Endless Ocean Luminous just dropped on Nintendo Switch so take a deep breath and plunge into the Veiled Sea, an unexplored region with discoveries that change with each dive.
Your goal is to encounter and learn about over 500 species of marine life – some of which are presumed extinct, or even mythical!
The game also boasts the ability to explore together in shared expeditions of up to 30 players online.
You can either join a shared expedition of up to 10 players with random matchmaking or up to 30 players using a session ID. Unfortunately, as its on Nintendo there is a limit to communication. There’s no in-game voice chat at all, so you must rely on using friendly gestures to communicate with other divers. This might seem frustrating, but it’s actually even closer to real diving.
Players start the 60-minute expedition in different quadrants of the map. Swim around and meet up with your fellow explorers to become “sharers”, which allows you to locate and fast travel to each other on the map.
The multiplayer is actually the most fun way to play the game as you tag creatures and salvage to track their locations so that other divers who are sharing with you can see on the map.
As a person who has grown up with Asthma diving has been something I’ve wanted to be interested in but unfortunately won’t be able to experience. I have used the meta quest apps to experience it in VR which is really great and to have something like this on the Nintendo Switch is good as a casual game.
However, its laid-back attitude is a bit lost on me. On one hand there’s a “gotta catch em all” attitude, but having it paired with a real “whenever you get around to it” urgency leaves me unmotivated.
That said, there was a lot of excitement around this release and mainly from people who had played one of the previous incarnations of the series. So, if you enjoyed the previous Endless Oceans titles, you’ll absolutely like this one, but if you like higher energy games, Endless Ocean Luminous might be so relaxed that you’ll actually get bored very quickly.
Endless Oceans earns a 6 out of 10, not bad, just not enough to keep me entertained for long. This is what is great about video games, there’s a game for everyone.
