found in. The Star Rating, however, is how you bring the fish back to your restaurant. Out of 3, a fish will have a 1 star if you get it back dead. 2 Stars if caught by a harpoon and three unharmed using nets or extracted via drone. Catching a 3-star fish, however, is a tedious job as it will require crafting a net-catching weapon, which is primarily useless against aggressive and bigger prey, along with its lack of ammo or finding a fish net bomb, which is purely luck-based. So yes, it’s a fortune to catch 3 Starfish. This is a great way to define and reward based on efforts towards catching a fish.

Dave the Diver has a subtle and calming game design. The background score drives the relaxing vibes of the game when you’re chilling at your farm, fish farm or just over at Bancho’s Sushi. But the intensity and thrill of the music underwater will always keep you on your toes, making your instincts of survival scramble and always look for the next opportunity to make this your current run the best run ever.

Dave the Diver is simply the best game you’d play on a rainy Sunday with no responsibilities.

Having a roguelike experience always pushes the players to outperform your last run, regardless of the objectives and scenarios. Having to reap your rewards in a dashing management sim Sushi Restaurant is the best way to redeem your efforts so that you’re loaded with enough cash to expand and upgrade for an even better run than the last.

Dave the Diver may make things slower than it is supposed to be, but the way the plot expands with unexpected twists and reveals is always exciting while having so many things to do simultaneously. Dave the Diver feels like a modern-day full-sized game packed inside an indie-type match with only the best indie games.

Having a glance at things that could’ve been better, there are indeed a few things. For experienced players, Navigating around and finding your next objective is a fair challenge, but people exploring the genre for the first time will have problems. Dave the Diver does lack a convenient shopping source to equip Dave better; he will always have to start from scratch, causing him to spend more time to reap the more significant rewards. The upgrades have bloated prices that make it harder to progress faster; however, there are better ways to make people grind more.

Dave the Diver is a complete package of a full-sized game, designed to be enjoyed in the most relaxing mood that will give you the taste of experiencing thrill and adventure in the first half and drive your management brain cells to their max in the other half. Backed with an impressive storyline and much extra content, Dave the Diver exceeds its value for money.

However, the grind will become repetitive after a while, and you may need more clarification about things for which the game does not elaborate well.