Line #20 YMMV/EndlessOcean


1	* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation:
2	** The WebVideo/GameGrumps posit that Alfred Thorman is an obsessed, passive-aggressive old man who fumes to himself when he doesn't get results from his e-mails to the player while hiding behind his "TakeYourTime" presentation.
3	** The dear Grumps also take Kat's offhand 'it gets kind of lonely up here' comment and interpret her as an extremely aggressive lesbian.
4	** For the sequel, the Grumps continue the tradition. In particular they characterize Jean-Eric as a bitter, angry Frenchman with only one testicle, who hates being reminded of his dead son Matthias. [[MadLibsCatchphrase Who is dead. Thanks for bringing that up.]]
5	* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: ''Blue World'' exclusively features tracks by Music/CelticWoman, and there's one for most every area of the game; each song captures the tone and atmosphere of their respective area quite well, though YMMV because the cloying and schmaltzy nature of the songs were {{Narm}} or NarmCharm for some players.
6	** Some of the in-game soundtrack is very nice and soothing, particularly the Valka Castle theme.
7	** The original uses Hayley Westenra's "Prayer", and the player can use an SD card to play their own SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic when they dive.
8	* EvenBetterSequel: ''Blue World'' addresses several complaints about the first ''Endless Ocean'' and sacrifices very little in the process.
9	** ''Blue World'' allows for far more environmental variation than the original. While the first game did have a little bit of variety, the sequel allows for diving in iceberg-filled antarctic oceans, muck diving in the Amazon, and exploring even more long forgotten ruins than the first game.
10	** In contrast to the first game having a very hands-off narrative approach with the only real character aside from the player being Kat, ''Blue World'' has a proper storyline with more fleshed out characters and motivations.
11	** The original game only had two legendary creatures that could be found, them being the Magu Tapah and the Ancient Mother. ''Blue World'' has a ''massive'' increase in the amount of legendary creatures, all of which have different ways of finding them and each with their own unique backgrounds. Three of them being [[spoiler:NotSoExtinct prehistoric creatures]] definitely makes it all the better.
12	* FanonDiscontinuity: Oceana is stated to be 14 in the European release of ''Blue World'', but most fans like to ignore this because it would be extremely irresponsible to allow someone that young to go on the advanced dives available in the game, particularly in the near-abyssal Zahhab region depths. They also point out that it creates a PlotHole regarding her father's death, which occurred fifteen years ago when she was "very young". They typically imagine her revised age as 16 at the minimum, though players who like to ship her with the player character (who is about college-aged or older) tend to put her age at about 19.
13	* SugarWiki/FunnyMoments: ''Blue World'' has several cutscenes which can last indefinitely if you don't press a button to advance them. One of them is Nancy giving your character a haircut. It's just so slow and methodical, it's hilarious.
14	* GoodBadBugs:
15	** Until you retrieve Oceana's pendant from the humpback whale, your air meter is infinite, to ensure that you can complete the tutorial without any interruptions. You can exploit this to completely fill the Gatama Atoll map, granting you an early buffer of pelagos when she starts her cartography business, as well as get all the fish in the area identified early.
16	** While you normally cannot swim near [[spoiler:the three prehistoric creatures]] since they're technically outside the map, two of them will come very close, and a determined player can swim right up to them by swimming persistently towards the map edge and waiting for the right spot in the creatures' paths. The game still won't let you focus on them, though.
17	* [[HoYay Les Yay]]: While romantic tension between the player and Kat/Oceana is kept pretty minimal and vague, the dialogue is the same whether the player is male or female.
18	* NarmCharm: Learning about the ocean fauna by swimming around and petting the hell out of everything is utterly nonsensical, but it really meshes well with the peaceful atmosphere.
19	* QuirkyWork: The first game, in particular, was hit with confusion from multiple sides asking what the "point" of the game was if there weren't points to score or clear goals to achieve. ''Blue World'' gave the story far more structure to try and combat this, but judging by newcomers' reactions to ''Luminous'', the stigma of the series having "nothing to do" never truly went away.
20	* ScrappyMechanic: The first game only lets you swim a few meters away from the ''Gabbiano''. While accurate to diving in real life, it also demonstrates why AcceptableBreaksFromReality exist, since it means you often have to return to the boat (which you'd have to, anyway, when your air ran out) and adjust the boat's position pretty often as you fill out the map and scour the sea floor for fish and salvage.
21	* SpiritualSuccessor: The series is essentially a follow up to the ''Everblue'' games, with many of its devs being veterans of the previous series.
22	* SugarWiki/SweetDreamsFuel: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsY0TyUrq98 "Prayer"]].
23	* TearJerker: [[spoiler:Kat's backstory]], and the secret cutscene unlocked by sitting on the deckchair at sunset.
24	** And then, in ''Blue World''... [[spoiler:Jean-Eric's son (and Oceana's father) Matthias became trapped in his submersible 650 feet down in the Zahhab Depths while researching the Song of Dragons; he died attempting to escape and left a message for his father in a waterproof case explaining why his work was important to him and that he loved his family very much, giving his old man something to shoot for once more.]]
25	** [[spoiler:Sidequests heavily imply that Matthias is still alive but the plot thread is never fully resolved.]]
26	* ThatOneAchievement:
27	** The "Seven-Seas Multimillionaire" title. See below about why saving up one million pelagos is annoying to do; now imagine having to save up ''two'' million. Have fun grinding!
