[Bullet Club]

Descend into an underwater world to explore and discover in Endless Ocean Luminous, arriving only on Nintendo Switch May 2nd.

 

[Rock And Roll]

Actually the highlight of the show for me. Was not expecting a new Endless Ocean although I'm pretty sure I've begged for one before in previous direct threads. Gives me hope whenever Nintendo goes VR they'll continue the franchise.

 

[Grisham]

OpenCritic - 63 average - 21% recommended

Critic Reviews


Atomix - Alberto Desfassiaux - Spanish - 80 / 100

Endless Ocean Luminous is a great return to the cult series of the Wii. Arika presents just the type of experience that that fans have been waiting for almost 15 years.

CGMagazine - Jordan Biordi - 7 / 10

Endless Ocean Luminous occasionally has some interesting moments, but it squanders its potential with tedious gameplay and a boring sea.

COGconnected - James Paley - 60 / 100

This is a pretty simple game to break down. You're drifting through a beautiful ocean paradise, scanning marine life. Doing so teaches you more about them, and also saves the world. Getting to this story gets harder and harder as things progress. If you love the simple gameplay loop, you're in luck! There's so much of it to be had. But if this simple premise doesn't immediately appeal to you, then this game will disagree with you completely. For the ocean life lovers out there, Endless Ocean Luminous will be a peaceful meditation and an extensive learning experience. There just isn't a ton of gameplay to go along with it, is all.

Checkpoint Gaming - David McNamara - 7 / 10

A lo-fi ocean adventure for those in need of calm, monotonous focus, Endless Ocean: Luminous provides an experience that is entirely low stakes, low risk, and low reward. It's incredibly soothing to dive in and chase down a huge variety of aquatic creatures through the game's diverse, atmospheric marine environments, but anyone looking for a deeper narrative will be left high and dry. Check this out if you've got the funds and don't mind fumbling through a bit of jank to reach your zen state of mind.

Console Creatures - Bobby Pashalidis - Recommended

Endless Ocean Luminous will be a sleeper hit for the Nintendo Switch. It offers a relaxing but necessary break in this year's packed schedule as you explore an exciting underwater space filled with trinkets, sea life, and mysteries at your own pace.

Digital Trends - Giovanni Colantonio - 2.5 / 5

Endless Ocean: Luminous' calming ocean exploration and lovely multiplayer components wear thin due to slow progression hooks that turn every aspect of it into a long chore. With tons of features from previous installments missing, anyone who wants to see its miniscule story to its end will need to tread a lot of water to find the pearls.

Digitally Downloaded - Matt Sainsbury - 4.5 / 5

It's ironic given everything I have just written above that I would never be game to go scuba diving myself. I can be pretty severely risk averse, and just like bungie jumping, skydiving, and motorsports, I'm not going to be jumping into the ocean depths anytime soon. That just makes me appreciate Endless Ocean all the more. It's a chance to enjoy the qualities of scuba diving at their best (at least, as I imagine them to be), without having to actually put myself out there. This is a beautiful, serene and relaxing experience and I loved every second of it.

Digitec Magazine - Domagoj Belancic - German - 2 / 5

Apart from the poor story mode, Endless Ocean Luminous is a lot of fun for the first few hours of play. I am constantly rewarded with beautiful underwater worlds and exciting facts about various animal species. The game feels like a playable virtual aquarium.

The more I discover of the underwater world, the more tedious the experience becomes. The gameplay loop of Endless Ocean Luminous reveals itself to be simple and superficial, the rewards trivial and unsatisfying. The initial intrinsic motivation to learn more about the animal species of the Veiled Sea gives way to a purely extrinsically driven appeal that revolves solely around increasing levels and scores. Even the largely well-done online mode doesn't help much. It's a shame, because the game's fundamentals show a lot of potential.

GAMES.CH - Benjamin Braun - German - 70%

Endless Ocean Luminous is less a game than an experience. If you want to explore the diverse ocean life in a very relaxed manner, you might be strongly tied up to the atmosphere. But if you want to be challenged at least at a minimum level, this is nothing you need to play.

Geeks & Com - Anthony Gravel - French - 7 / 10

Endless Ocean Luminous is a deeply relaxing diving experience. The amount of research that went through the game is very impressive. However, the slow campaign progression and the lack of interactions with the creatures handicap the overall experience.

God is a Geek - Adam Cook - 8 / 10

Endless Ocean Luminous is a lovely adventure that lets you play your way, and rewards you with a relaxing feeling few games offer.

Hobby Consolas - Alberto Lloret - Spanish - 80 / 100

Endless Ocean Luminous isn't a game for everyone. The absence of action or challenge for the player, along with a calm pace of play, may not please all palates. But if you connect with its proposal, as it has happened to me, you will discover a unique game of its kind, with more than what it shows at first. And catch the beast.

IGN - Logan Plant - 4 / 10

Boring in multiplayer and frustrating alone, Endless Ocean Luminous is a tedious, aggravating slog that feels endless in all the wrong ways.

IGN Spain - Raquel Morales - Spanish - 7 / 10

Endless Ocean Luminous declines to be the definitive underwater experience on Switch with little variety in missions and a slow progression system.

Metro GameCentral - GameCentral - 5 / 10

As laidback and undemanding as the Wii originals but in the modern age it seems restrictive and repetitive in a way that's unnecessary and even patronising.

Nintendo Life - PJ O'Reilly - 5 / 10

Endless Ocean: Luminous attempts to revive a niche Wii franchise as an online exploration experience, and fails miserably in the process. In comparison to the likes of Subnautica, this is an empty, cold, and boring ocean space to explore, devoid of any real reason to play beyond its generally relaxing ambiance and the opportunity to learn some facts about underwater animals. Even taken on those terms, it's weak, its online play is basic and bland, and its story does little to engage beyond teaching you the ropes. It didn't need to be this boring, but it is.

