Side Order is a stark contrast from the usual Splatoon campaign and I really appreciate that though I hope this isn’t the move going forward, I really did like this though, just prefer the formula of Octo Expansion of Splatoon 3’s regular story mode.

As a roguelike there isn’t any weapon centred levels and it’s quite unbalanced depending on what weapon you use, you’re going to struggle with a short range weapon a lot here not even to a fun degree. Regardless with the standard mid range weapons this game is really fun and challenging, picking the difficulty when given the opportunity was nice but also if you kept choosing easy or normal you get punished in the long run with rigourus challenges! I found myself going for hard missions most the time but if the ball missions were on rigourus I would always do that.

The story here is simple but let’s be real nobody is playing this for the story, they’re playing it for the challenge and fun. The skill card system is awesome but I found Pearl’s drone to be useless most of the time also I wish the new Splat 3 hosts were prevelant in this story mode but nope it’s Pearl and Marina for the 4th time, which yeah makes sense story wise but come on.

Overall I’m satisfied with this and had a lot of fun and rage with it at times but I don’t feel enough to do a full review here.