Limitless Ocean Luminous is an empty underwater world

Endless Ocean is again with Limitless Ocean Luminous, however as a substitute of being a real sequel to Endless Oceans 2: Adventures of the Deep, it’s extra of a delicate reboot of the primary recreation’s idea, mixed with on-line options from the second recreation.

In case you’re seeking to leisurely swim round an ocean with your pals, then that is the sport for you, however if you need an undersea journey, I’m unhappy to say the story right here is extraordinarily underdeveloped.

However we’ll get to that later. For now, let’s begin with how developer Arika has put collectively this undersea world.

The Veiled Sea

The primary recreation world in Limitless Ocean Luminous is known as the Veiled Sea. The sunshine is delicate right here and retains all the ocean creatures in a relaxed state, so that you don’t want to fret about aggressive sharks like in Limitless Ocean 2. There are additionally totally different elements of the ocean, together with recent, brackish and salt water, permitting intrepid divers to find all method of fish.

Whenever you load into the ocean on a solo or on-line dive, the sport generates a brand new space so that you can discover. You’ll be able to return to the identical locations you’ve already been, however at its core, that is random and shakes up every dive with new areas. By my third world, I spawned in a cave community, and it was actually enjoyable discovering my manner out to the open areas of that map.

Nonetheless, my first two maps had been far much less pleasurable and the primary felt fairly empty. It took me a number of hours to stumble throughout my first attention-grabbing underwater location. Earlier than that, there was a number of swimming over similar-looking coral reefs, sand and caves.

All that being stated, the fish fashions look respectable at a distance and also you get a fantastic sense of the look and scale of every creature. What would have been icing on the cake would have been some type of fish AI that might permit them to react to the diver. As an alternative, you’ll be able to swim proper via sure colleges of fish, which breaks the immersion barely.

You’ll be able to scan the fish to get a better look and catalogue new species you uncover. Limitless Ocean Luminous has a ton of various varieties, even ranging as out-there as prehistoric creatures. Scanning fish can be the way you get ‘gentle factors’ to degree up. Nonetheless, it solely provides you factors if you scan a fish for the primary time. In case you circle again and rescan it by chance, you gained’t get any factors.

Some fish you scan can even have a glitch impact on them that can set off you to seek out extra glitched fish. In case you discover seven of those, it leads you in the direction of a brilliant uncommon UML, which stands for Distinctive Marine Life. There may be one UML per map, so that you’ll want to seek out these glitched fish to find all the pieces within the space you’re diving in.

As you’re in search of fish, you’ll additionally uncover hidden treasures. For probably the most half, these appear to be small sparkles and air bubbles that you simply click on on to disclose a trinket. A few of these are collectibles, whereas others simply rely towards your salvage rating on the finish of your dive. As you’re swimming, you’ll additionally see a small yellow indicator gentle flash within the high proper beside the map. It does this if you’re close to a hidden treasure and factors in the direction of it. This makes exploring underwater extra leisurely and fewer purposeful because you simply come across treasures as a substitute of actively in search of locations the place they may be hidden.

The story

That is the a part of the sport that permit me down probably the most. Coming from the globe-trotting thriller journey underpinning Limitless Ocean 2 shouldn’t be nice for Luminous. The story opens with chapter one, which is sensible, however then that chapter is damaged into 5 sublevels. After which, if you play them, each is definitely a extremely brief tutorial that’s lower than 5 minutes lengthy. Simply swim from level A to B, and also you’re achieved. Scan this fish, achieved. Subsequent, sort stuff. It appears like these brief tutorials might have been written into one longer degree that taught gamers all of the fundamentals directly.

If for some motive you’re like me and resolve to maintain pushing via the story after the extraordinarily boring tutorial, you’ll in a short time be greeted by the sport’s fish-scanning degree gates. To get to chapter two, you might want to scan 500 fish. Chapter 2-1 is one other 500, and it simply goes up from there. I’ve unlocked 4 ranges previous the tutorial and to get the fifth, I have to scan 1,300 fish. Now, you may be asking your self, “Is that onerous?” And the reply is not any; it’s simply extremely tedious and takes hours.

And now you may be saying, “However are the story missions enjoyable not less than to make up for it?” The reply once more is a powerful “no.”

Previous the tutorial, many of the missions are simply exposition cutscenes. Even those with gameplay aren’t a lot better. One of many story missions that had some gameplay was simply ‘scan 10 starfish on this space.’ Typically, ranges really feel barely related.

Talking of exposition, 90 p.c of it comes out of your AI companion Sera. It makes use of an previous text-to-speech mannequin, so it feels like a speaking laptop, which is type of annoying, however it will get downright aggravating when you understand there isn’t a different performing on this story. As an alternative, Daniel, the one human character, simply grunts and textual content packing containers seem when he’s speaking. There wasn’t voice performing within the final two Limitless Ocean video games, both, however what they did characteristic was a full forged of quirky, enjoyable characters that felt alive. Sadly, can’t say the identical for Sera and Daniel in Limitless Ocean Luminous.

Maybe there’s one thing attention-grabbing buried on the coronary heart of Limitless Ocean Luminous, however I don’t really feel a motive to maintain pushing ahead and I anticipate most individuals to really feel the identical until they actually love swimming or fish. If you wish to study fish, that is the sport for you – it actually may be rewarding at instances. However even that feels stunted when all you get is a brief paragraph telling you roughly three random details concerning the creature. Together with extra data just like the fish’s real-world location, lifespan, weight loss program and different details would have been good.

There’s additionally a web based part to Limitless Ocean Luminous, however I used to be unable to check it previous to launch. Utilizing the sport as a chill spot to swim and hang around with mates sounds prefer it may very well be enjoyable, however with how little else there may be right here, even that could be a robust promote.

Limitless Ocean Luminous releases on May 2nd for $64.99.

Picture credit score: Nintendo