Analysis Review Endless Ocean Luminous | Review Thread

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Game Information

Game Title: Endless Ocean Luminous

Platforms:

• Nintendo Switch (May 2, 2024)

Trailer:

• Endless Ocean Luminous - Announcement Trailer - Nintendo Switch

Developer: Arika

Publisher: Nintendo

Review Aggregator:

OpenCritic - 65 average - 20% recommended

Metacritic - 65 average based on 37 Critic Reviews

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

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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.

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%

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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 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.

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.

PCMag - 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.

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.

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.