Endless Ocean Luminous review: A whale-come return shore to please fans

• Price: $49.99 | £39.99
• Developer: Nintendo
• Release Date: May 2nd, 2024 
• Platforms: Nintendo Switch

HD stands for hundreds of dolphins

A diving simulator all about discovering fish and saving the sea, Endless Ocean doesn’t bother with anything like breath meters or damage. Your diver can’t get crushed by the immense pressure of the ocean should they plumb the very bottom of the sea, and no need to worry about the bends upon resurfacing. 

Just keep swimming, there’s no worry here, and not even the grizzliest great white shark will bother to so much as nibble at you, even if you waved a flipper in their mouth. 

The latest game comes from publisher Nintendo, and returning developer Arika, who have delivered some outstanding games in the intervening years since the last entry. 

Endless Ocean might not seem like the ideal candidate for a multiplayer makeover, but looking at Arika’s library of work instills confidence in the idea. The studio is responsible for outstanding online titles like Tetris 99, Super Mario Bros. 35, and even some supplemental work on Tekken 7 and Tekken 8 alongside Bandai Namco. 

Now, thanks to fifteen years of technological advancements, and the wonderful portable nature of the Nintendo Switch, it’s hard to describe how immersed I have become in Endless Ocean Luminous. I’ve always been a wannabe marine biologist, and the original titles came out in prime gaming years for me as a teenager. 

The main gameplay loop here consists of exploring the ocean and scanning fish, upon which you’re rewarded with luminous energy that all works as XP to improve your rank. As well as fishy friends, the ocean is home to treasure, which you can salvage as you explore to earn currency.

It’s intoxicating to spend hours just exploring the ocean and learning more about the over 500 sea creatures waiting to be discovered, in the ever-changing procedurally generated maps of Endless Ocean Luminous. It’s all brought to life like never before thanks to a larger, more topographically varied map, as well as impressive attention to visual detail and a realistic ocean atmosphere. 

If you’re buying Endless Ocean Luminous simply to explore the sea and find new fish pals, you’re going to have an amazing time. The title excels in this capacity, and both the number of fish, as well as the music and visuals surrounding them, help to wash away the hours as you plunge further into the murky depths. 

Nintendo

As gentle sounds of waves wash over you, the distant call of a whale can send a shiver down your spine, as the creatures swiftly power past you with a fantastic sense of both scale and splendor. Similarly, the very depths of the ocean are accompanied by an eerie stillness that better reflects the pitch black of those forgotten corners, which makes stumbling across something as alien and interesting as the colossal squid an unforgettable experience. 

Even less spectacular moments are given an appropriate chance to shine, as the changing day brings with it a subtle change in lighting, veering between gorgeous sunny rays to even the fleeting dance of the northern lights. A sumptuous and understated piano score meant that finding areas teeming with life such as the colorful coral patches was just as emotional as bumping into a whale shark. 

You can even bring along a sea creature, as scanning any fish gives you the option to briefly add it to your party. While you start out with the capacity to bring along a minor minnow, eventually after ranking up you can have even a monumental mammal like a blue whale as your dive buddy, where even other players online can scan your impressive find. When Endless Ocean Luminous works, it really really works.

Lacking a sense of porpoise

Nintendo

Now just exploring the ocean would understandably be fun for a while, but there are also plenty of other things to discover and unlock. Players hoping to get hours of gameplay can look forward to filling their logs, both with the hundreds of fish ready to find (even with the option of a custom photo for each one) and an extensive Salvage Log to keep track of all your plunder. 

Outside of just looking at your treasure, there is a point to finding loot. It earns you coins which can be spent on new cosmetic items like colorways for your suit, emotes, and even stickers. While you start out with a small selection, you can unlock more by improving your rank and earning in-game achievements, though they must all eventually be bought with the main currency. 

Sadly, the amount of work needed to earn this currency is ludicrous in single-player, and even simple colors for your suit and stickers of fish can cost around 50,000 coins to unlock.

Similarly, Endless Ocean Luminous has a main story mode that slowly reveals a narrative about saving the World Coral, as well as uncovering the 99 mysteries of the ocean floor. 

This is a great idea, but instead of being able to move from chapter to chapter, these are locked behind how many fish you have scanned. Once you start getting through the first few missions, it is then necessary to have scanned around 8,000 to 10,000 fish just to unlock some of the later story missions. 

