My first dive into the Endless Ocean series, does Luminous swim above my expectations or sink well below them?

In the current era of game development where more and more large publishers are finding development so expensive that they have to focus almost all of their time and resources into big, familiar, and proven ip, it is really nice to see Nintendo and Akira work together again on an ip whose last game was around 15 years ago on Wii. Seeing Endless Ocean return in the HD era was a nice surprise even as someone whose only interaction with the series before this was testing the Wii discs I own to make sure they work.
So what exactly is Endless Ocean? Well it's basically an ocean exploration game where you swim around and scan fish as well as pick up treasures you find sparkling away and that's about it. Honestly I think that's fine, it makes for a really good relaxing experience in a similar vein to Animal Crossing. It does mean you'll probably feel burnt out by the gameplay if you're playing for multiple hours at a time but if you play for an hour or so at a time and take your time with the game then there's a pretty fun experience to be had exploring the ocean and learning about the many creatures that call it home. Like I didn't know there was a fish called Thanatos that just loves killing things! There's also extinct and prehistoric creatures in the game to find as well as unique species called UML that appear when you scan a certain number of creatures marked by an orange dot.
There isn't anything like oxygen management or aggressive fish to worry about here either, this is literally all about getting you into the ocean to explore and learn and it's a pretty chill and relaxing experience.

There's a few modes in this game to choose from. A story mode that sees you learning about a special Coral Reef that provides life to the world of Endless Ocean that is slowly dying for some reason. It's fine for what it is but the biggest issue with it is that to unlock more chapters, you have to scan a LARGE number of fish. Like Chapter 2-1 is something like 500 fish you need to scan which is pretty close to the 570+ unique species in the game so it's clear from the beginning that you just need to scan the same creatures over and over and over again to make progress in the story mode which isn't that fun when you get no real incentive for doing that.
Solo dives see you dive into a randomly generated ocean space where you can take your time to explore and scan all you want. This could've been a good fun mode if it wasn't a large random open space because for one person, you don't feel like you're making much progress on a map due to how big they are. That and structurally you'll be seeing the same kind of shipwrecks, crevasses, and caves over and over, it just becomes pretty repetitive, pretty quickly for solo players.
So the real focus of the game is actually the group dives via the online mode where you and friends or randoms can work together to explore a randomly generated ocean space like how you would in solo dives. The difference here is with multiple people, you can have the creatures and map of these places explored at a good pace and have the UML show up a few times during a session. People can tag items and creatures they find as well and it's another pretty well done online experience where you get a pretty friendly and welcoming time. These dives are also time limited to an hour which also helps to keep the mode from outstaying its welcome. This is what the game feels like it was designed for and where I got the most enjoyment from.

There's also a Mystery Board where if you find certain objects during your dives, you uncover one of 99 squares on the board, you can learn about an ancient civilization that called this ocean its home. It's a neat extra thing to give you a little bit more to do on your dives.

Endless Ocean Luminous is an unexpected but welcome return to the series. There's a relaxing and chill experience to be had here exploring the ocean and learning about many different creatures but if you're playing solo then it can get repetitive real quickly unfortunately. Online players will get the most fun out of this one.