#and by that i mean the marathon mode and cpu vs mode

[dentixvoxel]

started playing tetris99 again

[baphomet-media]

Beats and Blocks and Beats and Blocks and Beats and Blocks and - A Lumines: Electronic Symphony Review

Genre: Puzzle Subgenre: Rhythm Puzzle Developer: Q Entertainment Publisher: Ubisoft Platform(s): Vita Release Date: February 15th, 2012

Lumines (pronounced like “luminous”) is a series that holds a lot of fascination for me. I played the original game on my dad’s PSP as a kid, and while I was terrible at it, I was fascinated by the game’s mix of funky electronic music and block-busting puzzle gameplay. Many years later, I ended up picking up Lumines Remastered on Switch and loved it. Now that I have a Vita, I found out that a Lumines game was published exclusively for Sony’s doomed handheld, so naturally I had to give it a try. Does Electronic Symphony live up to the series reputation?

Story

The Lumines series is mostly a pure rhythm/puzzle game, and as such has no plot or characters, however it does have a progression system. In the original game, the player could play through the game’s main mode (called “Voyage” in Electronic Symphony) to unlock new  levels (called “Skins”), each with their own visual style and music track. This has returned in ES, but the game also has an XP system that rewards you for playing each mode by giving you progress towards new avatars.

Gameplay

Lumines is very much like Tetris in that the player has an empty grid into which colored blocks fall, and must manage their blocks wisely to clear them out and prevent any column from reaching the top. Aside from that, Lumines is very much its own beast. Each block you drop is a 2x2 square comprised of different arrangements of two colors. You can clear blocks by creating squares of 2x2 or larger of the same color, however matches are not instantly cleared. Instead, a vertical Timeline gradually makes its way across the grid from left to right. As the Timeline passes over matches, it registers them, then once the Timeline reaches the right side of the screen, all registered matches are cleared and the Timeline starts over from the left side. This creates an interesting dynamic where the player has to be conscious of the Timeline’s position when making matches, as making matches after the timeline has already passed that location means that match won’t be cleared until the next pass. This could also have a cascading effect, since blocks fall when matches below them are cleared, which could potentially disrupt matches placed after the Timeline has passed. Furthermore, the speed of the game generally increases as you progress through levels, making a slow and relaxed pace get more and more tense as you go along. Each skin has its own tempo, though, which affects the speed of block falling as well as the speed of the Timeline. As you progress through the main Marathon mode (called “Voyage”), you will find that the speed of each successive skin doesn’t increase linearly, and can jump around a bit to give you periods of intensity and relief.

To help you out with clutter are two special block pieces that can generate, the link piece and the shuffle piece. When a link piece is dropped, it can link with all other adjacent pieces of the same color, and cascades the effect through each linked piece, allowing those pieces to be cleared by the Timeline. This can drastically reduce clutter if used well, and can set you up for big combos by removing most of one of the only two colors on the field. The shuffle block has a similar effect, except when a shuffle piece is dropped, all cascading adjacent pieces are randomly shuffled between colors. While I found the link pieces to be immensely helpful, I mostly found the shuffle piece to be disruptive to my strategies, as there was no way to tell what it would change a large chunk of pieces into. Still, in a pinch, it can create some matches in large piles that haven’t been managed well, so it can sometimes be a lifesaver.

The game has plenty of other modes, though sadly ES has fewer than before. The modes include:

Voyage - The game’s Marathon mode where you play your way through each of the game’s skins, and unlock each skin for other modes as you reach them. If you lose, you have to start over. This is the game’s main mode, and what players will get the most use out of. I really like it, but one complaint is that runs can be fairly long. It’s difficult to just jump into, as a single run can take you around an hour or so if you’re decent at it, and a few mistakes late in the game can wreck your whole run.

Playlist - A sort of free-play mode where you can pick and choose from unlocked skins to create your own playlist. You can save and load playlists, as well. I didn’t really use this mode much, but it can be nice if you only want to play a few different songs.

Stopwatch - The game’s Time Attack mode. Select a time limit and see how many blocks you can clear within the time limit. It’s fun enough to attempt for the associated trophy, but not really interesting enough to come back to.

Master - A challenge mode of sorts, you play through five levels, trying to clear a set number of blocks in each level. Unlike Voyage, the skin is the same throughout, and the game speed drastically increases between each level. I found this mode to be the best challenge in the game, especially since you can start at any level you’ve previously beaten, but again is a bit too simple to really hold interest very long.

Versus - The game’s multiplayer versus mode. Unfortunately, the VS CPU mode from the original game is removed, so this mode is multiplayer-only. Good luck finding someone else who not only owns a Vita, but also owns this game and wants to play with you. Definitely a missed opportunity here.

The game also has a “world block” feature, which basically amounts to a number of blocks that have to be cleared in total by everyone playing around the world every 24 hours. This is an interesting feature, but eight years after the game’s launch, there’s barely anyone still playing, so the chances of anything happening with this feature are slim.

Presentation

The Lumines series as a whole is known for its quirky electronic music and flashy visuals, and ES is no exception. The vast majority of this comes from the game’s collection of skins, and ES has plenty of unique skins to go around. This time around, the collection of skins is decent, with fewer skins that I actively disliked, but unfortunately fewer that I actively liked, leaving the mix with kind of an okay middle ground. New in this game are some skins that apply a 3D art style to the blocks. While these look interesting, I found that the 3D skins are more distracting than the 2D skins, making it harder to get a feel for the state of the board at a glance.

Conclusion

Lumines: Electronic Symphony is a decent successor to the original Lumines with a solid lineup of tracks, but unfortunately has less to offer than the original, and does little to advance the series. It’s definitely a good game, and I recommend it to anyone’s Vita collection. I just feel that if Lumines Remastered didn’t exist, Electronic Symphony would have scored a lot higher. As it stands, I find it hard to recommend ES above Remastered in 2020.

Score: 7 / 10