Blair Loveday
When I saw the trailer for Endless Ocean Luminous I was sold.
A chill game checking out sea life, scanning and exploring? I am in.
It’s not the first game to do it, and it’s a consistently fun way to chill when you need to turn your brain off. Unfortunately, it just didn’t live up to what I was hoping for.
The story mode kicks off with you exploring a mysterious place called the Veiled Sea. You learn the ropes in some short missions as you can scan some wildlife and find the mysterious artefacts of an ancient civilisation. Here we encounter a rare and dangerous creature. Immediately I was intrigued by this. Then it all came to a grinding halt, as to continue the story I needed to scan 500 fish. I went back through the story levels scanning everything I could find.
It turns out, I needed to jump into a solo dive to scan enough fish. I did a couple of free dives, smoked through the 500 requirement and I was on my way. After some more time in story mode, it was time to freedive some more to keep progressing.
The stop start nature of this drove me insane. The story mode is okay and just intriguing enough, but having to stop, go play another mode for a bit, to come back, it just killed any momentum and I really had to force myself to care.
Outside of the stop / start story mode, there is the aforementioned solo dive option, where you can go into a random area, swim around, and scan fish and artefacts. There are some neat interactions here like certain fish only coming out at night, and some great varied environments to swim around, through, and under.
I actually really liked being able to turn my brain off and venture around scanning stuff. There is some added variety here as well with shared dive and event dive options, but I can’t imagine caring enough to want to do more than a few minutes of these.
The gameplay is super simple and chill, you can swim around, swim faster around, and scan to your heart’s content.
Unscanned fish glow until you scan them, and scanning them brings up a list of the fish in your diving area to see how much more you can find. It’s perfectly fine. The detail in the game is also, well, fine. It looks good enough but not amazing.
I have tried this game on different days, on when I have been in different moods, because I really felt like I was missing something. Ultimately though, it’s just kind of okay. The story mode really holds it back and the areas you can explore aren’t that big. Skip the story mode and you have a perfectly alright way to kill some time here.
Is it enough to recommend though? Nope.
Released: May 2024
Rating: G
Platform reviewed: Nintendo Switch
Genre: Adventure
Developer: Arika
Publisher: Nintendo