Professional Fishing: Starter Kit Basic (DLC)

I've spent enough time with free-to-play sims to know the pattern: the base experience is designed to slow you down, and paid starter packs exist to skip the friction. Professional Fishing, developed by MasterCode and published by Ultimate Games S.A., launched in late 2018 as a free-to-play multiplayer fishing simulator. The Starter Kit Basic DLC is not a content expansion in the traditional sense. It is an onboarding accelerant for a game you can already download and play for nothing. The core game itself has genuine hooks worth discussing. Fish species like carp, perch, and catfish each have distinct behavior patterns, and the weather system is server-wide and shared, meaning everyone on your session deals with the same rain or fog at the same time. That dynamic weather layer actually has gameplay consequences: catfish tend to respond better at night, and carp reportedly bite more reliably during rain. Getting your head around those timing windows is where the early-game tension lives. Transportation across large open maps comes via ATV or purchasable pontoon boats, which means reaching good spots requires either in-game currency or time. The combat system when a fish is on the line varies by species, with some pulling hard and some running laterally, though early community feedback pointed to fighting mechanics feeling underdeveloped and gear durability eating into your resources faster than expected. The multiplayer structure includes PvP tournaments, co-op sessions, and a fishing club system. Player reviews from around launch noted that the ranking system progresses slowly and that VIP access opens all lakes too quickly, stripping some of the map exploration tension. Microtransactions are present and, by the usual community temperature reading for a free-to-play title, they are on the visible end of the spectrum. A Starter Kit DLC sits inside that ecosystem. Without knowing exactly what gear or currency it bundles, the honest framing is this: it lowers the paywall friction on a game where patience and investment are the two levers you are always managing. For the strategy-minded player assessing value here, the math question is straightforward. The base game is free. This DLC presumably front-loads some gear or resources that would otherwise take several hours of ranked progression to acquire. If you like the core loop after an hour of free play and want to skip the slow initial grind, a starter pack is a rational purchase. If you are not yet sure whether the casting mechanics and weather-based species timing hold your interest, playing the free base first costs you nothing and answers that question before you spend a cent. The game as a whole has an older community at this point, concurrent player counts are modest, and the franchise has since moved toward a sequel. Keep that ecosystem context in mind when weighing DLC value. Diego, Scout Team