I have never played a Splatoon before this one and the on boarding for new players is insanely bad. You can spawn specific places on the map? I had no idea. Any way to tell how you're doing combat wrong? Well, TTK is so small you're likely falling over dead before you get anything meaningful to work with.

It's a shame the core of the game doesn't gel with me. Because the aesthetic is awesome. The city vibes and the characters are fantastic. The single player didn't do much to ignite my imagination with such a cool setting though. I imagine multiplayer would be rewarding after a few more hours, but I honestly just don't feel compelled to muddle through any more of the game.

It's actually really fun but ran into 2 hiccups I didn't expect:

First, there's the fact that despite me not playing Pokemon with any real fanaticism, I found it's hard to replace my love of the dumb creatures. Some of these are quite cute, but just can't cut it.

Even stranger still though is my second knock - this game is hard, and I like challenging games, but something in my brain is hardwired to want Pokemon and Pokemon adjacent games to offer little challenge. I like them because they're a relaxing time. The challenge makes my brain need to work a lot and honestly I think I'd rather play an smt or persona game if I wanted challenging turn-based combat.

I realize both these problems are hugely subjective but it really kept the game from "clicking" for me.

Fun old school, but the magic system is kinda busted. What started as a fun idea doesn't devolves into rather silly book keeping by the end as you manage all the spell sheets and have to check your notes on prefix and suffix. Still, it did something really cool and unique in the space (especially at the time) and I appreciate the game for it. I'm also a sucker for environmentally conscious stories.

I'd wish it would get the live a live hd treatment where they tune up a couple of those rough edges and the game would really shine.