Back in 2018, Splatoon 2’s Octo Expansion was one of my favourite releases of that year. It turned Splatoon’s core singleplayer gameplay and weapon system on its head, in a way the campaigns only vaguely hinted at - providing ingenious puzzle rooms and a surprisingly steep difficulty curve that finally demonstrated that Nintendo understood & could capitalise on the series’ potential. Leaned into the strengths of Splatoon’s setting too, exploring its bizarre underbelly and fugged vibes. One for the fans of the ‘Rock Bottom’ episode of Spongebob. Seeing Agent 8 in the trailers for this had me a little excited, as Splatoon 3’s campaign was solid but didn’t feel as if it pushed the envelope much, I’ve come to see Agent 8 as Splatoon’s Harbinger of Difficulty and it turns out I wasn’t wrong.

Side Order is cool!! I love the setting (even if it’s basically just something of a play on the Copied City). I found it pretty easy to be excited by the prospect of delving into whatever Nintendo’s idea of a roguelite would be, and it’s a solid foundation but there’s so little variety here I can’t help but find the tower loop a little dry. There are only four mission types, FEELS LIKE there’s only enough individual level layouts for you to see every available one in a single run, and the upgrades you collect as you ascend the floors are merely statistical buffs; “+15% shot speed” type beat. It’s very hard, I like the risk:reward option of choosing harder rooms for better upgrades on top of other chaotic modifiers that can shoehorn you into making rough decisions. As with all roguelites with vertical character progression though, it’s only hard for a while until you power creep your way over roadblocks with permanent character upgrades and such. Numerically overcoming odds always feels cheap to me and I knew my completing the DLC would only be a matter of time investment. Eventually you get the option to retract your upgrades for a prestige reward boost, but I’ll be one hundred percent with you, I don’t like the majority of the weapons in this game and I can not bring myself to be a completionist about this if it means I have to suffer the fucking umbrella. It's all a little undercooked and doesn't have enough to really justify playing over and over for.

Anyway the story is great lol, albeit that there's not a lot of it. The lengths they go to show how much Marina loves Pearl is endlessly cute. She made the currency in her gamedev project “Prlz” maan 🙏🥹. Recalling who won the FinalFest of Splatoon 2 gave me something of a pop-off moment and I’m dying to see how this DLC would have looked if Order won. Endgame is the strongest finale of all of these games yet and that’s honestly a ridiculously high bar. Remix Ebb & Flow forever I will cry every time. Personal favourite soundtrack in the series, too! I love how heavily it leans into its dark ethereal sleep paralysis ambiance. LOVE how the hub/training areas have little environmental tells for the instrumentation in the bgm.

Bit of an easier roguelite, but was still fun and felt well balanced! Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe Nintendo has developed a game in this genre before. I really enjoyed the grind while it lasted, but there are tons of unlockables to keep players coming back.

Also, you could reduce the roguelite parts of Side Order if you wanted. There are options to buy lives and continues. It's nice to see accessibility for players who may not play roguelites /likes, but I chose not to use these options. Side Order is plenty do-able on one life with good luck!

After 10 years I'm starting to think the fact that a serial abuser, four groomers/pedos, an e-beggar, an alt-right chud, and two actual sociopaths in my life all loved osu! might not be a coincidence.

Also when I watched some official osu! tournament in like 2013-2014 on Twitch, the presenter accidentally went to their desktop and the background was some loli in a bikini so there's that. I guess that's not very surprising though since every other map has scantily-clad lolis as the background.

At least I had fun for the thousands of hours I put into this oh wait no I didn't, good riddance, give me back 250GB+ of hard drive space on your way out