Splatoon Raiders Review

Nintendo takes Splatoon's signature ink-splattering gameplay in a bold new direction, transforming Salmon Run into a surprisingly deep looter shooter that shines both solo and in co-op.

In 2015, Nintendo released Splatoon on the Wii U. Few expected it to become one of its biggest trademarks. Splatoon was a new family-friendly online shooter that focused on inking battlefields rather than finding enemies. The game's unusual movement mechanics, inventive weapons, and distinct art style.

While popular, the franchise was panned for its conservative sequels. Splatoon Raiders was expanded in Splatoon 2 and 3, although they were still multiplayer games with regular gameplay loops. Their single-player adventures were engaging, but the multiplayer actions had more impact, leaving many gamers wanting Nintendo to explore the universe more.

The brand's first true spin-off, Splatoon Raiders, fulfills that promise.

Instead of another competitive shooter, Nintendo turned Splatoon 2's most popular side mode, Salmon Run, into a PvE adventure centered on exploration, growth, and rewards. Even more impressive is how readily the game borrows mechanics from Borderlands, Destiny, Diablo, and Monster Hunter while still feeling like Splatoon.

Not just another side project. Raiders, like Nintendo, is trying something new and may have given us the Switch 2's finest exclusive. The mechanic in Splatoon Raiders joins the trio Deep Cut from Splatoon 3 on a journey across the mystical Spiralite Islands. The team crashes on the island due to extreme turbulence, and their excursion quickly goes awry.

A month later, the group has built up a temporary base to make their way home. Instead of waiting for rescue, they explore the island's more dangerous parts, collecting valuable artifacts and discovering the secrets of the mysterious Spiralite deposits. Not a difficult story, but it doesn't try to be. Instead, it encourages more exploration while focusing on gameplay.

The cast is back and full of personality, the character interactions are still entertaining, and the tone is light enough to fit Splatoon's bright environment. Instead of a protracted cinematic, the tale progresses naturally, letting you explore, collect, and fight increasingly deadly Salmonids. How significantly Splatoon Raiders changes the series' structure is the biggest surprise.

No competitive multiplayer like prior games. Raiders is a pure PvE game that can be played solo or with up to four players online in co-op. Matching and drop-in make co-op gaming easy for friends to complete all the key missions. Nintendo also supports GameShare, which lets many users share a license for local multiplayer.

Raiders is mission-based, not open-world. You select excursions from a treasure map and enter condensed phases that take two to eight minutes. This design works well. Short missions make the game excellent for portable play and encourage "just one more run" while letting you accomplish significant things in short bursts.

With downtime between missions for gear organization, build upgrades, and expedition preparation, the pace is always rapid. Each mission rewards you with treasure, experience, and crafting materials, creating a satisfying gameplay loop that pushes you toward stronger equipment and harder missions.

The missions have simple goals, but the game's rhythm keeps it interesting.

Clearing waves of foes, protecting objectives, earning gold, completing platforming tasks, or surviving confrontations that limit weapon types always feels satisfying. This simplicity is one of its greatest strengths. Splatoon Raiders excels in fighting compared to previous Splatoon games and other looter shooters.

The beloved ink mechanics are back, but they now fight for posture, movement, and strategic decision-making rather than human opponents. You still use colored ink to morph into a squid and swim fast across the painted ground. It remains one of Nintendo's most ingenious gameplay concepts, allowing fluid mobility and resource management via restoring ammo through ink.

The arenas resemble battle riddles. Most enemies aren't there to be hit. Each Salmonid activity requires a unique approach. Some are heavily armored at the front, so you must attack from behind. Others attack you remotely, demanding priority before flooding the battlefield. Flying enemies need clever placement, while larger bosses use multiple features to keep you guessing.

Intense battle causes diverse foes to interact, creating unpredictable circumstances. When ranged attacks block mobility, heavier-armored enemies are more dangerous. The toxic environment immobilizes you, flying foes are always safe, and bosses constantly force you to move. The effect is like modern Doom games, where enemy prioritization is as crucial as mechanical skill.

