I've always been a big fan of Splatoon's singleplayer campaigns. They were never super long, but they were always incredibly well-designed and rounded out the package nicely. Octo Expansion and Side Order in particular are two of my favorite additions to any Splatoon game for their creative scenarios, tight challenge, compelling stories, and stellar aesthetics and music. So when Splatoon Raiders was announced as a fully-priced singleplayer-focused Splatoon, I was beyond hyped. And it seems like everyone is loving Raiders, with it currently boasting one of the highest user scores on Metacritic. It feels like there was potential for this to be one of my favorite singleplayer Splatoon campaigns to date, right? Well...
Splatoon Raiders is a campaign all about the idol group Deep Cut from Splatoon 3, as they crash land on an archipelago filled with treasures and Salmonids protecting them. As Deep Cut's pilot (referred to as Mechanic), you team up with them to go out on expeditions in search for as much treasure as you can find. It's a solid setup that finally gives the members of Deep Cut a lot more room to express their personality, and the game has some fun tropical vibes taking advantage of the island setting, though you're not getting anything as emotional as the Agent 8 stories. As far as protagonists go, the mechanic is one of the better ones due to being much more expressive than any of the Agents from past campaigns. However, if I had one nitpick, I'm not a huge fan of how limiting the fashion is in this game. You can only unlock 32 preset outfits and while a lot of them are cute, they are also quite samey. As for the hairstyles, I can't really say I'm a huge fan of any of them since they all incorporate physical objects like bottles and chains that make them look a bit visually busy. You do unlock a messy hairdo in the postgame that I did actually really like but come on, why couldn't we have gotten that from the start?
Splatoon Raiders is actually a somewhat different game from the rest of the series mechanically because it's a looter shooter. You go on raids to hunt down treasures and collect loot that you can use to fit out your build. In theory, this is a pretty great gameplay loop for a Splatoon game. I like being able to explore levels for collectibles, and there's a lot to find here. The first two hours of Raiders are unfortunately quite slow and handholdy, but once things open up and you get enough equippables, crafting a powerful build is really fun, freeing, and satisfying. However, as fun as this is, I feel there's a pretty big missed opportunity. So a lot of the customization aspect is lended towards your fifteen gadgets, all of which are powerful specials that you can modify to make even more powerful. But how about your actual weapons? Well, there isn't that much you can do to them actually. All weapons can be upgraded five times to increase their damage, but that's really it. This is a big step back from Side Order which allowed you to boost your weapons in all kinds of ways from fire rate to charge speed to making your shots homing. The gadgets are fun but ultimately they're just cooldown meters, so the fact that the core shooting doesn't feel super affected by your build-crafting is a real shame.
Another big gameplay system in Splatoon Raiders is the Bot Buddy, a robot mech that travels with you through levels and assists in battle. All three members of Deep Cut can pilot the mech, each having their own specials, and the more you spend time with them, the more they'll bond with you and get more powerful. I really like this system actually. Unlike the other idol groups, it's cool to see Deep Cut actually get more involved rather than staying on the sidelines, and their banter is all very charming. Beyond just the Bot Buddy, this game has a lot of XP and upgrade systems that helps to make you always feel like you're making progress on something. Whether it's improving your base stats, expanding your bestiary, powering up your tanks, or best of all, expanding the hub area. I've always been a fan of expandable hubs so adding more stuff to Deep Cut's hideout ship is really satisfying. You can even unlock some surprisingly addictive arcade games that are genuinely some of my favorite bits of content in the game.
The level design is where Splatoon Raiders really gets inconsistent for me, though. There are six different level types in Raiders, all of varying degrees of quality. So let's walk through them one by one:
- Treasure Hunt stages are basically the standard levels you'd expect from Splatoon 1 and 2's campaigns and they're... really underwhelming. There's not much platforming or level gimmicks and you're mostly just walking from Salmonid arena to Salmonid arena, and most of the collectibles are tucked away in clearly signposted side-paths rather than actually hidden. Granted, the level design does pick up in the ice region but that's also the last area of the game, it feels like Raiders ends just as it starts getting somewhat interesting. It's shocking considering this is the first full-budget campaign and yet it barely reaches the midgame of other campaigns in terms of platforming complexity.
- Shard Hunting stages have you explore wide open areas for collectibles to power up and mine a giant crystal at the start of the stage, and these are actually really fun. This is what I wanted from Raiders the entire time, they fully hone in on the sense of exploration and freedom allowing you to tackle each stage however you want. The collectibles tend to be more cleverly tucked-away in these stages and they have some of the best and most energetic music. Unfortunately there's only six of these stages which sucks, they're so good.
- Buried Ruins are basically the equivalent of Pikmin 2 caves where you dig down through a dungeon completing a combat arena on every floor, and they kinda suck. Since there are no alternate objectives besides killing hordes of Salmonids under a time limit, these ruins blend together and get repetitive really fast. Compare this to Side Order which, while also a bit repetitive, still had some variety like pushing around 8-Balls and defending territory. These are easily the weakest part of Splatoon Raiders and it sucks that they're such a big part of the game, especially in the postgame.
