Reviews from

in the past


This review contains spoilers

i went to the future and the game was awesome (6 star)

WHAT ZA FUCK THE STORY MODE IS SPECTACULAR

relationship ended with SPLATOON 2 now SPLATOON 3 is new best friend


don't care much for the game but it's the closest we have to my beloved miiverse

Updating this review since I've played more. Nearly 100ed story mode besides the secret stage and stuff.
Alright, this game? FUN. FUN AS HELL. Its online modes are the typical online experience- there's not much different besides some new weapons, specials, enemies and qol updates but I feel where this game shines is in the Story mode. It's much more like a less challenging Octo Expansion- but that doesn't mean it can't be challenging too. I went out of my way to 100 % it because it's probably some of the most fun I've had story mode wise in a Splatoon game.
Reccomend this. Can't wait for the DLC!

so many nice QOL changes and its sooo pretty. they knocked it out of the park tbh. i love the story mode too there are so many nice character moments and funny lines, even tho its mostly camp and the twist is a bit lame

REVIEW REFLECTS SINGLE-PLAYER CAMPAIGN ONLY

NOT REFLECTIVE OF FULL GAME

NO EXPLICIT STORY SPOILERS, BUT SOME FOCUS ON THE GAME'S STRUCTURE, FOCUS AND THEMES THAT I DIDN'T WANT REVEALED TO ME BEFORE I PLAYED IT, SO PLEASE AVOID IF YOU HAVEN'T FINISHED IT AND YOU'RE SENSITIVE TO THESE THINGS


After Octo Expansion, I was really excited about what the single-player in the next Splatoon would be. There was a bunch of familiar challenge missions, but at the end of it, there was a long sequence that showed how Splatoon's gameplay, music and setting could be applied to a structure more similar to Resident Evil 4 or Portal. It worked so well, I was sure that this was going to be the immediate future of Splatoon - A game that split its focus equally between an established top-tier multiplayer shooter and a fantastic single-player campaign to stand proudly alongside Mario and Zelda.

Splatoon 3's campaign is very much built off the back of Octo Expansion, but not in the way I'd hoped. It's understandable, but this is largely Octo Expansion 2, but with more of a focus towards players who are trying Splatoon for the first time, as opposed to the hardcore fans who bought the DLC.

There are some really good ideas here, though a lot of the time it's playing the old Splatoon balancing act of tutorials/MGS VR Missions. The utility of new weapons and specials are explored in fun levels that really show off their potential, and that Spider-Man one (I'm not familiar enough with the names of new Splatoon 3 stuff yet, sorry) is really good for vertical platforming. I'm not sure they've really given a good reason to ever use the Squid Boost thing in regular Splatooning, but I guess it's not doing anybody any harm.

I'll try to get over what it isn't, and appreciate it for what it is, and there is good here. They really throw a bone to Splatoon 1 fans here, especially at the start. The direct references are so baked into the story that there's a good deal that will go over your head if you've never had the delight of being a Wii U owner (or a GameCube owner, for that matter).

I think they do a good job of introducing new characters, while still establishing that The Squid Sisters are the toppermost of the poppermost. Really well balanced, and I felt overwhelmingly encouraged whenever Callie or Marie complimented how good I was at playing Splatoon. Having the old Agent 3 be their new Captain is a big play to Splatoon 1 fans, who get to point at the screen and say "that's me!"

The tone is pretty light throughout, though the dark backstory is explored in the Alterna Logs, and presented in a way that young players probably won't bother reading them. It's a bit of a let down that a Splatoon game dealing with the threat of an extinction event has fewer fucked up things in it than the new Kirby.

All in all, it's a fun new mode with a lot of things to dig into and enjoy. Not really what I'd hoped for, but there's enough in there to appeal to me, specifically, as an individual, that I worry I'd seem ungrateful if I moaned about it too much. I really hope they just stretch the last hour as the format for the whole of the next one though.