Nintendo News - 6.5 / 10

As long as you don't approach it with a completionist mindset, Endless Ocean Luminous is a relaxing and overall fulfilling experience that is perfect for short solo gameplay sessions or group dives with friends. The limited variety in the procedurally generated maps means that the novelty of exploration will likely wear off for most long before they catalogue everything, and the story mode is disappointingly sparse and disjointed, but what it lacks in depth it more than makes up for in sheer volume of content. If you are looking to try something with a slightly different flow, this might just be worth diving into.

PCMag - Jordan Minor - 3 / 5

Endless Ocean Luminous offers pleasant deep sea exploration on Nintendo Switch, but the fish photography goes from soothing to boring far too often.

Press Start - Kieron Verbrugge - 6 / 10

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.

SECTOR.sk - Matúš Štrba - Slovak - 6.5 / 10

Endless Ocean Luminous is an enjoyable diving adventure in which you get to know many species of marine animals and the reason for their protection. However, the game quickly becomes stereotypical, and the story is incomprehensibly locked behind a series of generic and tediously repetitive quests outside of the story mode.

Shacknews - Ozzie Mejia - 7 / 10

While Endless Ocean Luminous feels limited as a single player game, it works far better as a communal activity. Whether it's with friends or random players, Luminous is at its best when there are more fish (figuratively and literally) in the sea. There are a few things that hold it back from being truly transcendent, like the limited ocean life animations and the story's overall structure, which is told through all-too-short individual chapters. With that said, Endless Ocean Luminous doesn't make a big splash, but it does feel like a relaxing swim.

Siliconera - Brent Koepp - 5 / 10

Endless Ocean Luminous promises a deep dive into a sea which ends up being shallow.

Spaziogames - Francesco Corica - Italian - 6.2 / 10

Endless Ocean Luminous is not a bad game per se, but not an excellent one either: you should enjoy it in small doses and, if possible, with the right companions.

The Games Machine - Danilo Dellafrana - Italian - 6.5 / 10

Endless Ocean Luminous is not the dream sequel I always hoped for to Arika's beloved submarine series. The change of direction has favoured the co-operative component, but has mutilated the original experience of many interesting and distinctive features. The purely educational aspect remains, and the possibility of organising dives together with such a large number of friends is not to be underestimated, but I wouldn't recommend the game to those who are only interested in reliving the fascinating sensations of the original chapters on Wii.

TheSixthAxis - Dominic Leighton - 5 / 10

Everything about Endless Ocean: Luminous makes it a particularly Nintendo game: the chunky menu layout, the soothing AI voice, the tranquil music and the laidback vibes. That's emphasised by the notion that this is a deeply unusual piece of software, and one that you wouldn't find coming from the other major console manufacturers. It's a shame then that, unless you're an avid fan of marine facts, it's interminably dull.

Twinfinite - Rowan Jones - 3 / 5

The lack of threat aside, Endless Ocean Luminous is pretty average. The graphics are fine, the mass multiplayer is cool, and the creatures are interesting. If you like to have a list to complete and a love of the ocean, then this game is perfect. If, however, you are looking for something that offers more than just a peaceful swim and a slow-moving story, then it may not be worth your time.

VGC - Chris Scullion - 3 / 5

Endless Ocean's procedural generation keeps its exploration engaging enough for a while, but its Story mode is poor. As long as you're willing to forgo plot (and any meaningful interaction with the species you encounter) in favour of exploring random underwater environments, there's still a good deal of fun to be had here.

Wccftech - Nathan Birch - 5.5 / 10

Endless Ocean Luminous offers some agreeable laid-back moments, but a lack of depth and complexity, even compared to the 15-year-old Wii entries in the series, waters down the game's appeal. Endless Ocean Luminous was always destined to be a niche product, but even the diehards may find the game's narrow focus on procedural generation and unexceptional online play over almost anything else a bit fishy.

 

[Rock And Roll]

I really don't think you can trust reviews on this game. The first two games were fantastic despite the reviewers complaining "its boring, there's no story, there's nothing to do" while at the same time fellating Animal Crossing for some bizarre reason.

I'll be getting it and if anyone on D Pad grabs a copy, I'm down to try out the multiplayer.

 

[Spiders]

I really don't think you can trust reviews on this game. The first two games were fantastic despite the reviewers complaining "its boring, there's no story, there's nothing to do" while at the same time fellating Animal Crossing for some bizarre reason.

I'll be getting it and if anyone on D Pad grabs a copy, I'm down to try out the multiplayer.

100%
I read some reviews, the complaints are like "story progression", "nothing to do", etc...

It's a fucking swimming game. You swim and chill the fuck out. I swear these people... reviewing games on a deadline is the dumbest fucking job in the world.

 

[Franky Family]

I really don't think you can trust reviews on this game. The first two games were fantastic despite the reviewers complaining "its boring, there's no story, there's nothing to do" while at the same time fellating Animal Crossing for some bizarre reason.

I'll be getting it and if anyone on D Pad grabs a copy, I'm down to try out the multiplayer.

This one is for those who love the ocean and oceanography. Not that they're similar, but remember Ecco the Dolphin on the Sega Genesis? There were also some really cool bass fishing and fishing games back in the day too. Endless Ocean Luminous is one of those rare ocean life games that come around once a generation or two. This game isn't for me, but I remember back in the day playing some games that sort of remind me of this. They're fine games to dabble in for short periods of time

- Jotaro Kujo

 

[teezzy]