Excellent series revival, makes the boss fights fun even without buster, and also has awesome additions like the double gear gimmick being used well, whilst still feeling optional. I used it far less for tricky platforming on this run and I find that to be more rewarding. Also some good lore here for those who care. Robot masters and their weapons all are great (I especially love how you get unique outfits rather than palette swaps), and the parts system is a fun marriage of what 8 introduced alongside 9 and 10’s minor item shops. Only complaint is the final stages are genuinely too little. There’s two full sized ones with their own bosses (though I wish we didn’t do another Yellow Devil. This is 4 classic games in a row (6 if you count &Bass and Powered Up) with a devil boss, and that is beyond tiring. Beyond that? Obligatory boss rush for a third stage, though I’m glad it’s separate from anything of substance, and a hallway that leads into the final bosses. I still adore this game, and it deserves the praise it gets, and the fact that it’s now the best selling in the series. This is how you do a 2.5D revival of your series. Breed familiarity with a unique twist, and design it meticulously. Doesn’t hurt that it’s also just 30 dollars at base, so no one’s being overcharged beyond compare by a 2D side scroller that’s short and replayable. Good as hell replay, I hadn’t revisited this since 2018 and I left loving it even more.

It was great. I think the puzzle solving and physics are rightfully acclaimed, and the atmospheric storytelling really sells it. GLaDOS is hilarious and wonderfully acted, to the shock of no one. Yes, it’s some deadpan and dark humor and some is very 2007, but. It’s fun. I think getting hit with “you’re adopted” in the final boss because it’s just slinging any insult at you is really funny. I do feel like the game’s pacing can be a bit odd at times, as some chambers feel quite juxtaposed with others in their complexity and length, and not always progressively. And this is personal, but some of the reflexes the puzzles can demand of you can be tough to adjust with due to how the physics work and expect you to think up that solution on the fly, and it can be tough. It’s a motor skill thing and it’s not hard to be sensory overloaded by it. It’s minor, but there. Still, an excellent game. It didn’t hit for me as much as I’d have liked or expected it to, when so many people hype it as a “best of all time,” and that does hurt, but not the game, just me. I still really enjoyed it and I’m eager to play its sequel. Oh also I left this on my backlog for 16 months that’s my bad.

Unlike it's predecessor I actually wasnt in the mindset or the hype at all for splatoon 2, I didnt get stoked for leveling up and gaining new content because I was too impatient in getting all the gear I found fun again.. I didnt even peek at the story mode because I simply didnt care much about the story or what happened in it. I liked Marina and Pearl though C: always love the hosts in these games

But even when I feel like I completely whiffed the community this game offered and what made this IP feel special to me drifted off, I still was really surprised with just how much they would change with the structuring of the campaign for splatoon 2 while also keeping a lot of the same DNA from splatoon 1

For starters, MANDATORY weapon usage
This can act as a double edged sword really considering that some levels may feel harder because youre forced to use a weapon you never really thought was that fun to begin with

Sometimes you gain newfound appreciation for some weapons in different modes, like how some of the weapons are much more fun and practical in Ranked modes as opposed to how they feel to use in Turf wars.

This is a running trend throughout these levels and while the bosses are still overall pretty easy (Even the 2nd to last boss didnt kill me and the final boss was cooler but less testing than the first in some ways) I still think they were designed with more Fun in mind than just raw challenge

I think that the little snippets of lore through scrolls
(those and sardines are collectibles in these that youll need to hunt around for if you wanna get fed more of the story since the story itself in splatoon modes aside from octo-expansion dont really clock in to anything more than an NES level of video game plot, yeah this is a long tangent)
are COOL but i also feel like Im simultaneously learning less if not about the same trickled in amount of plot as I would in the first game

They definitely did evolve things going forward though and it's pretty safe to say that when I tackle the 3rd game's campaign Ill probably come out of it with extremely high opinions

Even though the common criticism with this franchise is that it's core formula IS the exact same when it comes to things like turf war at the forefront and splatfests, I think that simplicity and doubling down in thereof shouldnt be chastised but praised. Nintendo clearly doesnt want to fumble but also doesnt want to have this stagnant and I think 3's reception having a lot more boom than the 2nd's is more evident of not just having more content to look forward to and community interactivity but also the fact that people just needed More Time.
This shit dropped like 2-3 years after Splatoon 1 and was coming off as one of the last major wii u games into one of the very first switch games?? I was one of those people that looked at this then and thought it was too similar to the first, but now i just think it really was
wrong place wrong time
I like splatoon 2 :>

