It's extremely dissapointing comparing this game to Luminous, i genuinely don't know how they could have this garbage come out in 2024 when Blue World set up such a high standard.
I have complicated feelings about Luminous. I played Blue World for over 400 hours to 100% completion, and it's one of my favorite games of all time. Nothing in Luminous compares to the beauty of Blue World, and the way you have this island as a hub and can travel to all those different locations around the world. One of the biggest mistakes Luminous made, in my opinion, is that not only do you never go to anywhere outside the ocean, but you can't even surface to look above you. Because there's essentially nothing there. The map just stops after the region you were given to explore. Another huge mistake is the maps themselves - being "randomly generated", you never get the satisfaction of completing the map and getting to know it very well. They will give you regions within your 10x10 square of ocean which contain fresh water, cold water, deep water, or prehistoric water, but there's never anywhere you can go to select exactly what you want to swim in like in Blue World. And as for "randomly generated", it seems to be made up of 4x4 blocks that are always the same but in different places, with a central feature where whichever legendary creature you can find this time will show up. You can even get the same 4x4 block twice in the same map. And it just feels so inorganic, with the ocean floor being perfectly flat all the time and sharp, right-angled transitions between depths. I can't wait to go back to the second game and its charming, realistic maps. Another thing: the lack of humanity in Luminous is such a letdown. In both the original Endless Ocean and in Blue World, you get people to interact with: Katherine Sunday and people through your mail in the first game, and your whole team and other NPCs in the second game. But in the third game, not only is there just one other person you ever see (that being this faceless entity Daniel), not only is your main correspondent introducing herself as an AI (which I take huge issue with on principle), but you can't even see yourself at all! There is no character customization whatsoever, since you never get out of a diving suit which keeps your entire body covered. Yes, you can customize the color of the suit, but that does little to compensate for this soulless decision to remove all other human interaction from the game. Well, I guess that's not entirely true - you _can_ interact with other humans, but you have to pay for Switch online services to do so. Which I certainly won't be doing. The story, too, is so obviously a minimal part of the game. There is almost no substance to it, they make you explore and scan more fish (which in itself is incredibly tedious that you have to do that all the time) in order to progress, and I still haven't even been able to finish the story because it requires you to unlock all 99 mysteries before getting to the final chapter. The story should be the driving force of the game, and you shouldn't have to do a whole bunch of free exploration and discovery in order to unlock the next part of the story. Even the simplistic story in the first Endless Ocean was better than this, since you actually get to learn about Katherine and interact with her, rather than being told by a self-described AI some inconsequential drivel about a coral that you can somehow heal by scanning fish. The story in the second game absolutely crushes anything this game has to offer. And then there is just the sheer amount of things to do in the second game, and even the first game has Luminous beaten here. Since Luminous doesn't have a central hub like the first two games, you can't customize your experience at all. Luminous's version of the Gabbiano or Nineball Island is a menu screen which heavily promotes online play. In the second game, there are loads and loads of side quests to complete and collectibles to obtain. Even in the first game, you still have guided tours, photo requests, and dolphin training, although the second game improves on all of these, especially the dolphin training. But in the third game you just swim around and scan fish and find stuff and that's literally it. All there is to do is to find the 99 mysteries to complete the story, and unlike the second game, you don't get any hints or guidance on where any of those mysteries are. Not only that, but since the map changes every time, if you've known how to get a mystery in the past but, say, you didn't have the "dive capacity" to have a massive whale follow you, there's no way to have access to that mystery to complete it anymore aside from just exploring a bunch of random squares until you find one that has what you're looking for. It's maddening. In the first Endless Ocean, the in-game date is tracked, which I find very enjoyable. It's another way to add humanity to the game, and to remind you that this takes place on Earth, since different fish show up at different times of year, and some fish even have spawning events in certain months. They did away with that for the second game, which is one of the few things I miss from the first game. But in addition to this, the moon phase is also tracked in the first game, and you can check it in the second game by buying a telescope. Some things can only happen at night or only at a full moon, or only when it's raining - the environment is such a core aspect of the second game in particular, and seeing as you can't even go above the ocean in the third game, the environment is practically nonexistent, and when it does exist, it is actively annoying. This is because while you are in the ocean in the third game, a complete day-night cycle takes only 10 minutes and 6 seconds to complete. Further, the lighting in the ocean changes drastically and suddenly as the time of day changes, so that one minute it'll be bright blue, and then it will be slightly orange for evening for the next minute, and then it will quickly change to dark blue for night. This is jarring and the exact opposite of the first two games, where if you are in the ocean, the time slows down completely, giving the impression that you are suspended in time in the ocean. I really like this, because I imagine that's how it might feel in real life. In the first game, one day-night cycle lasts a full hour, which feels just right, and in the second game you can get the time to speed up if you train dolphins or sleep in your hammock, or else slow down if you relax in a chair. I have yet to determine exactly how much it speeds up or slows down, so