Just cleared credits on Hero Mode, the single player story mode. In short, Splatoon is a 3rd Person Shooter, following an inkling squid kid who paints terrain by shooting enemies, floors and walls with paint guns alongside other arsenal like buckets, rollers and brushes.

There’s many modes, Turf Wars probably being the most popular - working competitive in a group of four to cover the most terrain against a rivalling group.

This is mostly a Single Player review, since I’ve rolled credits on that and are still working towards playing the other modes. The single player campaign is always a good time, they’re on the level of the bonus stages of Super Mario Sunshine in terms of platforming but with much more versatility in movement.

The catch in Splatoon 3 is the exploration available in the hub areas, this used to be a matter of exploring zones to find the levels hidden in invisible grates.

Whereas the zones in Splatoon 3 are covered in fuzzy goo which will kill you upon touch, only your buddy small-fry can eat the goo when you amass enough disposable points to wipe them away. It creates an addictive pull between finishing missions to get more points and using them to clear more terrain to unlock mode levels, bonuses like decorations, playing cards and improving the music for each zone as you uncover the terrain - it’s subtle detail but cool addition. Sunken Scrolls are now hidden in the over world meaning stages can be speedrun without needed to check behind every single corner to find a collectable!

The stages themselves are like the Octo Expansion, you start in a desalination box basically with a choice of load-out for the mission. I like replaying stages with different load-outs for the full completion status and nothing else really. The story fills some gaps in the lore, namely Mr. Grizz and evolution of the inklings with some character info drops.

I really enjoyed the single player and are looking forward to more Octo Expansion tiered difficulty. Only towards the end did the levels become more difficult and enjoyable.

after abandoning it originally back in 2022 when it came out, thanks to xenoblade 3 and its amazing side content consuming my life, I have finally come back and finished the main story of splatoon 3. i needed a game to hold me over until No Rest For The Wicked released. and wow, yeah, i should've finished it sooner. that finale was fucking awesome. the singleplayer is, of course, quite fun. the lore was actually super sick this time around too! but man... nothing about this game shouts innovation to me. nothing about it seems worthy of an entire new game on the same system as the last game. its basically just doing the splatoon 1/2 singleplayers again, with some octo expansion type levels in there too, but now with smallfry (who i barely used outside of clearing fuzzy ooze). and thats just... disappointing to me. even the multiplayer is basically just more of the same. Its not like i wanted them to remove the previous gamemodes, but they couldn't at least add a couple? we got clam blitz out of Splatoon 2, but we got no new gamemodes here, and barely anything else new in the game either. it really sucks to see. I love this series, been a fan since the early days of splatoon 1! so I say this from a place of love: despite it being a great game, i just can't help but feel let down. I still need to play side order, that very well could be the originality i'm looking for like octo expansion was for splatoon 2, but until then... lets just hope that splatoon 4 is more than this.

A lot of my problems with this game are things lifted from Splatoon 2, and tripled down on. As a quick recap - 2's Maps are smaller and WAY more focused on nonstop PVP. Splatoon as a concept was designed originally for people who weren't really into traditional shooters, the maps in the original game were big enough to give you breathing room and genuinely strategize on how to help your team even if you couldn't 1v4 the enemy. Now in 3 maps are so cramped that some barely even feature floors to heckin ink dude. It's a nonstop teamfight and it sucks. I was never this actively frustrated playing 1 or even 2 despite the problem cropping up there. Even games where my team ends up winning I find I'm just straight up not having any fun.
Sploon 3's improvements are small but felt really cool at first. The lobby is nice, not locking hairstyles to gender is HUGE for making the male inkling a viable aesthetic choice. The hub is unnecessarily large which is nice coming off of 2's miniscule hub. Salmon run is more properly integrated and feels worth playing now. There's more to unlock than ever with a rotating free battle pass and daily loot box along with a fully customizable locker.

