Lumines Arise [Review]

It is hard to stay still while playing Lumines Arise. The fast-paced nature of the gameplay accompanied by an overwhelming amount of particles and effects are ingredients for a messy experience, but it is far from that.

Lumines is a puzzle game akin to Tetris – the ceiling is the limit – but instead of doing rows, here, squares are the thing, with matching tiles that are “cleaned” by a vertical line that goes from left to right in a fixed BPM.

It is hard! Getting to understand each stage's pace as well as making decent combinations every time the line passes is surprisingly difficult, and the rhythm of it all creates a pace that was more controlled by the game than by me. That's because this new version spice things up by adding over the top effects, particles, and sounds while making the tiles themselves sometimes harder to see or contextual to the board – like shifting the weight of it all to the side where it has the most pieces, for example.

The pieces are fast and change alongside the music. Oh, right, the music! Most of the soundtrack is basically some EDM (“Electronic Dance Music”) songs with interesting twists and turns that modify the speed of the vertical line. The songs are good except for the vocal tracks, all featuring very bad, “trying too much” to be catchy, borderlines self-help vibes. I really disliked all the lyrics, no exception, with one song in particular by the end that I couldn't really stop laughing at it, unfortunately. It is not as common as the purely electronic songs, but every time a sung song was played, I tried my best to fast-forward it using the 'burst' mechanic – a “special” of some sorts, that can create a big one colored square that helps to clear out the stage when everything is too cluttered.

This game is seriously challenging, in both easy and normal, the latter one being the difficulty that I played. It is hard to do high scores and to receive good ratings, but the stages take 3 to 6 minutes to complete, so it doesn't take too long to do them again. Unfortunately, there aren't many modes after the main “journey” ends, and the game could've used a bit of its creativity that are on the visuals on having some other, more novel modes to play after doing the short campaign. The online mode is fun (and I'm shocked to say that I won some matches!), but when I lost 1 or 2 against humans, the game matched me against CPUs (that often play better than humans at my rank) and those are less interesting to play.

Another part of the game that I wasn't too keen was the interface and overall UI. It is somewhat hard to find what I want to check, and things are named in fun ways but are lacking some much-needed descriptions. The multiplayer hub is exceptionally convoluted. Things don't get better inside the stage themselves: while the HUD is ok and easy to understand, when pausing or after losing a stage, silly stuff is there, for example, the “Restart” button goes back from the beginning of the whole journey while “Continue” restarts the current stage. That confused me (call me a dumb-dumb, I don't care!). A lack of confirmation pop-ups also made me restart more stages than I wanted. So the menus and hubs are messy, convoluted and a bit confusing.

At about halfway through the game, I purchased a PSVR2. Lumines Arise was my go-to game for testing it, and I did the latter half of the game entirely in VR. While the gameplay is essentially the same, the way the VR works is excellent, and the effects and stages are superbly presented in virtual reality, making it borderline magical. There are way more details and situations to look at while in VR, but ultimately, because of how chaotic and fast the game is, I couldn't really look or pay attention to the scenery outside from the very beginning or end of the stage. Still, it is awesome that it is there, and works incredibly well. Again, an “exploration” or “slow paced” mode could be fun and propose new interactions with what the artists created here, but it is sorely missing.

There's so much that describing the game can do, but really, the core gameplay of Lumines Arise is absurdly fun and rewarding, and that's the most important thing. The visuals are pretty and immersive, but a so-so soundtrack with iffy lyrics and a lack of gameplay variety makes this game a bit shorter, faster and less than its core gameplay than it should be. When the tracks and visuals click, I found myself almost dancing to the tunes and getting lost in the zone, and for those moments, Lumines Arise is worth it alone.

8/10