Review: Splatoon 3: Return of the Mammalians

by · October 4, 2022

Splatoon 3
Splatoon 3

Warning, this review will contain spoilers for the story mode. You have been warned.

 

Splatoon 3 has been a major time sink for me. A lot of it is because of the story mode. Maybe it’s just because I like how the levels are paced. Each level is placed into a kettle. These kettles are unlocked in a linear fashion leading up to the boss kettle. Some levels are more combat focused and other levels are more puzzle based, but there usually tends to be a good amount of variety within these levels. The final encounters have also been a huge thrill and are set up perfectly

The Fourth level was interesting. You can see the goal right in front of you. Yet there was a lot more than you might expect. Credit to Nintendo

Splatoon 3 story mode is an interesting case. The tutorial world follows the level style of the previous two games. For example, the 4th level is a series of encounters made more difficult after each checkpoint. The final checkpoint sees you hunting the encounters down in a pillar filled room. Yes, it is simple, but it works well for a tutorial level.

 

A New World, New Issues

After the tutorial levels, the hero is sent to Alterna. This is where the level of creativity picks up. However, a lot of the levels become what I will call “One-Shots”. These are short levels that work around one encounter, gimmick, or puzzle. Boss fights do not fall under this category because each boss fight has at least three stages, which means there are three different beats.

The good news is that the “One-Shots” have so much variation, very few of them feel the same. There is a level that only lasts for one shot. There is another level which consists of removing crates to match a sculpture. While the length varies, there is not much pacing for any of them. One exception I can give is to one where the user paints a moai head. Once 20% is painted, Platforms rise up to give you access to the rest of the head.

The Moai head looks really cool! But aside from this one event, there is not really any “beats” to this level. Credit to Nintendo

 

This does not mean that all the levels are that simple. Some of my favorite levels were the longer, harder levels that involved fighting or solving puzzles with a given weapon. Even if these levels focused more on combat or puzzles, there are enough variety of these kettles to where by the end of the game the user has played decent amount of each.

I went through each level in world 1 and marked if I thought it was mostly puzzle, mostly combat, or something else. 6 was an outlier as it was more platforming than puzzle.

But sadly, that is where my main gripe comes in. by the time I reached world 6 (the last World before “the final stretch”), I had skipped a decent amount of these levels. because only the boss kettles are required to reach the end game, this means someone who just wants to get it over with will not experience enough variety to be happy.

Arguably one of my favorite levels in this game. There isn’t a lot of combat or puzzles: Just getting from point A to point B. And that mix is what makes it so good. Credit to Nintendo

 

The Perfect End

Now, I want to talk about the final stretch. Just like Octo Expansion before it, the final boss is blocked off by a gauntlet of four levels. While meant to be done in one go, you can skip any level you have already beaten if you ever need to quit.

The first level is a blend of puzzle and combat as you try to pave the way and the feet enemies using only a sub weapon. The second level is plowing through waves of enemies using all of the specials available to you in the story. Third is a decent combat trial on three different elevators. And the 4th is a perfect blend of puzzle and combat as you have to carefully navigate deadly ooze and fight your way up to the heart of the operation.

Diagram marking the different beats I found in the final stretch, including walks between levels. Level 4 is odd as it technically is two levels. But as you cannot skip the first half if you haven’t beaten the second half, I count it as one.

These levels feel like a celebration of your accomplishments. These levels are also paced better than anything else in the main game. one of the main reasons for that is each level is separated buy a break. While walking from one level to the next the protagonist and antagonists talk to each other, explaining their motivations for their actions as well as hyping up the final boss, whose face has never been revealed until their boss fight.

Not only are you slowly trekking to reach your opponent, you are also looking at the world below. It is a nice break between levels that both calms me down and hypes me up. Credit to Nintendo.

 

Final Thoughts

I do not know how I would try to improve this. If I changed all the levels to work like the tutorial ones, I would have to make sure that every weapon available to the player could beat these levels. That severely limits creativity in what I can do as well as Losing the fresh ideas that the mode so badly needed.

All in all, I enjoyed my experience with Splatoon 3’s Story mode. While beating every single level became a chore (I left out “One Way Trip to Target Town” for a reason, the ones I did mention stood out enough to be of note. And boy is there a lot to note. The end game is paced really well, but the beginning leaves a lot to be desired. The balance between too repetitive and too much is a thin line with this series, and it is hard to say if there is a better way to handle what they did or not.

 

updated 10-6-2022: Added diagrams to better visualize my explanations, as well as other formatting fixes.

Splatoon 3 is available on the Switch.

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