Splatoon 3 received two waves of DLC in it's expansion pass. The first wave contained the Splatoon 1 plaza as a hub world option and that released on February 28th 2023. While the second wave contained a new story expansion called Side Order , which released February 22nd 2024. Today I will be reviewing the Side Order part as I feel that is really what the DLC pack is for. Side order is a new single player mode. As stated by the title, it is a roguelike experience, where players must face a series of challenges without loosing. How well does this work for Splatoon? Well, I can give you my thoughts on how I feel about it now as I have fully completed the DLC.
~ Positives ~
Clean Art Direction - The game goes for a mostly monochrome look featuring many blacks and whites with splashes of colour for the main characters and the player's ink. The way they have pulled it off is very aesthetically pleasing, the player's ink really pops from the other elements. The enemies all look very interesting and quite different from what we have seen before from Splatoon. This is a nice change as we are so used to seeing the Octarians. The environments look great too with good lighting and intriguing details in the backgrounds. There really isn't anywhere else that looks like this area in the game, it's so unique. The UI design and HUD design are top notch as always for Splatoon, I love how the names of the floors end with .floor, really adds to the Virtual reality feeling.
Engaging Gameplay - This experience feels much harder than your normal Splatoon campaign, you really need to think about your choices in this and play well. That said, anyone can pull it of with the right upgrades and such, it's about thinking what your weapon would need. The core of the gameplay is starting from the bottom of the tower and getting to the top by clearing floors with different challenges. There is a decent amount of variation to the challenges with the danger and bonus conditions helping out the variety. These conditions add an extra layer to the floors challenge, whether it be making it completely dark for a danger floor or giving you an extra goal for a bonus floor. They also brought in a new mechanic for the player, that being, the Pearl drone. This adds a new movement option for players allowing them to float downwards from the air. This is quite useful in certain situations.
Deep Background Narrative - While the active story may be somewhat simple in nature, the lore does some very heavy lifting and really helps with the world building. Splatoon has always been lore heavy so this isn't a surprise. The story does still have some great moments though for sure, including the final showdown which is just as epic as the previous game's Octo Expansion. The files you can read and the descriptions of weapon palettes and enemies gives you so much information you can digest. The text for these is so well written as well and has so much personality. The world of Splatoon is such an intriguing thing and this DLC only helped build on that. There really just isn't anything like Splatoon.
~ Negatives ~
Main Story A Bit Short - This isn't a big deal due to how replayable it is, but it would have been nice for the main story of the DLC to have been a little longer. For me it was around 1.5-2 hours. I do feel like there could have been more added into it such as more involvement from a certain Agent.
Needs More Variety - While it is not too bad for the standard challenges it would have been nice to see a few more challenges especially some weapon specific challenges. The bosses however, really needed more variety. You come across three bosses as you play through your run. The final boss is always the same which makes sense, but then the other two slots only have three bosses to choose from. It's a shame too because I really like the bosses in the game but there definitely could have been more.
~ Conclusion ~
To conclude, this DLC is great. I like it just as much as the Octo Expansion from the previous game, which I wasn't sure if they were going to be able to match. With a little more added to it I think it would have probably even been better than Octo Expansion. Though I am more than satisfied with this result we got. Splatoon 3 is coming to the end of it's support now this has been released, so I am excited for what's to come in the future for this series.
Total Hours Played: 10
Score: 8/10
That's it for this blog, stay connected!
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