that will be fun to figure out. Believe it or not, there are some things I like about Luminous! I really like, for example, how not each specimen of each species of fish looks exactly the same. There is a fair amount of size variation among individual members of each species, and you get medals depending on how big the fish you see are. This makes it feel much more realistic, at least in that one particular sense. I also really enjoy the expansion of the creature and salvage logs. Now there are 578 species to find, and over 300 individual salvages. I just wish you could see species on land too. The prehistoric sections are also a nice touch - maybe in an ideal Endless Ocean game, that could be confined to its own location, just like how cold and fresh water have their own locations. I also enjoy how you can dive not just with dolphins, but with any species that you want, as long as it isn't too big. And finding a huge river of magma in the bottom of a trench was a fun surprise. Which brings me to my last section here: what would I like to see in an ideal Endless Ocean game? I'll use the second game as a basis, because it is absolutely the best of the series. Take the second game, but add even more people and places to dive. Add the ability to have it rain and thunderstorm anywhere in the world, with appropriate frequency relative to the place that you're diving (e.g. a lot in the Amazon and in the South Pacific, occasionally in somewhere like Ciceros Strait, and not at all in the Arctic or Antarctic, replacing the rain with snow like in the second game). Keep track of the date in-game, and let us choose how fast the time passes, with the option to sync the in-game date and time to real-life date and time. Employ the creature discovery and salvage mechanics of the second game with the inventories of all three games combined. There would be even more animals to train, not just dolphins (and they'd look like typical members of their species, not every single partner being the odd one out like in the second game). We'd be able to salvage items on land as well as in the ocean. We would have more character customization options and clothes to buy with in-game currency, more quests and story to complete, and the characters would have even more depth and soul to them. And when you reach the endgame with nothing else to complete, the characters wouldn't repeat the same lines over and over like in the second game, but would have a unique line for every day of the year, like Katherine does in the first game. Of course there's more I would like to see, but it would probably fit better in a video than in a text post like this. Suffice it to say that I am disappointed in the new Endless Ocean game. The original is better, and the second is the gold standard of this series. I will continue playing the second game unless they somehow come out with something better.
Just looking back at this before my mom wants to get the wii again
It's extremely dissapointing comparing this game to Luminous, i genuinely don't know how they could have this garbage come out in 2024 when Blue World set up such a high standard.
I haven't played Luminous yet, but that sounds concerning, I was really looking forward to it.
How is it disappointing
I have complicated feelings about Luminous. I played Blue World for over 400 hours to 100% completion, and it's one of my favorite games of all time. Nothing in Luminous compares to the beauty of Blue World, and the way you have this island as a hub and can travel to all those different locations around the world.
One of the biggest mistakes Luminous made, in my opinion, is that not only do you never go to anywhere outside the ocean, but you can't even surface to look above you. Because there's essentially nothing there. The map just stops after the region you were given to explore. Another huge mistake is the maps themselves - being "randomly generated", you never get the satisfaction of completing the map and getting to know it very well. They will give you regions within your 10x10 square of ocean which contain fresh water, cold water, deep water, or prehistoric water, but there's never anywhere you can go to select exactly what you want to swim in like in Blue World. And as for "randomly generated", it seems to be made up of 4x4 blocks that are always the same but in different places, with a central feature where whichever legendary creature you can find this time will show up. You can even get the same 4x4 block twice in the same map. And it just feels so inorganic, with the ocean floor being perfectly flat all the time and sharp, right-angled transitions between depths. I can't wait to go back to the second game and its charming, realistic maps.
Another thing: the lack of humanity in Luminous is such a letdown. In both the original Endless Ocean and in Blue World, you get people to interact with: Katherine Sunday and people through your mail in the first game, and your whole team and other NPCs in the second game. But in the third game, not only is there just one other person you ever see (that being this faceless entity Daniel), not only is your main correspondent introducing herself as an AI (which I take huge issue with on principle), but you can't even see yourself at all! There is no character customization whatsoever, since you never get out of a diving suit which keeps your entire body covered. Yes, you can customize the color of the suit, but that does little to compensate for this soulless decision to remove all other human interaction from the game. Well, I guess that's not entirely true - you _can_ interact with other humans, but you have to pay for Switch online services to do so. Which I certainly won't be doing.
The story, too, is so obviously a minimal part of the game. There is almost no substance to it, they make you explore and scan more fish (which in itself is incredibly tedious that you have to do that all the time) in order to progress, and I still haven't even been able to finish the story because it requires you to unlock all 99 mysteries before getting to the final chapter. The story should be the driving force of the game, and you shouldn't have to do a whole bunch of free exploration and discovery in order to unlock the next part of the story. Even the simplistic story in the first Endless Ocean was better than this, since you actually get to learn about Katherine and interact with her, rather than being told by a self-described AI some inconsequential drivel about a coral that you can somehow heal by scanning fish. The story in the second game absolutely crushes anything this game has to offer.
