This review contains spoilers
Single player: VAST improvement over 2's base game story mode. Levels are more akin to Octo Expansion than they are 1 and 2's hero modes, and that's much to its benefit; they're short and sweet challenges that have unique ways of testing your skill, introducing mechanics that teach you about the game's weapons without feeling deliberately like a bloated tutorial. Levels being comprised of floating assortments of debris and memorabilia from our modern society, apart from just looking really cool, really helps sell the whole far future society. The overworld is really fun to explore and very nice to look at, and finding every little secret never really felt boring, but having to throw little buddy around everywhere to find the hidden capsule gets a little tedious.
I really wish they hadn't marketed the story mode as heavily as they did, because it really would've made the twist at the start feel more surprising, intentionally designed to feel like the story mode in the first two games as a bait and switch, down to the wasteland aesthetic, the familiar sounding music, and Octavio's boss fight being a miniature copy of his original battles. Beyond that, the writing just had me smiling the whole way through; personally, as a long-time Splatoon fan, I had a dumb grin on my face during pretty much every cutscene.
Multiplayer: Also huge upgrades over 2 on pretty much every aspect. The squid form has always been one of its outstanding mechanics over other shooter games, driving home the game's emphasis on movement options, but despite that, there wasn't really a whole lot to it other than swimming and sneaking. The introduction of the squid surge and the squid roll raises the skill ceiling of the game pretty significantly, making walls less awkward to maneuver and making strafing more interesting. Salmon Run has also gotten some technique improvements in the double-edged sword that is throwing; it feels incredibly satisfying when your whole team is passing along eggs from the shore to the finish amidst all the salmonoids trying to get in your way. If you were hoping SR would be more chaotic, I'd say this game delivered. The new specials are much better balanced overall than the previous games, with the best ones no longer serving as panic buttons or a free shot to advance. Much more strategy is involved with each one, and because of that, they all feel more rewarding to use and fair to compete against. My biggest gripe beyond the constant connection errors is that some weapons just have pretty bad specials/sub weapons to compliment them, so plenty of weapons just aren't going to be that good until they get their variants.
With gear, there seems to be a lot more convenience involved overall, with the opportunity to change the main ability of gear now available, and an easier time grinding out ability chunks, looking stylish and playing optimally is now on the table.
Also: MPU is gone. Thank god.
Also also: Ranking up isn't super annoying, it seems, which is another plus.
With lockers and titles, you can really tell that this game was handled by the Animal Crossing dev team, with the locker system functioning a lot like a tiny AC house that peers into the player's personality (unless they just threw a moyai in there), and titles work just about identically to how they do in New Horizons.
Overall, I'd say this is a very worthwhile purchase, and will probably be even more worthwhile when/if they figure out all the problematic disconnection issues. It may be too soon to judge the game on its multiplayer front when it's only been out for a few days, but I've still been having a good time. For old fans, this is a no brainer, and for everyone who was interested in Splatoon before or might've been pushed away by the flaws of the previous titles, this might be worth checking out.
I really wish they hadn't marketed the story mode as heavily as they did, because it really would've made the twist at the start feel more surprising, intentionally designed to feel like the story mode in the first two games as a bait and switch, down to the wasteland aesthetic, the familiar sounding music, and Octavio's boss fight being a miniature copy of his original battles. Beyond that, the writing just had me smiling the whole way through; personally, as a long-time Splatoon fan, I had a dumb grin on my face during pretty much every cutscene.
Multiplayer: Also huge upgrades over 2 on pretty much every aspect. The squid form has always been one of its outstanding mechanics over other shooter games, driving home the game's emphasis on movement options, but despite that, there wasn't really a whole lot to it other than swimming and sneaking. The introduction of the squid surge and the squid roll raises the skill ceiling of the game pretty significantly, making walls less awkward to maneuver and making strafing more interesting. Salmon Run has also gotten some technique improvements in the double-edged sword that is throwing; it feels incredibly satisfying when your whole team is passing along eggs from the shore to the finish amidst all the salmonoids trying to get in your way. If you were hoping SR would be more chaotic, I'd say this game delivered. The new specials are much better balanced overall than the previous games, with the best ones no longer serving as panic buttons or a free shot to advance. Much more strategy is involved with each one, and because of that, they all feel more rewarding to use and fair to compete against. My biggest gripe beyond the constant connection errors is that some weapons just have pretty bad specials/sub weapons to compliment them, so plenty of weapons just aren't going to be that good until they get their variants.
With gear, there seems to be a lot more convenience involved overall, with the opportunity to change the main ability of gear now available, and an easier time grinding out ability chunks, looking stylish and playing optimally is now on the table.
Also: MPU is gone. Thank god.
Also also: Ranking up isn't super annoying, it seems, which is another plus.
With lockers and titles, you can really tell that this game was handled by the Animal Crossing dev team, with the locker system functioning a lot like a tiny AC house that peers into the player's personality (unless they just threw a moyai in there), and titles work just about identically to how they do in New Horizons.
Overall, I'd say this is a very worthwhile purchase, and will probably be even more worthwhile when/if they figure out all the problematic disconnection issues. It may be too soon to judge the game on its multiplayer front when it's only been out for a few days, but I've still been having a good time. For old fans, this is a no brainer, and for everyone who was interested in Splatoon before or might've been pushed away by the flaws of the previous titles, this might be worth checking out.