Lumines: Arise, the first new game in the series since Electronic Symphony on the Vita almost 14 years ago, released several days ago.
Electronic Symphony is honestly one of my favorite games ever. It’s perfectly constructed: the visuals, music and gameplay are all gorgeous and lure you into a trance. I’ve played every other game in the series, but Electronic Symphony remains the best.
I genuinely thought the series was dead. I begged for a new game for years, telling everyone I know to buy the remaster of the first game released however long ago. And it’s finally here.
Arise is a great game, I’ll say that much. It’s incredibly beautiful, taking full advantage in the increased hardware power. I’d prefer that they stick closer to the original style and rely less on Tetris Effect for inspiration, but either way.
The gameplay is really tightly refined here, with the new Burst feature being easily the best “gimmick” any of the games have offered.
I’m immediately taken aback by three things though. The music: I haven’t spent enough time with it to completely write it off, but this might be by second least favorite soundtrack in the series. It’s so ambient and like, TOO trippy, again taking from the studios incredibly popular Tetris Effect.
The Electronic Symphony soundtrack was the best **** ever, with Aphex Twin and LCD Soundsystem and Kaskade. But this is just personal preference.
The other thing is that after every song/skin is cleared, there’s a good 15 second pause while the next one loads in. This is a huge break from the series tradition of skins seamlessly switching over, never allowing you to break your focus and immersion. I DO NOT like this change.
Additionally, the skins are now grouped into “areas”, something I believe also comes from Tetris Effect. You’re taken out of the gameplay and given a score for the area every 5 songs or so, leading to further immersion breaking.
These changes all seem arbitrary and I have to imagine someone from the studio kept checking on development and saying “okay, but make it EVEN MORE like tetris effect so this doesn’t flop and kill the series for another 12 years”. I get it, but it sucks.
Still Lumines though, still encouraging everyone to buy it ASAP so the studio knows people want more. And because it’s a banger, regardless of my issues with it.