The robotic sidekick that follows the player on every adventure is wonderful.

In addition to exploration, it has many military uses. It can be used to reach certain areas, bounce for extra height, escape danger, or reach inaccessible enemies. Learning when and where to unleash this partner is crucial to mastering later encounters.

Special mention for scaling difficulty. Splatoon Raiders brings new ideas and forces you to rethink your strategies. This campaign is harmful to foes even on the regular level. Mindlessly spraying ink at the screen rarely wins. Move, manage cooldowns, prioritize targets, and use special powers wisely to succeed.

Combat is always interesting even with few mission templates because every encounter is different. Especially notable is the game's variety of adversaries. The campaign has dozens of Salmonids, with tougher elite and boss varieties adding complexity. Each new enemy requires a new strategy, not just more weapons.

Several methods for advancing the game affect fighting performance. Relics that boost life regeneration, damage, or mobility, like double jumping, are awarded for missions. Starting with one relic slot, more slots unlock as the character progresses, allowing for more specialized builds. Gadgets add personalization.

Upgrade cards can boost the efficacy, duration, or cooldown of offensive, tactical, and mobility tools. During intense battles, Power Egg-fueled companion powers destroy big numbers of adversaries. Splatoon Raiders' loot system is most rewarding. Raiders is more conservative than recent looter shooters, which flood you with throwaway stuff. 

Weapon drops matter; less-frequent equipment has entertaining perks, and materials are plentiful enough not to inhibit growth.

Splatoon Raiders rewards you for playing another mission rather than making you labor endlessly to extend playtime. Each expedition yields a weapon, crafting materials, relics, experience points, or coin for improvements. The result is a growth loop that is surprisingly thoughtful of the player's time while maintaining the addicting ‘one more run’ mentality of the finest looter games.

It's still all about the weaponry, and Nintendo has capitalized on Splatoon's creative armaments. Raiders gives you a variety of rifles that feel mechanically diverse rather than a bunch of identical ones. Along with ink shooters, there are rollers, paint brushes, buckets, umbrellas, and other weird weaponry that encourage varied fighting styles. Because each weapon has its own personality and function, trying new gear never feels bad.

You can build more facilities at their home base, thereby advancing progression. You can upgrade their favorite weapons at workstations rather than scrap them when a stronger version becomes available, encouraging long-term loadout investment. This solves a common complaint in loot-driven games: your favorite gear is worthless after a few missions.

Not only weapons can help you progress. Upgrade points can be utilized to permanently increase your maximum health, damage output, or gadgets with each level. These upgrades make each level worthwhile because you can always see your progress even if you don't receive the weapon or artifact you wanted on a mission.

Relics give another intriguing customization layer. The passive powers of each expedition treasure can influence how you play the game. Early relics can double leap or regenerate health, whereas later objects may give significant advantages that encourage specialized builds. You earn more relic slots as you progress through the campaign, allowing you to combine synergies to build for mobility, survivability, cooldown reduction, or pure damage.

Customize using gadgets. Speed, Power, and Tactical abilities are powerful fighting tools that can turn the tide of battles. The tactical may use moveable turrets to secure the sector, while the offensive may use explosives to quickly wipe out larger numbers of attackers. Further upgrade cards increase these devices' duration, damage, or utility, allowing you to equip many gadgets.

Companion abilities add strategy. You charge Deep Cut's deadly special attacks with Power Eggs from defeated Salmonids.

In the game's toughest battles, summoning a giant shark to speed across enemy formations or unleashing other stunning strikes can rescue the day. Underground experiences differ from surface missions in the game. These cramped arenas are more like Salmon Run, with hordes of increasingly aggressive foes attacking under time pressure. Collect enough Power Eggs before time runs out to descend further.

You must face a strong boss every time you fall. Underground tasks are the hardest in the game. Movement is confined by limited locales, pushing you to maximize every campaign mechanic. Positioning, unique powers, and target prioritizing become crucial to fighting. For extra challenge, these sections contain Raiders' greatest moments.

