That wasn't my first choice of topic title, my first choice was "Fishing Mini games Suck" but this is 'the place to talk about your
favorite games', after all, so I'll try to keep it positive
Well that rather showed my hand in regards to where I stand on this, so let's get down to it: Fishing mini games appear in a lot of different franchises, and most of them are terrible. If I were to rate them, my algorithm would be some function of how fun fishing is, and how necessary the materials obtained from it are to core game play. I'm also only taking into account games that I remember I've played.
With that in mind, let's go to the bottom most fish-inclusive game, a rather familiar one. Minecraft! Fishing in this game is indisputably bad; as evidence, I submit the AFK fish farm, a device created entirely so you could get the desire rewards from fishing without ever actually dealing with fishing. Another runner up for worst in my book is Rune Factory, where fishing is a matter of staring at a screen, waiting for a button prompt. These are examples of the really dull approach to fishing, where I could go outside, sit at an actual lake with a real lure on a physical pole, not catch a single thing, and still feel more fulfilled than catching a stack of pufferfish.
A slight improvement was made in later Rune Factory games, where you could actually see the shadows of fish and try to cast near them to grab their attention. The Monster Hunter franchise takes this a step further by being able to identify the fish swimming around, and decide if it's worth fishing them out (as an aside, fishing in Monster Hunter serves as a nice counter balance to the action-focused game play).
Stardew Valley took the Rune Factory/Harvest Moon style of fishing and improved it vastly by requiring a modicum of skill to succeed in fishing, making it something akin to an actual 'mini game'. However, one game went further in making virtual fishing actually
fun, that being Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. Fishing in PH required chasing fish across the sea, casting and going through touchscreen actions of reeling them in. It was also totally optional, making it the best waste of time in the world of virtual fishing.
Oh yeah, forgot about the Wii fishing game, whatever it was called. Probably had some odd controls, so it has that going for it. Eh.
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