Nintendo

Plus, these story missions are minutes of gameplay at best, just an excuse to hang the narrative of the game on some quick gameplay, with some even passing by with barely a moment of actual scanning of the fish or underwater exploration. You and another voiceless diver are tasked with saving the ocean, but the only voice you ever hear is the monotone musings of an onboard AI called Sera, who seems to be uncredited with a voice actress, and seemingly is just a text-to-speech voice-generated character. 

Thankfully the many mysteries of the ocean add a lot to do, and they are genuinely rewarding to find. A yellow marker flashes when you are near treasure or a point of interest, and you can use the game’s stickers to place a marker that appears on the map for both you and other players when online. However, while some of these stickers are very helpful for marking certain things they are once again prohibitively expensive. 

I’ve played for well over a dozen hours and have barely unlocked more than a handful of cosmetic options, and can afford about three stickers. Frankly, I wish these cosmetic items and stickers were also able to be discovered on the ocean floor to further incentivize exploration and encourage finding them, while patient players could then use the currency to buy exactly the sticker or flipper color they want. It would also be nice to actually use our treasure to decorate a boat or island, much like in Endless Ocean 2, but instead treasure just fills out the log.

Finally, the game also occasionally has you scanning certain fish with unusual biometric patterns. There will be seven fish in total that are behaving strangely, and if you can find and scan all of them, you may earn the chance to encounter an ancient or mythical fish to fill your creature log. These moments are magical, but finding the seven fish in solo dives is a painstaking exercise, as you meander around a huge ocean map, waiting for the subtle pulse of the Joy-Con to finally indicate you are near to one of the seven fish. It’s tedious but solved in the much-improved multiplayer.

Sea kelp from pals in multiplayer

Nintendo

Everything about Endless Ocean Luminous makes so much more sense when playing online. Set up a dive with up to 30 players online, and you and your pals are thrown into different corners of a procedurally generated map. If you love one in particular, you can even share the dive ID with other friends so they can explore the same area. 

If you get close enough to another player, proximity enables an icon for them on your map, and as well as being able to wave or taunt them with emotes, tag treasure with markers, you can also show off your underwater finds thanks to the fish in your party. 

Plus, players share their rewards, so what was a meager payout in single-player suddenly becomes a bountiful haul of luminous energy to rank up treasure, and in-game currency. This is fantastic, but currently feels so heavily weighted towards multiplayer as to almost make single-player feel like a waste of the user’s time. 

Nintendo

The game comes alive in multiplayer, becoming an almost Monster Hunter-esque hunt for rare fish and the opportunity to get the best photo, plus there are leaderboards to show off your rank and your treasure-hunting achievements. I do wish for a couple more features, as while I know the Switch isn’t meant for it, a proximity chat like Sea of Thieves would be incredible here. 

Plus, I’d love the chance to share photos online for leaderboards, as I’m pretty proud of some of my underwater shots, with little thanks to the barebones photo mode that has nothing more than a few filters, a selfie mode, and the ability to zoom in and out. 

Still, after getting a taster of the online, I cannot wait to return to Endless Ocean Luminous with some friends and do it all over again. I’d recommend most players play the title almost entirely in multiplayer, as it enhances the experience in both gameplay and in your rewards. 

Nintendo has promised some upcoming event dives which will have special conditions and sea life for players to explore, so I hope to see a season of content added to further bolster the fantastic multiplayer. It just feels like a shame that this all seems to have been done at the expense of a rewarding single-player experience.

Verdict – 3/5

Endless Ocean Luminous is a beautiful immersive experience that occasionally struggles to be a videogame. The ocean and hundreds of creatures have been recreated in painstaking and loving detail, making this a must for anyone with even a passing interest in marine biology. 

The jump to HD, alongside some gorgeous models full of character, means that this is an ocean teeming with gorgeous ocean life, and it’s a blast to simply exist in this space. From the subtle sounds of waves sloshing over you, to the fantastic score that always seems to find the perfect moment to begin, I’ve had some amazing moments exploring. 

I just hope that the tedious story mode and unforgiving approach to unlocking cosmetics gets an overhaul, as while it’s easier to unlock things in the fin-tastic multiplayer mode, the shallow offerings mean there is little to keep solo players engaged after the first few hours unless they’re seriously obsessed with marine facts.

Reviewed on Nintendo Switch

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