I so desperately want to give this a 3 and a half star rating, but I can’t. It may be a good step in some ways, but it’s so regressive in others. The animations and visuals and physics? They’re all there, and the game is a joy to control and look at. The new emerald powers are neat and on the fly, and can sync pretty nicely with level design. The first 7 zones and Frozen Base are actively very fun, but there’s a caveat. It should never be 60 dollars for this game, especially with its issues. Boss design is terrible. Whether it’s long I-Frames which, while I understand them in a multiplayer context, do not belong in single player, or extremely long patterns to simply get a hit in, that is present here, and to a worse extent than it is in other games guilty of this, like Rush and 4 Episode 2. This hits a crescendo with the Golden Capital and Egg Fortress bosses, being about 5 minutes long a piece with no checkpoints and filled with attacks that can blindside you. Level quality also just, takes a big hit after Press Factory. Golden Capital is absolutely a fine zone, but it’s another pinball zone and thus, doesn’t feel unique. Cyber Station, however, is just bad. Be it through pace breaking gimmicks like the squid game and mouse sections, or circuits dropping frames when you exit them, which seems to be intentional, it sucks. Frozen Base’s Phantasy Zone homage is a bit jarring, but mercifully benign and short. Egg Fortress is a fine zone on paper, but there are clear collision issues here that led to me being crushed when I wouldn’t have been. I really enjoyed it until it fell off, in spite of the bosses, though. Soundtrack wise, I’m going to echo the same complaints as everyone. There are good, great songs here, even if there’s less cohesion between act 1 and 2 themes than I would like. However, Jun Sunoe’s tracks are mostly abominable. They’re fine compositions, but use horrible fake Genesis synth and drum instrumentation that’s actively hard on the ears. For example, Speed Jungle’s Sonic act has a genuinely excellent song! You’re not going to hear it though, because Fang’s theme, a horribly synth infested track, interrupts it regularly. Perhaps worst is that when I went to configure the game’s sound, as I do when I get any new game as I’m audio-sensitive, I got blasted by the menu theme, which sounds like a Sega Genesis panting for help. So that was great. It’s a shame that the only track to use this instrumentation well is Sky Temple Zone. Otherwise, it’s other composers doing the heavy lifting, and admittedly producing some bangers. Listen to Speed Jungle Act 1, for example. Tee Lopes has still got it. I’m glad to see a character like Fang return, but I’m sad it’s done with such a bad boss fight and theme. He deserved better. The new character, Trip, is great. You’ll never hear me say otherwise. I think she fits so naturally with the classic cast and aesthetic, and seeing Naoto Oshima design a Sonic character again after 28 years has me beaming with joy. The tragedy is, I did enjoy myself, but the boss fights and probably 1/3 of the OST make replayability feel very slim for me, and that’s a shame when Classic Sonic games ride on this. If some of the jank is patched, I’ll gladly bump this to a 3.5. My heart wants to say it’s a good time beyond the bosses and OST harming replayability, but those issues bled into the level design. I need to make it so crystal clear, I enjoyed a lot here. A simple fact is that my gripes just mounted, and the part of the game I consistently relied on as enjoyable, being level design took a hit in the last 1/3 of the game. I know to many this game is a step forward for the brand, and I get that, but I’m also tired of tolerating steps forward that are littered with flaws, like this and Frontiers. I did enjoy them, but where do we draw the line and get tired? This could have been one of the best Sonic games, and was on track to be a pretty solid 3.5-4/5 rating for me, but still lost the plot. Mania got the formula perfectly, and I swear, with some tweaks, Superstars could have too. I’ll gladly up my rating if they patch some things, but as it stands, it’s just decent, with moments of greatness and some moments of immense frustration. Don’t get this at full price. It shouldn’t have been a 60 dollar game to begin with, especially when other 2.5D retro revivals like Mega Man 11 are 30 at base and are more refined. Just wait for a sale, and maybe even updates before you buy. If nothing else, a solid formula is here, but what needs refining needs to be refined severely.