Endless Ocean: Luminous is fucking slop. I pirated it to see if was worth paying $50 for and it is not. Thank you, and good night.

Luminous does a good job making you feel a sense of wonder sometimes, but the Switch is so old that the graphics do not compel, and the gameplay does not compel. The game is at it's best when you're in a fugue state with no neural activity in your brain and your eyes are blurred out of focus and your brain tells you a sweet little lie that you're immersed in something. The reality is nothing is happening, and you will not remember the unremarkable visual stimuli happening across your screen the moment it passes. I am not angry, just disappointed.

Here are better games (* marking especially banger titles) if casual underwater exploration interests you:

Abzu *
Aquanaut's Holiday
Aquanaut's Holiday 2
Aquanaut's Holiday: Hidden Memories *
Endless Ocean
Endless Ocean: Blue World *
Everblue
Everblue 2

Man. I love fish, I love animals, I love taking pictures of both of these, and I loved Endless Ocean on the Wii. This game is not like the originals. I started this game with a higher opinion of this than I think a lot of people, it was fun, kind of clunky mechanically, but the core was strong enough to be a good time. The more I played though, the more baffling decisions I encountered. There’s so many axed modes and features from the Wii game that this feels like if you ported the idea to an iPhone game more than a third entry of the Endless Ocean series, which sucks. I got my money’s worth out of it, and overall it’s fine, the features cut are things I could overlook if the game was as good as the originals and it’s just not. Not to mention, I have encountered so many glitches that halt progression, and even gotten softlocked out of the ending from what I can tell because one of the items I need to complete the 99 tasks you have to do to pad the game out to hell and back just didn’t spawn in the already rare randomly generated formation, all of this just makes me wonder how this game was okayed in the state it’s in, missing any of the typical “shine” from a Nintendo published title, with things that scream a lack of QA testing.
Overall the lack of an aquarium mode the change to randomly generated maps from set maps, making exploration a lot more tedious to get what you want, and just lack of good QOL features… makes the game all in all very disappointing.

So close to being great but too many fatal flaws. Canvas Curse sequel? Awesome! Make it more action-y and give it more forward momentum? Great! Make it look like Gumby? Ohhhhhhh yeahhhhhhhhhh.

This is a monkey's paw situation surpassed on the Wii U only by Star Fox Zero. See, the big downside to making a beautiful claymation Kirby Canvas Curse sequel is that if you're using the stylus, your eyes are LOCKED to the GamePad at all times. So while I played the game on my gorgeous 1080p monitor (ie I matched resolution so it should look its best), I barely got the chance to look at the game on the TV because I had to look at the low-brightness, LED Playskool-ass GamePad that can only display game graphics by streaming them from the console. Although I sympathize with the idea that this is probably the only way to make this game on Wii U, I can't help but think in 2024 that they should have saved this as a Switch handheld-only game that is packed in with a capacitive stylus. The way it is now feels completely kneecapped.

The game is quite fun, and feels like it has more pop than what I played of the DS game. Good worlds, good level design, fun bosses, etc. However, (I hope this isn't a spoiler so quick warning HERE) the way the game is structured, there are 7 worlds of 4 levels -- last one of each being a boss -- and the first three world bosses repeat for the second set of three worlds. In other words, you fight the damn Kirby World 1 Tree twice, with the latter time being a little harder. There are only 28 levels in the game...do we need to be repeating bosses on a first playthrough? Between that and the lack of side modes (other than some challenge levels), I understand why they charged only $40 for this at launch.

So yeah, totally good Kirby Wii U game, glad I played it, but the art style is completely compromised by the fact that you are only regularly looking at it on your smudgy 12-year-old GamePad. If you can live with that and the fact that it's kind of a sparse experience, pretty good!

forgot why i played this. it was kind of sort of totally shit but some of the characters were cute. i think i may just be too insane to enjoy normal yaoi though so please take that with an entire ocean of salt. in terms of summer camp themed visual novels i prefer everlasting summer or wktd personally. ummm some of the characters were also kinda freaky lookin... also DO NOT PAY £50 FOR THIS!!!! SERIOUSLY. THIS GAME IS OVERPRICED AS FUCK YUDASHI PERIL IS LITERALLY THE SAME LENGTH, INFINITELY BETTER, WAS ONLY DEVELOPED BY ONE PERSON AND IT IS COMPLETELY FREE.

I mean, it's alright but it's a bit cringe. Definitely not the worst game I've ever played but arguably the worst fifty dollars I've ever spent. It's way overpriced considering you can get much better, longer yaoi games for a fraction of the price, and I honestly find this line on the developer's website a tad amusing:
"BLits seeks to grow by always putting its content over profit and financial gain."
Like... okay, sure, it's bright and flashy and pretty, you put a lot of effort into the GUI and dare I say you were even passionate about it but $49.99? Really, BLits?

I don't wanna shit on this game too much because like I said, it's not the worst game ever and it did have some real love and effort put into it. It's just a bit cringe, very overpriced, low-stakes, difficult to take seriously and it has such an insufferably, unrealistically optimistic protag that I wanna punch him in the face.