This review contains spoilers
Unfortunately held back by the inherent flaws seen in any other roguelike, where level design kinda has to accomodate for every single possible weapon, so you don't see a lot of unique layouts because of that, rather only seeing stages where some weapons are superior and other weapons are annoying at worst, but never impossible; definitely makes this DLC stand out less than Octo Expansion in my eyes, where every level was deliberately designed around a strict set of challenges best achieved by a selection of a few different weapons
Of course another classic roguelike paradigm is having a run live or die on your luck with upgrades, or level setups, or what have you; a problem that could boil down to "skill issues" but also doesn't feel very satisfying when you can't learn anything from a run where bad luck made you lose or a run where good luck made you win
Another issue is how repetitive the game feels in objectives, having only like 4 different ones to choose from and then only a whopping 4 bosses (2 of which are randomly picked for each run, and the final boss doesn't change); for something that was hyped up for over a year I don't think it really lived up to it
That said, as a person who both likes roguelikes and loves Splatoon, this is still a very fun campaign, and they absolutely deliver on giving us more gay cephalopod content; despite all the words I wrote that would lead people to believe I hated this expansion, I found myself having a lot of fun with the synergies you can accomplish with the color chips
If you either A: hate roguelikes, B: hate Splatoon, C: are homophobic, or D: are a combination of the three choices, don't bother with this
EDIT: Beat the game with every palette, my main complaints still stand but Agent 8's palette offers a really unique challenge, especially if you pair it up with the risky rewards upgrade; definitely worth giving challenge runs a shot for this I think
Also gonna dock points for having just so little interesting lore bits, we really only get characterization for Acht and Off The Hook; Agent 8 gets very little, Agent 4 gets even less, and Cipher is just a dude
They didn't top Octo Expansion, but let's be real: will they ever?
Of course another classic roguelike paradigm is having a run live or die on your luck with upgrades, or level setups, or what have you; a problem that could boil down to "skill issues" but also doesn't feel very satisfying when you can't learn anything from a run where bad luck made you lose or a run where good luck made you win
Another issue is how repetitive the game feels in objectives, having only like 4 different ones to choose from and then only a whopping 4 bosses (2 of which are randomly picked for each run, and the final boss doesn't change); for something that was hyped up for over a year I don't think it really lived up to it
That said, as a person who both likes roguelikes and loves Splatoon, this is still a very fun campaign, and they absolutely deliver on giving us more gay cephalopod content; despite all the words I wrote that would lead people to believe I hated this expansion, I found myself having a lot of fun with the synergies you can accomplish with the color chips
If you either A: hate roguelikes, B: hate Splatoon, C: are homophobic, or D: are a combination of the three choices, don't bother with this
EDIT: Beat the game with every palette, my main complaints still stand but Agent 8's palette offers a really unique challenge, especially if you pair it up with the risky rewards upgrade; definitely worth giving challenge runs a shot for this I think
Also gonna dock points for having just so little interesting lore bits, we really only get characterization for Acht and Off The Hook; Agent 8 gets very little, Agent 4 gets even less, and Cipher is just a dude
They didn't top Octo Expansion, but let's be real: will they ever?