woomy
I hate Splatoon multiplayer. I’m not great at it, and it gets me very heated, so I essentially avoid it after the first couple months, I make myself a character, all good to go.
I LOVE Splatoon singleplayer. So so so so so so much. Splatoon is essentially a singleplayer experience for me, and I am ok and content with that. I also love roguelikes! So when the DLC is a roguelike (with best idols as the feature), it’s peak. Ignore the fact it took me a while to beat it that’s how ADHD works. Anyways, I have a format that I think I’ve made now, so I’m going to do said format
Roguelike :)))))) I love these! I already said this! There’s not much to say other than it certainly is a tower where I get more upgrades and create silly broken builds and I love that! Drone and Lucky Combo was my favorite cause I could just make inkstrike and special and bomb spam and nobody could stand a chance against me, it was super fun. Roller was my favorite weapon for this reason too (I also beat the tower with roller first so that might be part of it). The game def takes a few runs to really get going but like, I can’t hold that against it?? That’s what the genre is. You start to unlock shit and it starts to ramp up and that’s the fun. I got frustrated at times on certain levels, and especially the rigorous ones on earlier runs get very very exhausting (I had to take a lot of breathers cause my hands would get sore), but that’s not really like… a bad thing. I expect this genre to make me work. When I was going through with all of the different weapons, it was nice that each felt different enough, especially with the color biases, to make each run for 100% fresh (HA) feeling.
Murch was NOT cooking with his loadout though how the fuck does that dude play irl it took me so much fire speed up chips and changing his whole loadout to make that feel ANY good
Pearl and Marina :)))))))) They’re my favorite idols. They’re the best ones. I get more of them and even more Marina backstory and I’m not upset about it. Dedf1sh/Acht was a really cool addition and I’m glad they’re expanding on characters that were previously just musicians. I found their whole shtick of “Thank god you’re here Eight otherwise these two might just start making out in front of me and I can’t handle that”. It was funny. Order was a very cool force, and even as Smollusk with his stwupid wittle baby voice (DISCLAIMER: I ENJOYED IT) was a neat little character, just a program doing what it’s supposed to do.
The best part of this DLC’s story is its worldbuilding and continuity from the last DLC expansion from 2. Seeing them acknowledge the Octoling society exodus, AND all of the sanitized people??? That’s super cool! Marina showing off more of the skill they talk about constantly with her creating this whole program and working to fight against it is awesome. I appreciate how they tied the gameplay being constant runs into the story, each complete run giving you more and more details on what created Order, why everything is the way it is. Of course, that is also what makes it a little frustrating at the start, because you want to see the story but you have to play the game more to really get it going. It’s what happens, so like, whatever, but I do wish for the story’s sake alone I could have sped my progress up A LITTLE (the solution is to git gud).
It’s fucking Splatoon. Of course the music is peak. I loved the empty sounding songs, the evil printer techno, the super hype club beats while you are dying, it’s hype! My favorite song was Parallel Canon :)
Part of the reason I love Splatoon is the ocean theming, I love sea creatures. I thought it was really cool how they made irl dying coral reefs into the theme, combining it with the digital and technology aspect of grayscaling, it’s such a cool combination of theming that only Splatoon can do. Speaking of, the attention to detail in this DLC (and really the series as a whole) is INCREDIBLE. The app icons, the programs Marina using being actually recognizable as real programs, the demonstrations showing off character with the silly little anime eyes, there’s just so much to look at in every point. The text and writing has also always been a strength of Splatoon, and Side Order just continues to deliver. I loved all the enemy names being musical terms, the puns are always great, the extra dialogue in the menus as you unlock and kill enemies, and even Overlorder’s title changing as you do more runs??? It’s so cool and it all gives you more motivation to continue to play more. This game is a charming joy with one of the most unique settings I’ve seen, and the DLC just gives me more of what I love.
10/10. Continued supply of Splatoon and Roguelike goodness with a jelle-ton of charm (I’m funny!)