Endless Ocean Luminous Part 1 [No Commentary]

This part contains all of Chapter 1 including a solo free dive which is needed as we need to scan 500 fish for Chapter 2.
Endless Ocean Luminous is a game where you dive in the said "endless" ocean and swim with the various marine life, ranging from tiny fish to giant whales, from assumed extinct fish to even new ones not yet known to man. It's a casual relaxing game where you can go at your pace all while trying to figure out the 99 mysteries and not at all tedious tasks or gimmicks on a stone tablet you find. What happens if you solve them all? Who knows.
Feel free to watch on x2 speed or have it on in the background. All the fish information gets read out by Sera anyways.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Taken from the Wiki:
Endless Ocean Luminous is an adventure simulation game developed by Arika and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch. As the third game in the Endless Ocean series, Luminous marks the first installment since 2009's Endless Ocean 2: Adventures of the Deep for the Wii.
Similar to previous entries, the player takes the role of a scuba diver tasked with encountering and documenting marine life. Additionally, the game features online multiplayer that allows groups of up to 30 players to explore together. The game was announced in a February 2024 Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase and released on May 2, 2024.
Endless Ocean Luminous tasks the player with exploring the Veiled Sea, a fictional, unexplored region, in order to encounter and document marine life. The game itself has over 500 species to learn about, including creatures that are deemed mythical or extinct such as the Mosasaurus. Outside of marine life, the player can also explore underwater structures such as temples and shipwrecks. Luminous features a new mechanic for the series in which the region will change with each dive the player goes on.
Unlike the multiplayer modes in previous installments, the game allows groups of up to 30 online players to embark on dives together. Players in groups can share their findings and communicate between one another via emotes.

[@platyadmirer]

I've heard the game got a lot of bad reviews, how is your experience so far?

[@solidsnek4902]

At this time of writing this comment, I'm around 10 hours in.
Luminous is a perfectly serviceable Endless Ocean title. It's rough around the edges, literally as you can see where the certain procedural areas are set in like puzzle pieces, but overall if you likes the other Endless Ocean games or simply like a relaxing swimming game with 0 risk you should pick it up. 50 bucks is a lot for it, so I would recommend a sale.
I haven't messed with multiplayer, so I can't say anything about it. If you have friends or wanted to swim around with strangers, have at it. (Judging by the rankings for multiplayer, there's a bunch of try hards three days in at release speed running maps to be at the top of the leaderboards, so be wary of joining in on random dives where people might be speedrunning them). I don't think Endless Ocean needed multiplayer, but if you wanted it, it's there.
The story mode seems tacked on, but it short enough and gives you some lore about the Ocean and why are things how they are. It's a weak part sure, but it's fine.
There's a bunch of marine life to find, photo, and salvage to collect. It will be a pain to fully 100%, but if you want the challenge it's there. The mystery board challenges are things you randomly have to figure out, such as collecting certain salvage, doing certain tasks via the stone circles, etc. So far I'm around 1/4th done on that, but just like I said before, might be a pain to fully 100%.
The game does have event dives which at this point in time the first one hasn't started yet and how many total is yet to be known. Hopefully enough for a year plus or it'll loop around at some point.
I say overall the game is above average. If you liked the other ones, you should like this one. Might wait for a discount, but you should be content picking it up full price.

[@platyadmirer]

@@solidsnek4902 I got it at a $20 discount with my gamestop rewards so I'm pretty stoked about that 😁 it'll arrive in a few days. Thanks for the heads up about it! I bought it to have a relaxing mindless thing to do so I'm glad it sounds like it'll be a good fit

[@calwakerz]

AI voice? Hmm... How does it run?

[@solidsnek4902]

It's just the AI voice in-game. There are some words that it says that seems a little off if you hadn't read it/heard it before, but overall it's fine and serves its purpose.

[@calwakerz]

@@solidsnek4902 cool, but I meant how does the game runs on the switch? 😅

[@solidsnek4902]

Ah, my bad. The game runs well with only some slight slowdown if you scan a lot of fish, although the times that I've noticed it is very minimal. It does also slightly slow down/lag a little when you scroll down the list of scanned fish. Overall, it is perfectly playable with a slight fps drop.