Endless Ocean Luminous

This is a beautiful, serene and relaxing experience and I loved every second of it.

An accurate online multiplayer submarine exploration experience that focuses on discovering marine wildlife and relaxation. The loss in sound quality compared to its predecessors is evident, as is the increase in the amount of content available and a wealth of collectibles to keep you entertained for dozens of hours.

Endless Ocean is the granddaddy of the cozy game, and there are some great chilled experiences to be had here. Diving with a bunch of people, uncovering mysteries, plus cataloguing and photographing some of the ocean's cutest and most disgusting creatures is a lot of fun. However, the grating AI-voiced story and the near-essential requirement for online to get the most out of it goes against the chilled vibe for which the series is known. It is a game somewhat at odds with itself, but deep down, it is a relaxing, chilled experience one that you can share with massive group of people.

At the end of the day, if you're not playing Endless Ocean Luminous to look at and learn about oceanic creatures then you won't enjoy it as there is little else to it. While not necessarily a bad game, it becomes less and less fun the more you play it and I wouldn't exactly call that the hallmark of a good game either.

Endless Ocean Luminous is a mildly confounding product. On the one hand, it's still got that very compelling offering of hours spent drifting through gorgeous oceans and coming face-to-face with hundreds of stunning creatures, without complex mechanics or urgency to get in the way. On the other hand, the overall gameplay experience has been dulled down so much to feel like a backwards step, and the system of randomly-seeded dive spots dilutes a lot of its personality.

Oh dear, what happened there? Instead of a triumphant return for the series, Endless Ocean Luminous unfortunately is only a shadow of what made its predecessors so brilliant.

Endless Ocean: Luminous could have been a realistic SCUBA sim with all the treacherous hazards that real underwater divers need to consider, a relaxing chill-vibes game that's mostly about finding fish with your friends, or a story-driven game centered around discovering awesome and even extinct underwater beasts. It has pieces of all of those, but it doesn't commit to any of them. Instead, it takes the enormity and glory of earth's largest and most mysterious region and turns exploring it into a dull, repetitive chore.

Everything about this game makes you relax and enjoy, in a transcendental vibe. Not everyone is prepared for this in an era of souls like and similar games, if you are looking for frantic action, this is not your game. Enjoy the beautiful soundtrack, graphics and rich biome. Swimming has never been so enjoyable.

Todos miramos con nostalgia a Endless Ocean Luminous, que avivó las aguas con cada nuevo avance donde nos mostraban un océano infinito por descubrir. Con dos entregas a sus espaldas, esperaríamos una receta más refinada en cuanto a historia, exploración e interactividad pero este título de aventura irónicamente no toma la iniciativa de explorarse a sí mismo y sumergirse en lo desconocido para descubrir algo novedoso y atractivo. Hay que reconocer que tiene sus momentos -pasajeros- que los amantes del género de simuladores centrados en la exploración y contemplación podrían valorar. Pero los jugadores más interesados en la acción o la narrativa más espontánea podrían no encontrar en este título el atractivo suficiente para sumergirse en sus aguas.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

I played the Wii game endless ocean. This is not that game. I bought this because I liked the last one. This feels like an AI generator stole all the material from the wii game and threw it together. It feels like there were several teams working on this and the timeline hit and they were not done but they released it. Too much focus on multi-player mode think was the timesink. The narrative doesn't make sense. It refers to time when creatures come out but the game is stuck at noon. It talks about down drafts in the "story mode" there are no drafts at all in this game. SERA refers to things happening elsewhere out of context. Story mode is not story mode it's tutorial mode. You can't do really anything SERA keeps you on a tight leash and only let's you do the objective. Not like there is much in the level if you ignore her and try just swimming about. What is good. Group swim is great in that you only need to uncover 80 % of the map to see it all and you work with other gamers in a procedural generated map. Working together you can find special fish mark treasure abd cool fish. The graphics are nice. No oxygen limit. No hostile creatures. Really nothing can kill you. What needs fixed. Story, an actual story not a vague concept of inpending doom. Personally I like going places and having things change like the artic and being terrorized by the Greenland shark. (Wii game). I am not a fan of freshwater fish and salt water fish and extinct marine sea creatures all being on the same map. Also why do star of thorn starfish get to be "fish" but all the sponges and starfish are decoration. I like finding treasure but painting underwater was just weird. I would also be nice if I could change my avatar. Stickers can be added and templates changed but user is stuck with a masculine diver. I like the swimming part and I hope they will patch it. Particularly so I can complete the final "story mode".

As a huge fan of the previous games in the Endless Ocean series, I know with confidence that the developers of this game had the formula to make this a successful, long standing game that would attract both old and new players. However, they abandoned that formula entirely. Endless Ocean Luminous is missing some very essential features. As you’re swimming across the (mainly empty, lifeless ocean) you have many moments where you wonder, “what is this all for”? There are not enough incentives to continue scanning fish and exploring, other than some different colors for your equipment and some stickers. The environment becomes increasingly soulless and repetitive as you dive 3+ hours - soon enough you have already seen everything the game has to offer. One of the most frustrating removed features from the last Endless Ocean is the aquarium. This feature made you excited to scan fish because you could add your favorites to the aquarium and enjoy seeing them there. With the story mode lacking, and both the solo dives and multiplayer dives being extremely repetitive, this game just doesn’t have much to offer. I’m a huge fan of the series and really hope there’s another attempt to recreate the magic of the previous titles.