Incredible game! Easily the best one! The quality of life changes are great, the specials are really fun and well designed, the ranked system is so much better, all the new additions are great, and even the singleplayer campaign is awesome! I do wish we could change gear/weapons without leaving the lobby in Anarchy Battle, Mahi Mahi Resort was kinda turned to ash, you still can't buy ability chunks, and you can only use sea snails to increase/reroll gear slots, not coins. Other than that, the game is amazing and I'm very excited for it's future!

Mostly good but the story mode fumbles the bag near the end, luckily I can just imagine a better version.

i feel like this was made for me. super easy to get into. love it

This log is for the story mode.

Goddamn bro. What a way to end the trilogy.

Subtracting half a star just because it succumbs to the multiplayer shooter syndrome of "we're gonna add some maps and make a few tweaks and call it a new release." I'm not really sure what star rating to give something that is essentially just "more of the same" when "the same" is something I enjoy very much. One of those things that makes me regret giving out star ratings to games (something I don't do with movies on my letterboxd) as if the quality of this type of thing can be measured out numerically. The campaign is better this time 'round mainly because you only have to do a few of the "in-between" levels before getting to the boss fights, which is the only real reason to play the campaign for me, but it is still like, hours of time spent to fight 5 neat bosses. Dope credits sequence though. I ultimately am not rating it too low because this is still my favorite multiplayer shooter franchise. Literally it launched the day after the Queen died and everyone made fun of her in the lobby. If that's not evidence that this is the only good multiplayer shooter community, idk what is.

they showed a grappling hook and a crab mech in the trailer its a 5/5 already.

played the game now yeah its a 5/5

Multiplayer and Salmron Run are more refined and polished as well, and with the card mode and other QOL. The story mode is actually fucking incredible this time around (better than Octo Expansion, I said it) I highly suggest you go in blind. With updates and confirmed story DLC (with everyone's favourite lesbians) Nintendo has proven to us once again that they can make fun and exciting IPs.

Nintendo make me your bitch.

Meu filho está jogando um videogame desgraçado em que moluscos de um futuro distópico ficam atirando tinta uns nos outros. Lançou hoje e já quero jogar pela janela o negócio #acabasemana

I'd really love to get better and enjoy this series but jesus christ Nintendo servers won't even let me finish a match! I just wanna play the game ;-;

I get launch day severs and such but good lord -_-

Couldn't care less for multiplayer but that singleplayer was really fun, glad they learned from what worked from the dlc

Reall good :)

ok the QOL updates & weapon changes are perfect. salmon run 24/7.. thank u nintendo my crops are watered..

Splatoon is a game that carries the idea of the rebellious teenager. A bunch of rowdy kids competing in hardball sports, making a mess of familiar places and loitering around the plaza space. Everything from the characters, music, clothing, branding and world were meant to reinforce this idea in Splatoon, back in 2015. Something that always irked me in Splatoon 2 is how it felt like this aesthetic was commodified. Splatoon 2 veers itself into feeling a lot more pro-consumerist, taking the player from Inkopolis Plaza to Inkopolis Square, an area more modern and more filled to the brim with advertising, making the centerpiece a literal tower of screens and billboards of ads. The new idols are multimillionaire pop superstars running a news station with sponsored ads (I’m sorry Pearl and Marina I just gotta prove a point I still love you). Smaller things reinforce this too, like the new stages occupying more professional and commercial spaces, and the UI elements being centered a lot on price tags and the like. I know it’s bizarre to criticize a Nintendo™ game as being too commercial, but compared to what came before it, Splatoon 2 feels a lot less rebellious throughout. It comes across as exemplifying punk and street culture in the same way a TikTok guy pretending to shoot people and say he’s an “alpha male” while dressed head to toe in expensive brand name clothing is punk. It’s not just less rebellious, it’s less intimate and it comes off colder than its predecessor.

Splatoon 3 works to recapture the essence of the series’ embrace of teen counterculture, encompassing itself under the idea of “chaos”. Divorcing itself from the comfortable modernity of Inkopolis, Splatoon 3 sees players off to the rougher, louder, densely packed streets of Splatsville. The Japanese names of these two cityscapes, Haikara City (Inkopolis) and Bankara Town (Splatsville) show this divide, as Haikara is a term used for Western fashion that arose in the late 19th century, implying a sense of high-collar fashion, something new and progressive but still professional in nature. Bankara is a term meant to encompass the reaction against this high-collar Western culture that's made its way through Japan, a way for younger generations to wildly and deliberately rebel from Haikara style.

