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.