Harder objectives and rarer equipment in endgame content follow this. Raiders continues after credits. It encourages you to refine your builds and return for harder levels with rare loot and upgrades. For individuals who like trying new builds or challenging high-level content with friends, post-game assistance makes the game durable.

As in most successful looter shooters, repetition is inescapable, but the game hides it with fantastic pacing, continual rewards for growth, and combat systems that remain entertaining even after you master the basics. Instead of grinding, replaying missions can be an opportunity to try out a better build or find that last piece of equipment needed to complete a loadout.

Graphically, Splatoon Raiders maintains the series' style and shows off the Nintendo Switch 2.

The colorful ink effects are back, but the surroundings are much more detailed. Tropical beaches, rocky cliffs, deep caverns, and vast desert panoramas offer a change of scenery while maintaining the series' engaging style. Brightly colored ink over sandy coastlines and lush vegetation creates stunning images.

Character models benefit from better lighting and textures, but close-ups can reveal rougher features that are less impressive than the game's. Fortunately, these are brief and rarely detract from the display. The game's fighting may be its most impressive technical achievement. 

Late-game confrontations sometimes feature dozens of enemies, PCs, enormous creatures, spectacular explosions, transparency effects, particle systems, ink splats, and special attacks. Despite this visual chaos, Raiders maintains 60 FPS almost the entire game. This project started as an expansion for Splatoon 3 on the original Switch, but the final output is much better.

There are certain clashes with more enemies and visual effects than any other Splatoon game, suggesting that Nintendo has raised its goals with Switch 2 hardware. The sole weakness is the presence of some underground sublevels. The combat is strongest in these portions, but the landscapes are dull compared to the more colorful surface locations. They provide tension but lack visual variety compared to other parts of the trip.

Raiders is likely Nintendo's best-looking first-party game on the latest hardware. Audio distinguishes Splatoon Raiders from prior games. Splatoon fans anticipating the peppy, pop-inspired music may be surprised. Raiders' darker, more ambient music reflects its Salmonid-infested focus.

Industrial sounds, distorted instruments, foghorn effects, percussion, and eerie tunes create a spooky ambiance that feels more like survival horror than a Nintendo shooter. Underground adventures benefit from this distinct soundscape. The opponent waves grow increasingly terrifying, and the audio increases with the action to emphasize that you are fighting for survival against insurmountable odds.

However, the soundtrack has faults.

The heavier soundtrack may clash with the vivid settings of lighter tropical surface missions. The compositions are impressive, but the contrast between the happy pictures and scary soundtrack might be off-putting. The sound effects are fantastic throughout. Every weapon has tremendous acoustic feedback, opponent impacts are audible, and veteran fans will recognize the powerful ink splashes.

Voice work is stylized in the series' fictional language to keep Splatoon's unique appeal in check. Splatoon Raiders is a great spin-off and one of Nintendo's boldest series reboots. Instead of just improving on Splatoon's multiplayer concept, the developers have produced an experience that confidently takes the best aspects of looter shooters while preserving Splatoon's movement, originality, and personality.

The mission structure is perfect for mobile gaming, enemy design and mobility mechanics make fighting interesting, and advancement methods give you meaningful goals. Whether you're seeking relics, refining your favorite weaponry, testing new technologies, or tackling more challenging end-game horrors, Raiders makes your purchase worthwhile.

The limited variety of tasks, repetitive underground vistas, odd soundtrack choices, and slightly restrictive control options are minor flaws compared to the overall product. Your time is respected, and the game offers enjoyable solo and co-op experiences with high technological polish and smooth performance.

Perhaps Raiders' greatest achievement is attracting both veteran Splatoon fans and those who didn't like the series' competitive multiplayer. Salmon Run is now a full-fledged PvE experience with fantastic gameplay and growth, making it one of the best looter shooters of recent years and one of the best Switch 2 exclusives.

Splatoon Raiders proves that breaking from the norm can produce something unique for a franchise that might have easily relied on iteration. This bold move adds dimension to the Splatoon universe and sets the stage for further spin-offs. Raiders, alone or with friends, is a vivid, satisfying, and shockingly rich adventure that fits alongside Nintendo's best recent releases.