- Dens are single challenge rooms which require you to defeat a relentless swarm of a specific type of Salmonid, and they're shockingly fun. Compared to the repetitive hordes of the Buried Ruins, these stages actually have deliberately crafted challenges that play to each Salmonid's strengths and figuring out how to find the right build for the job makes them feel like a puzzle.
- Sampler Dungeons are the best part of the game. They're this tight Octo Expansion-esque platforming puzzles each built around exploring one of your gadgets. There's an impressive amount of these (24!) and they're all really fun and creative. I would take an entire campaign with this kind of level design, it's crazy how much more engaging these are. I just wish there was more than a single biome though.
- And finally, the Bosses. These are pretty solid, very large in scale and boasting surprisingly beefy health bars compared to other Splatoon bosses. However, every single boss in Raiders has phases where you have to just take out hordes of enemies which really halts the pacing of each fight. They're all way more fun when you're actually fighting the boss itself. There is one exception though, the final boss, which is not only an astounding spectacle with incredible music and a great sense of tension, but it's also a pitch-perfect final challenge that tests you on everything you've learned. Even with all my gripes, the Splatoon team knocked it out of the part when it came to the final boss, easily one of my favorites in a Nintendo game in recent memory.
So as you can see, I find the levels in Splatoon Raiders all over the place. On one hand, the more explorative Shard Hunting levels and the more tightly-crafted Dens and Sampler Dungeons are great. But on the other hand, the standard levels and buried ruins are very repetitive and lacking in terms of design. And I think a big problem with this is that Salmonids are actually very limiting as an enemy. Unlike the Octarians which work well with platforming and stealth, the Salmonids are only really effective in groups. So all of the standard levels are broken up into arenas made for horde combat, and there's a real lack of the platforming/shooting/stealth blend that I love in Splatoon. I also think the Salmonids work best when you have to juggle them with another objective which Salmon Run and Side Order understands, but this game just doesn't. To be fair though, each level does have multiple harder variants with more enemies peppered around and those certainly are more engaging, but it's still hard to look past how weak the actual level design is.
One thing that I think Splatoon Raiders really has going for it is its price tag. Unlike other Switch 2 releases, this is only $50-60 and there's a surprising amount of content especially in the postgame. There's over 80 total stages across the various types and as mentioned, many of them have multiple harder variants. There's also tons of stuff to unlock and buy, the unlockable outfits work almost like an achievement system, and of course, there's those very addictive arcade games. The postgame also introduces some entirely new levels, though they're all Buried Ruins and one of them is an endless dungeon with a secret boss on the 100th floor. This is where the Side Order comparisons really start to harm Raiders because having to do 100 floors of the same old Salmonid combat with little to no variation gets extremely repetitive. And now that I mention it, despite all this content, you can still very much tell Splatoon Raiders is a budget game. There's a lot of asset reuse here, and a mere three total biomes for the main stages: Beach, volcano, and ice. Despite being on Switch 2, it doesn't really look that much better than Splatoon 3 outside of the ink physics being more organic.
But even with all of Raiders' issues, this is a Splatoon game so at least I can expect a banger soundtrack, right? Right? Well, no, unfortunately not. So Salmon Run always had some of the most divisive music in Splatoon due to its discordant and frantic nature, and I've never been a fan. Some tracks like Frothy Waters are kinda fun to poke fun at, but none of them I would willingly listen to. Unfortunately since this is a Salmonid-focused game, half the music in Splatoon Raiders is basically Salmon Run music, and it's equally unpleasant. There are plenty of good tracks like the hub music, the Sampler Dungeon and Shard Hunting themes, and the arcade minigame jingles, but so much of the music is either dull ambience or irritating noise. And most of all, there's none of the fun techno and pop that made the other campaign soundtracks such enduring classics to me. I could probably forgive a lot of Raiders' problems if I was bopping my head through those boring missions but that sadly isn't the case.
I know I was very critical here so I just want to clear the air and say I still liked Splatoon Raiders and think it's a pretty good game. It's a Splatoon game after all, and Splatoon's core gameplay will always be fun to me. But I feel Raiders is just really lopsided. I like the build-crafting, interacting with Deep Cut, expanding the hub, playing the arcade games, challenging myself on the Spicy difficulties, and I think half the stages are really fun. But the other half of stages are really boring and repetitive, the visuals and soundtrack are underwhelming, the weapon system feels underdeveloped, and they just don't do enough to make Salmonid combat super engaging for me. I do see why other people are fawning over Raiders, but unfortunately I think this is one of my least favorite Splatoon campaigns.
Splatoon Game Ranking:
- Octo Expansion
- Splatoon 2
- Splatoon 3
- Side Order
- Splatoon Raiders
- Splatoon
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