But at the end of the day, I find I'm only playing for worthless FOMO content. They really have us out here grinding for 50+ hours for a dabbing emote, png's, and objects to put in your locker that do absolutely nothing. Man having 2 of these games on the same console already really harshes the "keep it FRESH" counter culture anti-online shooter nature the series was founded on...But if I'm gonna be grinding out meaningless slop content I'd probably genuinely have a better time playing one of this game's contemporaries that have got this trash down to a science. Another splatoon comes and goes and I'm still a bit let down by how few stand out character customization options there are. Ten years of them drip feeding just a morsel of new pants and hairstyle options and almost nothing else has me going delirious.

And while I enjoy Salmon run's implementation more here...What the hecc is big run? I kept hearing people clamoring for it for a few months and we finally get it and it's just Salmon Run but on one of the turf war maps? Is this where we are that we're waiting months for lazy asset flip content? I just don't get it.

Complete with a fourth campaign that I've lost any and all tolerance for. An absolute snoozefest that's supposedly taking after the octo expansion? Idk, the octo expansion was already taking after base splatoon 2, which was "inspired" by the nothing single player of the original game. Batting 0 for 4 with no legitimate improvements here had me feeling burnt out and not wanting to even finish the incredibly short campaign. It's got some actual boss fights so it's better than octo expansion I guess, can't say I remember anything about any of 'em besides one of them being a mario sunshine reference - Love when mid games reference significantly better games to inject artificially positive feelings~ The lore additions aren't as interesting as Octo Expansion though so eh it's really whatever.

Splatoon 2 was carried for me by Pearl and Marina, their dialogue/dynamic made the Splatfests fun to participate in. I didn't even once use any of the crystal mushroom things you get, I just enjoyed playing 'em for the sake of it. That and the devs basically admitted they ruined turf war by making the only good turf war maps exclusive to the splatfests. They were a highlight of 2 that gave me the fun I needed to have positive associations with the game. This time around there's no splatfest exclusive maps, so even these events are hurt by the pvp first focus that Splatoon as a concept was designed to not be about. And I really tried but I just can't get into the new idols. I barely even know what they're babbling about half the time and I find their dialogue pretty dry and I don't really closely identify with any of them enough to fight for their side. The prompts are pretty mid and the system doesn't seem very well thought out as they've had to change it four times already. There was criticism towards how 2's victor was handled but I never felt like what I did didn't matter like in 3. 2's results being rigged was more of a conspiracy theory and in-joke than legitimate major design issues that hurt the experience much. Just like the normal game itself, Sploon 3 has me annoyed and feeling empty even when I do win. For the first time I found myself actively not caring when a Splatfest came around. I've done a handful of them but the tri battles aren't strong enough in their implementation to carry how nothing the rest of the experience is now. In 1 and 2 I always tried so hard to participate in as many splatfests as possible, rarely missing one. But 3? Yawn. Callie and Marie are sisters, Pearl and Marina are all but confirmed dating (I'm not usually a shipping type but I love these 2), but these 3 feel like co-workers that are at most throwing very surface level competitive jabs, not able to really cut very deep at any point. Pearl and Marina would get so fired up but these 3 sometimes can't even decide what side they themselves want to be on. 2's so quotable and full of lines that catch you off guard. 3's dialogue feels so phoned in and devoid of stakes.

Hec they let you skip the news now so that's probably why they put less effort into a good localization. Gamers just wanna grind their CONTENT they don't want EFFORT just let them GRIND. Genuinely any change to make the majority happy is a bad decision when it comes to gaming. I remember people debating the Japanese culture of curated experiences when the original game came out. America likes to preach the customer is always right, but anyone who's worked anywhere can tell you, they most certainly are not. I'll take a nonconventional approach made to give a legitimate experience over something that sheepishly gives into peer pressure and gives us nothing. Make Splatoon 4's news screens twice as long as 2's to filter out half the audience please. They've got restaurants in Japan where you have to literally catch your own fish before it gets cooked. Americans above the age of 40 can't even handle self check out machines that have been around for 20 years man don't listen to us.