28	** "World Traveler" requires you to swim a total combined distance of 1000 kilometers (600 miles). You average about one-fifth to half of a mile per dive. It's a long, long process.
29	* ThatOneBoss: [[ThreateningShark Thanatos]] shows up once in the main storyline and a few times in other quests. He's immune to the pulsar gun and needs to be avoided or fled. No so easy when you have to search his area for a salvageable.
30	** Even worse on one particular side quest, where you have to distract Thanatos and keep him away from another diver. Unless you're good at dodging, you're going to lose a lot of air.
31	* ThatOneLevel: Ciceros Strait. It's swarming with sharks and whirlpools. The whirlpools block off a section of the map during the day, so you have to go there at night - and put yourself at risk of running into Great White Sharks or Thanatos, who tend to lurk around wrecks with salvageables around them.
32	* ThatOneSidequest:
33	** In ''Blue World'', making one million dollars [[spoiler:to excavate the Okeanos temple]] after you complete the main story. Most jobs you take that even reward money and not equipment pay a couple thousand at best, so you have to [[MoneyGrinding spend several tedious hours]] doing the same jobs over and over again. There's no hint of this quest coming up, so if you've been spending all the money you've earned so far on other things you're screwed.
34	** The game then pulls a rather annoying fast one on you: turns out you can reopen the temple for ''half'' that, but the option still isn't available until you've gotten the full $1 million. The result being that you can then purchase pretty much all the best equipment and the items for Nine-Ball Island at once after the temple's been opened, which is nice, but many players will probably still feel annoyed about the FakeLongevity.
35	** Voice of the Night Sky in ''Blue World''. 100 enigmatic coins are scattered across the various diving regions, and you're tasked with finding them all. All of them are hidden in "zoom spots", many of which are tucked away in obscure corners of the map most players would overlook (including the sealed Okeanos temple -- and no, you can't find them the first time you enter it at the end of the story). Taking Oceana (who points out zoom spots) with you on dives makes this easier, but it's still quite a time-consuming feat. Completing it is the only way to see two of the game's three ultra-rare legendary creatures.
36	** The dolphin-training minigame is quite obtuse about progression, though it was improved in ''Blue World''. That game also features a sidequest that lets you recruit more dolphin partners, but to progress you have to repeatedly train your partners and put on dolphin shows, which many players find to be a tedious slog.
37	* TheyChangedItNowItSucks: A minor example, but many players were flummoxed and annoyed by ''Blue World'' removing the option to play custom music from an SD card. There is a jukebox you can purchase that will play music during dives, but it only has the Music/CelticWoman tracks previously heard in the story.
38	* UglyCute:
39	** Lots of the fish are pretty in really bizarre ways. It's even an InUniverse example, as Oceana geeks out over many of them.
40	** The [[spoiler:''Anomalocaris'']] is a specific example, as it's since garnered a following for being either cool or this trope due to its black beady eyes and [[ScienceMarchesOn new knowledge that it probably wasn't as vicious as it was originally thought to be]], even if it was still a predator. Fittingly, the first show of the legendary creature system in ''Luminous'' shows a player finally being able to interact with the beloved radiodont [[spoiler:after having previously been locked outside of the playable space in ''Blue World'']].
41	* UnconventionalLearningExperience: Since each creature comes with a write-up about its size, habitat and other miscellaneous info, both games can function fairly well as marine life encyclopedias.
42	* UnderusedGameMechanic: The private reef in ''Blue World'' is a brief diversion at best, since you have to dive at Gatama Atoll to even access it instead of being tied to your hub of Nineball Island, and once you get it decorated how you like, nothing really happens. You can try experimenting to attract certain schools of fish, but that's about it.
43	* VindicatedByHistory: When ''Endless Ocean'' released in 2008, many reviewers and gamers were perplexed by the idea of a game with no goals or objectives beyond swimming around and petting fish. One reviewing website even published a satirical piece proclaiming that it "was not a game". The following decade would see the release of numerous indie games and [[EnvironmentalNarrativeGame walking simulators]] that would greatly expand popular perceptions of what video games can be, including well-received diving games like ''Beyond Blue'' and the critically acclaimed ''VideoGame/{{Abzu}}''. Now, ''Endless Ocean'' is looked back on much more fondly, and it was even greenlit for a third installment in 2024.
44	* SugarWiki/VisualEffectsOfAwesome: The original games both punched well above their weight given both their budgets and the rather limited hardware of the Wii.
45	** All of the creatures you're able to interact with are lovingly recreated and animated in as realistic a fashion as possible, from the biggest of sharks to the tiniest of sea slugs. Granted, [[ScienceMarchesOn some of these designs are now outdated]], but the point still stands that they look excellent.
46	** The environmental detail and variety, particularly in ''Blue World'', is extremely impressive. Vibrant coral reefs, deep blue open ocean voids, pitch-black abysses, and arctic seascapes are all rendered as realistically as possible, including the beautiful light rays that shine in from the surface and illuminate the water.
47	* TheWoobie:
48	** [[spoiler:Kat lost her father Patrick when he drowned during his search for the Ancient Mother.]]
49	** Oceana [[spoiler:also has a DisappearedDad, who was lost when his submarine got stuck at the bottom of the seafloor. Later sidequests suggest that [[InferredSurvival he may still be alive]].]]

Context YMMV / EndlessOcean