Endless Ocean Luminous Test – A dive that lacks depth

Test conditions: We played the title for around ten hours in solo multiplayer via a session organized by Nintendo. We also discovered most of the marine species of the title.

In troubled AI

Although exploring the seabed takes up a large part of your time in Endless Ocean Luminous, the game still includes a small narrative framework. You play the role of a novice diver within a research organization called “HQ”. Your essential mission is to explore the Veiled Sea and save the “sea tree”, a vital pillar of the local ecosystem. .

Furthermore, after discovering an ancestral tablet, you also embark on solving the 99 puzzles of the Veiled Sea. In this quest, you are supported by Daniel, an experienced but somewhat timid diver, and by OceanIA, an artificial intelligence which guides you through the new features of the game and gives you instructions for your missions.

Moreover, the AI ​​speaks French well, but its way of expressing itself is typically robotic, which can quickly become annoying. It would have been better to employ an experienced actress to simulate an AI voice, because this reading of lifeless texts really takes us out of the sonic immersion that the title manages to establish with its marine setting.

However, the biggest concern Endless Ocean Luminous is its gameplay loop which very quickly becomes repetitive. Concretely, you can dive solo on a randomly generated map and explore the seabed. Besides that, you have the story mode which is divided into different chapters (often very short and lasting no more than a few minutes) which you generally have to unlock by cataloging a certain number of species during your solo dives. This structure gives a fairly heavy rhythm which goes against this idea of ​​a relaxing game.

The sea of ​​all species

The title is mainly aimed at those who like to take their time and are curious to learn more about underwater species. Endless Ocean Luminous offers the possibility of discovering more than 500 forms of life, including some extinct or from legends. As a diver, your actions are limited to moving around, scanning creatures with the L trigger, and interacting with lost items to collect them. Here, no violence; we are not in Subnautica because even the most dangerous and voracious species will not attack you.

The game also includes an important educational component: each scanned marine animal provides you with a short description offering various information. However, if you are, like us, simply looking to collect all the fauna, the repetitiveness of the system quickly becomes obvious, especially as it struggles to renew itself. Ultimately, after a few solo dives, we find ourselves often found confronted with the same biomes and the same pieces of map.

It's a shame because the first hours of discovery are very pleasant. We wander the waters scanning fish and collecting treasures. Occasionally, we come across a mystery from the ancient tablet to solve, which involves, for example, bringing back a particular fish. Even if graphically the Switch is doing well, whether in docked mode or in portable mode, and the work of modeling hundreds of species is to be commended, the software is visually limited by a lack of variety in the settings and dynamic interactions with underwater fauna.

For a concept that focuses so much on relaxation and immersion, the rendering is sorely lacking in richness and detail. We would have hoped for more natural interactions in this underwater universe, like a whale feeding on fish or a sea urchin displaying its quills. The only notable interaction is the ability to recruit an animal to swim alongside you. One of the rare objectives that can keep you in suspense is the discovery of the CMI (Unknown Marine Creatures), but once again the title transforms into “grind cards” so that we can progress sufficiently.

More effective with several people

The experience is definitely better with others, but not necessarily for the right reasons. While it's fun to explore with friends and pin creatures with stickers so our companions can find them whenever they want, the reality is much more pragmatic. The main advantage of these group expeditions, which can have up to 30 participants, is the ability to cover a large territory quickly, with each player exploring a different area. In short, this mainly reduces the repetitiveness of the grind.

Apart from these underwater excursions, Endless Ocean Luminous does not offer other activities that could have given us a change of scenery. The system in place is limited to an experience mechanism that allows you to level up and earn money based on your discoveries when returning to the surface. Leveling up can, for example, allow you to recruit rarer species to swim alongside you, while money is used to acquire colors for your suit, stickers to customize it and emotes.