The idea that I've just outgrown the series popped into my head so when I went to go visit my family I dug out their now extremely crusty, disheveled wiiU who's gamepad can NOT hold a charge to save its life...And I just had a blast playing the original game. Instead of the unfun uphill 1v4 feeling of modern Splatoon I was inking the walls and strategizing and flanking. With maps and weapons that were expansive enough to foster a healthy level of direct combat instead of it being the ENTIRE focus...And without all the slop slapped on to justify the existence of a sequel it just felt like a coherent experience instead of a complete chaotic mess. I wasn't just hopelessly grinding battle passes like any other generic online game...I was just playing because it was inherently fun, because the first Sploon was made to be the exact opposite of the unfun state online shooters had found themselves in. Watched a compilation of all the Splatfest debates 2 had and it was consistently a joy to revisit, and I'm so glad I was there to play them all live. I have my problems with 2 but it was a really fun game to follow. Here we are at the third installment and not only is it not fresh anymore, the series itself has forgotten why it was made to begin with and became what it used to stand against.

On a somewhat positive note I guess, I'll never understand the universal hatred Nintendo's online gets. Obviously it varies on location I'm sure and I don't wanna completely white knight them. It's a topic that warrants its own focused essay to properly do justice...But in most cases Nintendo's online works just fine. If it was truly anywhere near as bad as reputation would imply the Switch itself would never have popped off, a huge percentage of the library is online-first in its focus and the games are good BECAUSE the online is there. Like yeah they're missing some standard conventions in a lot of cases but if I wanna play mario kart online I can do that, same with mario party, tennis, smash, splatoon. It literally just works. Tends to be pretty no frills attached but Nintendo has ALWAYS competed with a high amount of actual games to play. 20$ a year with the Switch's lineup is giving a lot more value than over three times the cost on the competitor's side. That said sploon 3 succ I genuinely prefer Foamstars by a landslide 'boutta drop 100$ to play that online for a year or something 'cuz my PSPlus expired this month and I sad that I'm stucc with sploon 3 when Foamstars is a much better designed game in almost every way. But uh, +1 to the online working perfectly fine, Nintendo's online is no different than any of the other guys. I say as an American who's pretty sure we have some of the most genuinely trash internet options in the world in a lot of states.

Oh yeah they added some card mode thing. Was kinda into it and was waiting for them to add online matchmaking to it. Don't think that even ended up happening, so yawn.

Also dog did they really announce paid DLC that lets you use the hub world from the first game and then you'd have to wait a whole year for yet another mediocre single player experience? Was that any good? Dunno if I'll ever bother with it 'cuz this series really just gets worse every time they put out more content. Idk if I've just lost all tolerance but updates for this game in general really felt abysmally slow. Less dripfeed over a long time and more...absolutely nothing for months then the updates don't feel big enough to warrant the wait. I'll prolly look into it soon 'cuz Chaos winning the final splatfest in the previous game felt like it was leading up to something really exciting. Pearl went on about how things staying the same predictable thing is LAME. Leading into the most safe, inoffensive game in the series is such a missed opportunity. Splatoon 2's canonical ending we all fought for was an excuse for 3 to be completely insane and change everything. Then maybe it wouldn't have been such a nothing sequel fighting an uphill battle to justify itself.

-You're a kid now, you're a focus tested milked dry franchise with all positive qualities drained out noooowwww, you're a kid now, you're a-

okay so good vibes first :
- great solo campaign, awesome soundtrack, looks as good as ever with some fun new characters, some awaited QOL improvements and as always the base gameplay is extremely fun.
but I still end being a bit frustrated with the fact Splatoon's subsequent entries end up not feeling like enough has changed to warrant getting a third game in the series so quickly. to me, the fact that Splatoon 2 and 3 are so similar and exist on the same console is just.... so bizarre to me. and it's like, yeah the game's good and has improved somewhat and has a different identity from 2, but at the end of the day it's just more Splatoon? idk, I kinda wish I didn't drop the game as soon as I did.