Splatoon Raiders Review - Style Without Enough Substance
Selfishly, I’d been really hoping that the Splatoon franchise would head in the direction that it has with Splatoon Raiders. I’ve never been a big fan of the competitive multiplayer of previous Splatoon titles, and the single-player campaigns that came with both Splatoon 2 and Splatoon 3 were fine, but nothing extraordinary. No, the Splatoon franchise needed something cooperative, a reason to party up with others for a shared objective, and that’s exactly what Splatoon Raiders is. While there’s plenty of room for improvement should Nintendo opt to develop another Raiders title in the future, the foundations are incredibly solid, and a lot of fun will be found, especially in co-op play.
If you were hoping that a more campaign-focused Splatoon game would give you a more profound story, you would be wrong. As a mechanic, you’re joined by Deep Cut (Shiver, Frye, and Big Man – introduced in Splatoon 3) in an endeavour to explore the Spirhalite Islands, which have seen a lot of tectonic activity in recent times, and it has flushed out a lot of treasure for the group to uncover. The expedition doesn’t begin well, though, with a violent hurricane bringing the group’s helicopter to ground, forcing the group to form a base, explore for the treasures nestled within the nest of clustered islands, and prepare their helicopter to leave. Salmonids again stand in the way, and players will need to overcome this fishy threat in order to recover and extract the treasure. The story itself is pretty wafer-thin, and the amount of dialogue is pretty excessive, so it might become tempting to skip cutscenes and mash your way through the waffling of Deep Cut just to move onto your next mission.
The meat of the Splatoon Raiders experience is, of course, the gameplay, and while Raiders plays similarly to core Splatoon entries, it’s the context that changes everything. Each island raid (and there are plenty of islands to explore with multiple different opportunities on each) could see you completing any of five types of missions. Firstly, there is the standard treasure hunt, where you venture out to hunt for lost relics. Second is a large crystal mining excursion, which culminates in cracking open a mega-sized crystal and extracting a tonne of valuable upgrade components (sphiralite shards) from it. You can also chase Sphiralite gems from Salmonid dens and visit a range of Salmonid-infested ruins to collect three relics. These four different mission types offer re-runs for greater loot, opportunities to level up, and to uncover new equipment to utilise on subsequent runs.
While the raids themselves are engaging and different enough from each other, there is still a lack of overall variety, leading to a bit of fatigue. Nintendo had one of two options to improve the game in this respect. They could have either shortened the 15-to 18-hour game a bit by scaling the number of missions back, or designed some other mission types, just to prevent things from getting stale. Should they return to the Raiders formula again, a few additions to the rotation of missions would have allowed the game to go the distance and “Stay Fresh!” throughout.
Your inkling can be customised, as can your weapon of choice, as well as the various gadgets that you can develop and bring as alternate weapons to your standard splattering tool of choice. Each gadget falls under one of three overall categories, linked to a different type of ink tank: the Power Tank, the Tactical Tank, and the Speed Tank. Each can be upgraded in time by accumulating enough power eggs (currency for beating Salmonids) and by collecting enough sphiralite, as well as some other lesser currencies; you’ll be upping your arsenal before you know it. Different relic powers can also be attached to your gadgets to boost their natural perks further, granting the player extra agency to tailor the combat experience to suit their strengths.
The standard Splatoon range of weapon types is present here for Raiders, from the iconic splattergun to dual-shot pistols, rollers, and more. There’s a lot of aesthetic variety to the weapons that make each look a little distinct from the others. You will also have the ability to bring a bot buddy along with you, which powers up over time in combat, and when at maximum power, can unleash one of a range of abilities that each of the members of Deep Cut brings to the table. Think of these as being the over-the-top super moves that you can unleash in case of emergency.
While Splatoon Raiders can wear itself a bit thin when played solo, it is in the game’s multiplayer that the most fun can be found. Partying up with others and tackling larger-sized hordes or more powerful (or both!) waves of salmonids never ceases to be a challenge and a joy, akin to taking on monsters as a group in Monster Hunter. It will take coordination, communication, practice, and a little sprinkling of luck to take down all of the threats and succeed in a run, but it never ceases to put a smile on your face as you and your peers are soaking the arena in ink, blasting your way towards success or impending doom.
Finally, for those who are well acquainted with Splatoon games, you’ll be familiar with the lively explosions of others, the contrasting neons splashing against each other, and the vibrant stylings of the creatures in the world. Everything pops in Splatoon Raiders, and with more diverse environments than ever before, it’s great to see how the ability to cover every location from top to bottom in flashy colours works even in this setting. The garbled voice acting of Splatoon has never been to my taste, so it didn’t win me over here and, when paired with the forgettable dialogue, left me feeling no regrets as I mashed my way through the voice acting. The sound effects implemented, many lifted from previous Splatoon games, always hit the mark, as does the game’s bubbly soundtrack.
Splatoon Raiders is colourful, chaotic, frantic and fun, but it just doesn’t offer enough for the solo player. Where the limited suite of options is sufficient for those partnering up to play, the single-player experience wears a bit thin after ten hours, while the spike in difficulty at the game’s conclusion is far from the typical level of Nintendo fairness to younger Nintendo players. There’s a lot of fun and a lot of depth to the Splatoon Raiders experience, and if there were a bit more variety available, this game could really have had some long-term sticking value.
Splatoon Raiders was reviewed on Nintendo Switch 2 with a code kindly provided by Nintendo Australia.
