Review: Endless Ocean Luminous is certainly an endless experience, but I’m still waiting for anything illuminating

When I first saw Endless Ocean Luminous, I was taken in by the idea of getting to explore treasures on the ocean floor and catalog new fish. I admit that it looked a little more on the simple side, but I expected… better.

As you can tell by the title, it’s no secret that Endless Ocean Luminous just didn’t deliver. So, let’s go ahead and get into that. 

Endless Ocean Luminous

The idea of Endless Ocean Luminous is that you’re a new recruit working with a team that is exploring the Veiled Sea, a previously unexplored portion of the ocean. Upon booting into the game, you have a few options available to you such as solo dives, story, events, and multiplayer. 

To be honest, I didn’t expect the story campaign to basically be the tutorial mode. And since it is just a glorified tutorial, it’s odd that some of the “chapters” are locked behind rank levels.

As far as tutorials go, it’s fine, but annoyingly on the rails. The most frustrating bit is when you see creatures that you don’t have cataloged yet and usually never get to analyze them in that section. 

In the whole game, you only ever encounter one human character who never gets a voice and one AI character who is the only voice that guides you through what you need to do. There are no voice actors used at all in this game. I think Covid was cited as one of the bigger issues for this, but as a Nintendo title, I’m disappointed that they couldn’t muster one authentic voice. 

As far as using AI voice for an AI program… I guess that’s the only time it should be used, but it made the big, wide-open ocean feel that much more huge without a “real” person on the other end. 

You’re taken through a series of situations where you find items on the sea floor, register fish, and even encounter mythic fish. But, the whole experience is really missing something. The most interesting thing that ever happened was purely fear-based driven on my part. 

I’m afraid of sharks but in a fear junkie sort of way. I love shark movies, but if you drop me in a game with sharks, I just might cry. Additionally, there’s nothing more creepy than sunken ships. So, coming across the Thanatos – a giant, mythic shark with scars all over it – or the one sunken ship I found was about as interesting as it got. 

If the most interesting part of your game is the shark that doesn’t attack, then you probably did it wrong.

There was, also, a large hole in the ocean floor that swimming down into was freaky, but mostly because there was another Thanatos down there. Otherwise, it was filled to the brim with pre-historic creatures and while it was cool, it was short-lived.

While it seems like there are various seeds for this game, your main game is only ever one map. (Seeds are procedurally generated.) For some reason, I figured that there would be a few different places to dive. You can find your world in the solo dives and let it randomly generate. Or, you could input a seed code if there’s one that you’re interested in. 

Once you’re off the tracks, it’s literally just swimming. You’re given a huge expanse of ocean and all you do is swim in it. Sometimes you’ll encounter shiny things on the sea floor. But, you’re mostly looking at all of the aquatic life – most of them real, but some of them rare or mythic. 

Here’s where things get exceptionally annoying. Not only are you trying to find unique fish, but you want to make sure you scan every single fish regardless of whether you’ve already cataloged it or not. Every fish has a light around it and by scanning them, you absorb that light and it helps to rank you up. 

There is some bigger story here about World Coral that you see briefly in the tutorial and the light is supposed to help keep that alive, but you can’t freely access this area. I believe it’s an end-game goal and I never got that far. 

Personally, I think that the experience could have been improved so much by simply letting us continuously scan our area. You have to hit the left-top trigger button to scan, but it will only do it for about 5 seconds. And while you’re scanning, your cursor has to physically hover over something to catch it. 

When that scan is done, the whole camera angle will zoom in on the last fish you scanned. Every. Single. Time. It’s so jarring and annoying. Not only that but just because you scan a fish doesn’t mean you’ve cataloged it. 

Scanning, scanning… no signs of life found.

There will be times when you’ve scanned 20+ fish and they will all be listed and they’re not in any special order. So, you’ll have to scroll down to make sure there isn’t a fish entry that’s simply a question mark. You have to actually click on the question mark to “discover” a fish type. 

Overall, this part is clunky and the worst part of the whole thing. So… ya know, the whole game. 

The first time I played, I sunk about 2 hours in and barely scratched the surface of the map. So, there’s a point in its favor for that. However, it killed my thumb. Not only do you have to push the left stick consistently, but because you’re also constantly scanning on the left side, it puts more strain on your thumb than a normal game would. 

While you’re scanning, you’ll find some hidden things that contribute to a tablet you found in the tutorial called “99 Mysteries.” They show up like any treasure on the seafloor as just a glimmer and don’t do anything. (Though, they might at the end.)

You’ll also find large stone circles randomly throughout that bid you to swim over them with various animals. I’ll be honest, I never bothered. I was too busy trying to absorb all the light. 

I wish I could tell you that there’s more, but that’s it. Find treasure and find light until everything is cataloged. 

Your AI companion will pop in every so often with tasks that help break up the monotony, but they’re smaller tasks and ultimately didn’t feel like they were injecting any freshness into the stale gameplay. 

I mentioned that there are multiplayer options, but I don’t have Nintendo Switch Online, so I wasn’t able to do anything with that. I was lucky to start the game while an event was going on, but oops, that needs Nintendo Switch Online as well. So, I can’t comment on that either. 

I wonder if the good parts of the game are locked behind the online paywall.

Nintendo does offer a free 7-day trial on Nintendo Switch Online through this game, but it just feels like throwing a deflated safety tube out and hoping you won’t notice.

Outside of this, there are some cosmetic things that you can do to change how your diving suit looks with different colors or logos. There are, also, poses you can unlock. But, that’s about it. 

Endless Ocean Luminous is filled with over 500 fish, but it still felt empty and lifeless. 

From what I understand, this is the third title in this series and while I haven’t played the others, I’m told they’re vastly better. So, if you want to explore the ocean, I suggest one of those titles, but they are on the Wii. Or look for indie games that will certainly put a lot more heart and spirit into the game. 

I don’t recommend Endless Ocean Luminous, especially at the AAA title price point of $49.99. Nintendo dropped the ball on this one and it sank down into the uncharted depths. 

If you want to check out a game we actually enjoyed, you can explore a mysterious mansion filled with flower puzzles in our Botany Manor review.