Review: Lumines Arise (PS5) – The Most Beautiful and Most Complete Lumines Game Ever

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In many ways, Lumines Arise represents the series reclaiming its own legacy.

While Tetris Effect is widely praised, its immersive visuals and music actually have roots in a 2004 game called Lumines, which originally brought a similar captivating puzzle experience to the PSP.

Lumines Arise plays a lot like Tetris Effect, and it works beautifully. The game’s central ideas – focusing on lights, colors, and music – really come together to create a cohesive experience.

Developers Enhance and Monstars didn’t just recreate Lumines – they improved upon it brilliantly. The game now boasts incredible graphics and a fantastic soundtrack, finally delivering on the original vision for the series.

This music-based puzzle game centers around Journey mode, which will feel instantly recognizable to players of Tetris Effect.

You’ll progress through a series of levels, each with its own distinct visual style, as you place blocks onto the game board.

Each part of the process, from the behind-the-scenes work to the main elements, creates a unique atmosphere.

Get ready to see astronauts floating and having fun, preparing food, hanging out with chameleons, speeding along train tracks, and tons of other amazing things!

Enhance has truly surpassed even its impressive work on Tetris Effect. This version of Journey isn’t just visually stunning – it’s just as captivating and fun to play as the original.

Sometimes, the game’s visuals can be a little overwhelming, but thankfully, it includes plenty of accessibility settings. These let you adjust the effects and animations to create a simpler, less intense experience.

Lumines is a game where you create 2×2 squares of matching colors or designs. These squares disappear when a vertical line sweeps across the screen.

The game’s timing adjusts to match the beat of the music, so each level feels different with its own unique speed and energy based on the song playing.

The game is simple to pick up – much like Tetris – but offers surprising depth. Skilled players can master advanced strategies to maximize their scores by chaining together combos and carefully placing pieces to create bigger shapes.

The new Burst feature is a fantastic addition to the game, creating a more balanced experience. As you play, you’ll build up a Burst meter, shown as a percentage above the game board. When full, activating Burst will temporarily prevent matched tiles from disappearing, giving you a chance to strategize.

This feature lets you create a large, screen-wide combo of blocks all the same color, sending opposing blocks upwards and off the grid. When that combo clears, the floating blocks drop back down, potentially triggering another big combo.

This move earns you a high score and helps clear space on the board when you’re getting crowded. Plus, it’s really rewarding to pull off!

Don’t be intimidated if you’re new to puzzle games! Lumines Arise has a comprehensive set of tutorials in its Missions mode to help you learn.

After the initial guide, you’ll find many lessons showing you how to build effectively in any situation. It’s a really thorough resource.

Once you’ve cleared Journey mode, you unlock Survival mode and Challenges.

This challenge requires you to complete all the levels in Journey without stopping. It’s similar to the Basic Challenge found in older Lumines games and is a really difficult test of your abilities – making it through 36 stages straight is a significant accomplishment.

The latter is located in Missions, and gives you a big list of entirely different ways to play.

Games like Growth begin with smaller, partial blocks that gradually increase in size over time. In Hatch, you progress by clearing squares next to an egg to crack it open.

To the Beat challenges players to drop blocks in time with the music, while Chains involves creating paths by linking special blocks together.

Similar to the creative modes in Tetris Effect, this game offers a wealth of inventive Challenges, each providing a new way to experience the fundamental gameplay. It’s easily the most comprehensive collection of single-player content ever created for Lumines.

On top of all that, though, is the multiplayer hub, which contains even more stuff to do.

Okay, so the main multiplayer mode is called Burst Battle, and it’s super fun! It’s a one-on-one thing where you’re basically trying to overwhelm your opponent with garbage blocks. You do that by clearing blocks on your side and building up big combos. The cool part is you can use this ‘Burst’ ability to both attack and defend – it’s a really neat tactic!

The game uses a system that matches you with players of similar skill, leading to more balanced and enjoyable matches most of the time. It’s the best multiplayer experience Lumines has ever offered.

You aren’t required to play ranked matches. You can also create custom games to play with friends locally, host private games, or practice against the computer.

The multiplayer area also features Leaderboard League, offering additional game modes like Time Attack and Dig Down.

This classic mode is a core part of Lumines, tasking you with clearing as many blocks as you can before time runs out. It’s a fun and effective way to improve your speed and skills.

Dig Down is a fresh take on a classic game mode, transforming it into a thrilling survival challenge. As you remove blocks, the game speeds up and a new row appears at the bottom, creating a fast-paced and exciting struggle to avoid being overwhelmed.

The best part is the full support for PlayStation VR2, and Enhance has really delivered. Playing in virtual reality transforms the experience; the 3D, animated backgrounds of each stage feel much more immersive, adding a sense of scale and depth you just can’t get on a regular TV.

If you own a PSVR2, definitely experience the Journey mode – it’s incredibly immersive. We suggest using a DualSense controller instead of the PSVR2 Sense controllers, as the game is much easier to navigate with a d-pad.

Overall, the game is excellent, with only a few minor points to keep in mind.

Firstly, it came as somewhat of a surprise to learn it doesn’t support HDR.

The game’s beautiful visuals and strong use of color really lend themselves to modern display technology, so it’s a bit of a shame HDR isn’t included. Thankfully, it still looks fantastic without it, so it’s not a major issue.

The game runs incredibly smoothly, maintaining a frame rate of 60 frames per second almost all the time. We did notice occasional, brief slowdowns, usually when a special ability finishes and lots of blocks appear on the screen.

It happens rarely and only lasts a moment, but it’s noticeable in an otherwise smooth-running game.

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2025-11-11 17:08