Though “chaos” is Splatoon 3’s generalized mission statement, it’s shown in a way different from how other media would conceptualize chaos. It’s rougher, it’s dirtier, it’s louder, but it doesn’t ever go out of its way to be meaner. Splatoon 3 has an edge to it, but not one that means to harm. Chaos, in this game, is embraced as a city formed of the people who live in it, the warmth of their community and spirit. The new stages you visit are much less developed than the stages of previous games, consisting of abandoned spillways, desert gorges, and factories. These places find life in how the people of Splatsville have restored them as arenas to continue their sport, and the one outlier to this, Hagglefish Market, is a marketplace filled with individual vendors suspended over the sea with various small structures. Opposed to the previous game’s skyscrapers, concert halls, and hotel resorts filling out Inkopolis, the Splatlands’ new stages are much more humble, and make the turf wars taking place on them feel more home-grown.
Splatfests in Splatoon 3 are shown much less as professional, organized concerts and more as festivals, where the game’s idols go through the streets, each performing music home to the culture they represent, and people are scattered through the streets cheering and dancing. Just roaming the streets during the games previous Splatfest World Premiere gave a much more powerful sense of warmth and excitement than either of the two previous games.

Through the course of Splatoon 2, I was a bit worried about the future of the series. Something that embodied itself and built its identity in its sense of counterculture felt like it was slowly eeking towards a dulled sense of conformity as it made its home in Nintendo’s signature lineup. Even with it's lack of new gameplay innovation and a frankly underwhelming story mode, Splatoon 3 truly impressed me with how much it recaptures and succeeds what the original game set out for, forging its identity as still being something fresh and uniquely set apart from any of its contemporaries. I dread to imagine what a Team Order version of this game would be like.


Mainly reviwing the story, gameplay is very fun so far if not a little lacking in the weapons department, but a little early to give a full criticism. Salmon run great as always, haven't seen any new ones but hope they added new events. The story is clearly inspired heavily from octo expansion, which is great, but the levels in the middle dragged like hell. It feels like a lot of them were multi-weapon when they shouldn't have been, and there were too little short fun gimmick levels, filled with mostly just kinda get to the end, i still had fun but it was a bit draining.

I've completed story mode and played enough of the various online modes and minigames to get a feel for them, and...wow. Everything about the story mode blew me away - it's a MASSIVE improvement over Hero Mode from the first two games, and in many ways it's an improvement over Octo Expansion as well. I'll avoid details to keep this review spoiler-free, but the story mode really is incredible, and well-worth a play. Maybe even a replay or two, as well.

Turf War battles feel more fluid than ever, partially because of the improvements to the lobby system and partially because of new movement options and less frustrating specials. The controls work great, and the weapons are impressively well-balanced for a game that hasn't had any patches yet. It's easy to join up with friends in their battles, too, which can save a lot of hassle.

Salmon Run is better than it was in Splatoon 2, for sure. It's largely the same, but the new bosses add some variety and the egg throwing mechanic makes things so much more bearable. Where was that mechanic in Splatoon 2???

The other stuff to do is great, too - decorating lockers is fun, getting the right abilities on gear is a lot less annoying, Tableturf Battle is a fun mini-CCG...really the only thing I miss from previous games is Squid Beatz, but its omission is a non-issue with so much extra stuff to do.

Basically, this game is a huge improvement over Splatoon 2 in just about every way, and I already loved Splatoon 2. This is almost certainly my game of the year, and it could even end up my game of the decade. I could easily see myself playing this for 500 or 1000 hours.

[Review written after approximately 30 hours of gameplay, about 10 of which were in the Splatfest World Premiere. Contents subject to change.]

This review contains spoilers

log for the story mode

i soyjacked when they started playing calimari inkantation at the end

what a great campaign, def feels like they took on board what people said about the last ones and the dlc from 2

splatoon 2 but for people who played splatoon 1