Lumines Arise Review – Sensorial Triumph

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While many game developers focus on making games look incredibly realistic, Enhance and Monstars Inc. believe technology can also create strong emotional experiences. Their new game, Lumines Arise, is a constantly evolving spectacle of visuals, filling the screen with captivating effects. It reimagines the classic Lumines series, which began in 2004, with a focus on immersive sensory stimulation, creating a game that is both beautiful and powerfully engaging.

Lumines hasn’t seen a major release in about ten years. The new game, Arise, adds a synesthetic element, but the basic gameplay remains the same. Blocks made up of four colored squares fall onto a grid. Your goal is to arrange these blocks so that squares of the same color touch, merging them into larger areas. Bigger merged areas mean higher scores.

A vertical line sweeps across the screen in time with the music, clearing away groups of squares it touches. To survive, you need to create single-color square groups so the line can eliminate them and prevent the screen from filling up – which ends the game immediately. At the same time, try to build up big combos by either expanding existing groups or making new ones. Remember, your squares only score when the sweeping line passes over them, so it’s a race against time to create the largest possible combos with each sweep.

Lumines has always felt like an arcade game, but the latest version really emphasizes a captivating, immersive experience. Each stage feels like its own mini-show – sometimes like watching fireworks, exploring an aquarium, or being at a concert – with dazzling lights, effects, music, and animations. The core of the game is its Journey mode, which features over 30 levels, each with unique music and visuals. While it still has that classic arcade feel with scoring and grades, each level is a complete sensory experience. You might go from a fast-paced, energetic club scene to a peaceful stage with swimming koi fish, but despite the differences, it always feels like Lumines.

What really stands out in Arise is its ability to create both excitement about reaching the end and a genuine sense of wonder as you explore each stage. You never quite know what to expect – the stage selection screen only gives you a tiny hint. And even that doesn’t reveal much, because every level has a unique visual style and a surprising twist that changes things up – affecting the pace, music, graphics, or a combination of all three.

Reaching the end of Lumines is genuinely challenging. Even as a returning player, I frequently found myself stuck. The game offers three difficulty levels, and increasing them means you’ll need to clear more blocks and deal with faster speeds. Expect to replay levels several times to complete Journey mode, but surprisingly, it never felt discouraging. Instead, it motivated me to keep trying and improve my score. After playing for several days, I’m still enjoying the feeling of getting better at the game.

A big part of what makes the game so satisfying is the Burst feature. As you clear squares, a percentage meter fills up, and once it reaches 50% or higher, you can activate Burst. This protects one square on the board from being affected by the game’s timeline for a few turns, giving you time to build it up by adding matching blocks. As you expand the square, blocks of the opposite color are pushed upwards. When the protected square is finally removed by the timeline, those pushed blocks fall down to fill the empty space, potentially creating a large clear. It took some practice to master, but once I understood how to use Burst effectively, building squares with over 200 blocks became incredibly rewarding.

I was really drawn in by how beautiful the game looks – the backgrounds are full of cool images, like dancers in the rain or beach parties at sunset. But what really surprised me was how the blocks themselves changed! Sometimes they’d completely transform – I remember one level starting with apples and limes, and then suddenly it was peppers and broccoli! Other times, you’d be stacking eggs, and as time went on, they’d crack open and little birds would walk around on top of the blocks. It was such a clever and unexpected detail!

The game’s music generally suits each level, but it doesn’t always stick with you. While there are many songs with vocals, they occasionally slow down the action, especially when the lyrics aren’t particularly strong. However, it’s good that the developers aimed for a unique sound. Some levels offer a calm, relaxed experience, but most are designed to be fast-paced. The hip-hop and techno tracks are particularly noteworthy, and it’s clear the developers wanted to offer a diverse range of musical styles.

Arise is a beautiful game, but the special effects can sometimes make it hard to see what’s happening. There are moments with a lot going on visually—like one level where water rises and covers the bottom of the screen—that look impressive but make things difficult to read. Luckily, the game offers many accessibility settings, allowing you to adjust things like background transparency and zoom to improve visibility. You can also find options to simplify the gameplay if needed.

I had some issues with how easily you could see everything in the game, but those mostly went away when I played in virtual reality. The viewpoint is naturally much closer to the action in VR. While I love playing on PC with a high frame rate, Arise really comes to life in VR. Seeing the visual effects up close, instead of as a distant background on a screen, makes a huge difference. It feels much more impactful when those effects happen right in front of your eyes, and everything appears larger. Having to physically move your head to take in the whole scene really brings everything together – playing with PSVR2 on PlayStation 5 is a truly immersive experience.

The DualSense controller enhances the experience with its advanced vibrations, making you really feel the rhythm and impact of each action. Activating Burst mode even causes the headset to rumble! The music dynamically swells and fades, and the game’s environment cleverly zooms in and out based on what you do, creating a constantly shifting and immersive VR experience. You can customize how much the screen zooms, whether you’re playing in VR or not.

The game uses 3D effects, such as objects appearing to come out of the screen, to heighten the experience without being overwhelming. But what I loved most was how the game played with scale. There’s a stage with a long road where a plane flies by – it’s startling when it appears to fly directly overhead, filling your vision. Later on, there’s a level that perfectly combines visuals and music, creating a powerful emotional build-up that always makes me feel moved.

Arise’s core experience is Journey mode, but there’s plenty more to do. You can also jump into Burst Battle, the game’s multiplayer mode. Play online with friends or against random opponents in either casual or ranked matches, team up locally on the same device, or practice against the computer. It’s a one-on-one competition where you create squares to send ‘garbage’ to your opponent’s screen, a bit like Tetris 99.

After you beat the main story, a ton of extra stuff opens up! There are leaderboards for speedrunning levels, and they throw weekly events at you too. Plus, there are missions designed to help you master the trickier parts of the game, and sometimes they even take existing levels and remix them in cool ways. Once you finish the story at least once, you unlock Survival mode, which is basically playing the whole game back-to-back without stopping. And if you want total control, you can even build your own custom playlist with any stages you like, in whatever order you want!

While the game’s missions and challenges could be better, I really liked the fast-paced Burst Battle matches I played before release. They’re much more exciting than the standard gameplay, and I think I’ll keep coming back to them. I’m especially looking forward to the limited-time events. During my time reviewing the game, I saw the multiplayer hub change completely for one event. Players worked together towards common goals, and everyone earned rewards based on the team’s overall score.

All of this highlights the game’s main idea: bringing people together. When you use a special move called a Burst, little characters called Loomii appear. Each one shows the username of another player currently in the game. You’ll see Loomii all over the place – standing beside your play area and running around the multiplayer hub, where you can even control them.

Each Loomii you unlock with a Burst joins you permanently. You’ll see more and more of them appearing on the stage selection screen, and eventually they’ll even fill up the levels in the final stage of Journey mode. They start as simple customizable avatars for your online profile, but there’s a lot more potential with multiplayer events, and I’m eager to see how those develop. During a weekend event, I noticed my Loomii would even dance to the music when I wasn’t actively playing in the multiplayer lobby. These little details, along with shared goals for players to work towards, could give people a good reason to keep coming back to the game.

No matter how I play Lumines Arise—whether I’m competing against others or enjoying a relaxed playlist—going back to previous levels is always enjoyable. This is a sign of the game’s clever design and the series’ overall quality. But what really makes Arise special is simply experiencing each stage, with its unique visuals and energizing music creating a distinct atmosphere. Even though the patterns are always the same, Arise feels fresh with every level, revitalizing the series by building on a familiar base and presenting each stage like a brand new performance.

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2025-11-11 17:12