On the same exact day as Penny's Big Breakaway, we also got the long-awaited Splatoon 3 expansion, Side Order. I haven't gotten to it yet in my Top 100, but Splatoon 2's Octo Expansion DLC is my favorite piece of Splatoon media, and probably my favorite DLC expansion of any game period. So Side Order had a lot to live up to, especially considering it went in a roguelite direction, which is a genre I'm not very fond of. There's a few roguelikes I enjoy like One Step From Eden or Downwell, but they're the vast minority. Thankfully, even if it doesn't come close to topping Octo Expansion, I can happily say that Side Order is now one of them.
Like the base Splatoon 3, Side Order has some massive spoilers pretty early on, so tread carefully.
Splatoon 3: Side Order makes an incredibly good first impression, with an extended prologue that both plays towards and subverts your expectations. It starts like the trailers suggested. Agent 8 wakes up in a strange world with a robot version of Pearl, Marina seems to be captured at the top of a tower, and you quickly meet the DJ Dedf1sh (now going by Acht) who offers to take you up to save her. This prologue slowly walks you through the game's mechanics like dealing with Pearl Bot, color chips, and picking rooms as you make your way to Marina, who... you proceed to fight in a boss fight? I was confused. Wasn't this supposed to be a roguelike? Wasn't Marina supposed to be the final boss? Am I even supposed to win this? Once you beat Marina, the twists keep coming. You actually manage to free her from captivity, and unleash a creepy being named Order who proceeds to kick you and Marina out of the tower. Cue the title card. After the DJ Octavio twist in the main campaign, I should've expected Side Order to pull another fast one on me, but the fact that all the trailers had Marina edited out meant the big twist that kicked off this DLC really caught me off-guard.
Once all that set-up is done, the game properly becomes a roguelite. You have to make it up 30 floors in a single run, each floor lets you pick between three different rooms of varying difficulties each with their own unique rewards, you add color chips to your palette as you scale the tower to give yourself buffs, and when you die, you get points you can use to give yourself permanent upgrades or even restart from where you died. Despite the trailers emphasizing how brutal Side Order would be, it actually has a pretty generous gameplay loop, between the many permanent upgrades you can get, the ability to save in the middle of a run, and the fact that many floors have at least one easy room means pretty much anyone should be able to make it up to the top eventually. However, you can also just ignore all the permanent upgrades if you want to make things harder for yourself. It's definitely possible to do it without them, I even managed to make it past the first boss on my first run.
I think the thing I'm most interested in with Side Order is, why does it work for me? As I said, I'm not a big fan of roguelikes, but I found myself surprisingly addicted to Side Order, so what gives? There's probably a few reasons. First off, I simply like Splatoon's gameplay. I'm willing to do runs over and over again, because no matter how far I make it, I'm still going to be getting a good dose of Splatoon goodness, even on the earlier, easier floors. It also helps that while the rooms you get are random, the rooms themselves are still purposefully designed arenas, meaning there's still actual level design here. Side Order feels less like a procedural dungeon crawler and more like a series of rapid fire Octo Expansion challenges, and I rarely ever played a room that was straight-up unfun. On top of that, I just really like the customization aspects here. Side Order strikes a good balance between allowing the player to really strategize about which color chips they want and what build they want to make, while also keeping the menus streamlined and digestible to avoid any complex number-crunching. The decision of which room to try goes beyond picking a difficulty, as you need to factor in which color chips seem more appealing, and the potential money reward. It's also reassuring to have permanent upgrades, and knowing that even having a bad run will still push you forward a bit. I know some people don't like permanent upgrades in rougelik/tes, but I usually enjoy them.
On top of that, Side Order also just does a lot of really cool things. The story, for example. It's great to get to see Pearl and Marina again, and Side Order puts a heavy emphasis on their relationship. So much so, in fact, that I think Off The Hook shippers are going to go pretty wild over some of the stuff that happens in this DLC. Acht is also a very cool character. I always thought Dedf1sh was an interesting character from Octo Expansion for their sick design and fantastic music, but their depiction in Side Order skyrocketed them to being my all-time favorite Splatoon character. From their laid-back personality, to their sad and intriguing backstory, to a certain endgame reward that wraps up their storyline perfect, Acht made a pretty massive impact in the best ways. And Order is such a creepy villain. Even coming off the heels of Mr Grizz, Splatoon keeps upping the ante in that aspect. Speaking of which, the bosses in Side Order are great too. Unlike Octo Expansion where every boss but the last two were harder versions of pre-existing Splatoon 2 bosses, Side Order's bosses are entirely original, and generally all really fun!
That being said, there are still a few issues I still have with the DLC,
as fun as it is. While I praised the lack of procedural generation, you
do end up stumbling upon the same few arenas very often which can make
Side Order feel a tad repetitive at times. And as I said earlier, I think Nintendo really overstated Side Order's difficulty. It can be tough, especially by the end, but if you've been playing Splatoon and especially Salmon Run for years, you might be a bit underwhelmed. Personally, I'm not much of a Salmon Run guy, so I still got put through my paces quite a bit. And while I do love the character interactions and bits of story we did get, Side Order is unfortunately not the sheer onslaught of lore that Octo Expansion was by virtue of being a roguelike. In particular, if you're just play this game to beat it once, you will probably miss out on a decent amount of story context.
As far as content is concerned, Side Order also really surprised me. There's a pretty impressive amount of collectibles and unlockables here that'll require quite a lot of playthroughs of the 30-floor tower. Between the 62 Color Chips, ridiculous amount of upgrades, and abundance of purchasable items that can be sent over to the main game, there's a lot to discover here. On top of that, there's a pretty neat bestiary mode that shows all the Color Chips and enemies you've found, and by collecting more of them, you'll get to hear Pearl's, Marina's, and Acht's thoughts on all of them. It's like the Piklopedia but for Splatoon! But the truly genius addition is the locker system. There's a total of 36 lockers to open which will unlock a bunch of perks like Marina's diary pages and more weapon/palettes to use. You open lockers by finding keys. There's 11 weapons, each with three keys to collect by beating boss fights, meaning to unlock everything, you need to beat Side Order with every weapon. This system gives the game so much extra replay value and difficulty, since you really need to master every weapon archetype, and you get consistently rewarded for your efforts too. Where Side Order lacks in length, it more than makes up for in pure replayability.
I can't comment too much on the presentation since Side Order is pretty much just built on Splatoon 3's engine, meaning it doesn't look that much different from the rest of the game. The eerie blank white aesthetic of the Memverse is visually striking, though, and I love all the references and callbacks to the Octo Expansion. The soundtrack is also pretty fantastic, which is also par for the course for the series. It's a nice blend of the vibey techno of Octo Expansion and the unnerving dissonance of Salmon Run music, and there's a lot of standout memorable tracks like the comforting elevator theme and most of the boss fight music (especially the one that plays during the Marina fight). Like the rest of the game, it's not on the same level as Octo Expansion, but it's still pretty great.
And that's really my take on Side Order as a whole. I still think Octo Expansion is the better package and it left a much stronger impact on me, but Side Order still feels like a worthy successor in pretty much every way. It's got a surprisingly addictive, customizable, and replayable roguelite gameplay loop that managed to make me enjoy one of my least favorite genres, on top of the fantastic atmosphere, lore, and music that I loved so much about Octo Expansion.
4.5/5 Stars
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