And then there is just the sheer amount of things to do in the second game, and even the first game has Luminous beaten here. Since Luminous doesn't have a central hub like the first two games, you can't customize your experience at all. Luminous's version of the Gabbiano or Nineball Island is a menu screen which heavily promotes online play. In the second game, there are loads and loads of side quests to complete and collectibles to obtain. Even in the first game, you still have guided tours, photo requests, and dolphin training, although the second game improves on all of these, especially the dolphin training. But in the third game you just swim around and scan fish and find stuff and that's literally it. All there is to do is to find the 99 mysteries to complete the story, and unlike the second game, you don't get any hints or guidance on where any of those mysteries are. Not only that, but since the map changes every time, if you've known how to get a mystery in the past but, say, you didn't have the "dive capacity" to have a massive whale follow you, there's no way to have access to that mystery to complete it anymore aside from just exploring a bunch of random squares until you find one that has what you're looking for. It's maddening.
In the first Endless Ocean, the in-game date is tracked, which I find very enjoyable. It's another way to add humanity to the game, and to remind you that this takes place on Earth, since different fish show up at different times of year, and some fish even have spawning events in certain months. They did away with that for the second game, which is one of the few things I miss from the first game. But in addition to this, the moon phase is also tracked in the first game, and you can check it in the second game by buying a telescope. Some things can only happen at night or only at a full moon, or only when it's raining - the environment is such a core aspect of the second game in particular, and seeing as you can't even go above the ocean in the third game, the environment is practically nonexistent, and when it does exist, it is actively annoying. This is because while you are in the ocean in the third game, a complete day-night cycle takes only 10 minutes and 6 seconds to complete. Further, the lighting in the ocean changes drastically and suddenly as the time of day changes, so that one minute it'll be bright blue, and then it will be slightly orange for evening for the next minute, and then it will quickly change to dark blue for night. This is jarring and the exact opposite of the first two games, where if you are in the ocean, the time slows down completely, giving the impression that you are suspended in time in the ocean. I really like this, because I imagine that's how it might feel in real life. In the first game, one day-night cycle lasts a full hour, which feels just right, and in the second game you can get the time to speed up if you train dolphins or sleep in your hammock, or else slow down if you relax in a chair. I have yet to determine exactly how much it speeds up or slows down, so that will be fun to figure out.
Believe it or not, there are some things I like about Luminous! I really like, for example, how not each specimen of each species of fish looks exactly the same. There is a fair amount of size variation among individual members of each species, and you get medals depending on how big the fish you see are. This makes it feel much more realistic, at least in that one particular sense. I also really enjoy the expansion of the creature and salvage logs. Now there are 578 species to find, and over 300 individual salvages. I just wish you could see species on land too. The prehistoric sections are also a nice touch - maybe in an ideal Endless Ocean game, that could be confined to its own location, just like how cold and fresh water have their own locations. I also enjoy how you can dive not just with dolphins, but with any species that you want, as long as it isn't too big. And finding a huge river of magma in the bottom of a trench was a fun surprise.
Which brings me to my last section here: what would I like to see in an ideal Endless Ocean game? I'll use the second game as a basis, because it is absolutely the best of the series. Take the second game, but add even more people and places to dive. Add the ability to have it rain and thunderstorm anywhere in the world, with appropriate frequency relative to the place that you're diving (e.g. a lot in the Amazon and in the South Pacific, occasionally in somewhere like Ciceros Strait, and not at all in the Arctic or Antarctic, replacing the rain with snow like in the second game). Keep track of the date in-game, and let us choose how fast the time passes, with the option to sync the in-game date and time to real-life date and time. Employ the creature discovery and salvage mechanics of the second game with the inventories of all three games combined. There would be even more animals to train, not just dolphins (and they'd look like typical members of their species, not every single partner being the odd one out like in the second game). We'd be able to salvage items on land as well as in the ocean. We would have more character customization options and clothes to buy with in-game currency, more quests and story to complete, and the characters would have even more depth and soul to them. And when you reach the endgame with nothing else to complete, the characters wouldn't repeat the same lines over and over like in the second game, but would have a unique line for every day of the year, like Katherine does in the first game. Of course there's more I would like to see, but it would probably fit better in a video than in a text post like this.
Suffice it to say that I am disappointed in the new Endless Ocean game. The original is better, and the second is the gold standard of this series. I will continue playing the second game unless they somehow come out with something better.
@@HealingVoice39it’s dog shit