Splatoon Raiders Review

As someone who grew up on brightly coloured, deeply unserious Nintendo 64 offerings such as Super Mario 64 and Banjo Kazooie, I simply never saw the appeal of shooters with their more-often-than-not heavy, militaristic vibes. It wasn’t until 2017 that my eyes were opened to the sheer fun of them, when Splatoon 2 brought the genre onto my radar. Paintball? But you’re a squid? Shut up and take my money.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I’d found the franchise that would soon become my all-time favourite. The silliness that is baked into Splatoon’s DNA hides a technical depth that is both challenging and exceptionally satisfying to master, and nowhere is this truer than in the PVE mode, Salmon Run, where I spend most of my time in the game. When it was confirmed earlier this year that Splatoon Raiders would feature Salmonids in all their ugly-cute glory, it basically turned me into the human equivalent of the starry eyes emoji in sheer anticipation. It’s been a long year waiting for this game to release, so I’m not going to beat around the bush: Splatoon Raiders is phenomenal, and if you’re a die-hard salmon runner like I am, you’re in for a hell of a treat.

Your adventure starts when Deep Cut, the treasure-hunting idol trio from Splatoon 3, gets stranded on the mysterious Spirhalite Islands. You take on the role of the Mechanic, the resourceful pilot who can cobble seemingly any kind of gadget or gear out of discarded junk, and together with Shiver, Frye, and Big Man, explore the islands in search of lucrative bounty.

Don’t mind if I do

As I mentioned in my preview of the game, Splatoon Raiders is built on the strong foundations of Salmon Run’s PVE gameplay. The mode traditionally consists of waves where you must defeat aggressive, amphibious fish – Salmonids – and ferry a quota of their golden eggs back to your basket before time runs out. Raiders both streamlines and expands upon this formula, offering a broad variety of platforming areas, challenge dungeons, boss fights, and exploration, while doing away with the golden eggs entirely. Instead, bosses now drop the grab-and-go Mega Power Eggs which you use to power the Bot Buddy, a mech that will help you drill for treasure and navigate tricky terrain.

Before playing Raiders, I had had some reservations about how removing the golden eggs would translate in the feel of the game – after all, a big part of what makes Salmon Run such an appealing mode is how you must constantly evaluate your priorities, whether this is killing bosses, hustling eggs, or simply staying alive. Meeting quota with barely a second to spare as you dodge for your life is all part of the adrenaline-pumping fun. But as it turns out, Raiders’ timed levels capture this frantic energy perfectly – there were plenty of times where I’d make a suicidal dash into a solid tsunami of fish, hoping to grab that last Mega Power Egg and fill up my meter before time ran out. The chaos feels like Salmon Run in a deeply recognisable way, without ever overcomplicating the objectives you need to juggle in the single-player setting.

A perfect day for murdering fish

In addition to the levels where you’re farming Power Eggs on a timer, there are wide open areas across a range of biomes where you can take your time hunting down the secrets on the map. Raiders also borrows from the stronger entries in Splatoon’s single-player campaigns such as the Octo Expansion DLC, with the bite-sized Sampler Dungeons offering creative challenges that make use of the game’s unique weapons, gadgetry, and new movement options. One of my favourites was where my only gadget was a Zipcaster-like weapon, which was used to create some insanely fast precision platforming. Despite how short these dungeons are, they’re a hell of a lot of fun and offer a refreshing change of pace against the frenetic murder sprees that make up the bulk of the game.

Weaponry is also a strong point in Splatoon Raiders. There are over 100 main weapons to choose from, which you collect in randomised loot drops as you play. The designs here are fantastic – brightly coloured pieces of hacked-together junk, bringing a distinctly homemade aesthetic to fit the stranded island setting. In a series first, weapons are also levelled, with stronger drops unlocking the further you get into the campaign.

Something that I love about traditional co-op Salmon Run is how random weapon allocation forces you to be highly adaptive to every new scenario, and I wasn’t sure if it would be possible to translate this into a game like Raiders with its emphasis on build customisation. However, the heavy randomisation of loot drops and the expansive range of weapons work perfectly here; the pace at which you level up ensures you’re never guaranteed to have a strong version of your preferred weapon class at your disposal, encouraging you to branch out and switch up your gear from level to level. The moments where I pushed myself to take on a challenge using my weaker weapon classes often ended up being the most fun – and if it took a few tries to get there, it just made my eventual victories all the more satisfying.

Conga time?

In lieu of the traditional Splat Bomb, Splatoon Raiders offers Gadgets, strong sub weapons with attacks and abilities that align with a Speed, Power, or Tactics-focused playstyle. These weapons can be upgraded using parts collected from Salmonids on your raids, and although there isn’t an excessive number of gadgets to choose from, you’ll constantly find yourself going back to fix up your builds until they’re just right. The scope for customisation is really remarkable, and I particularly loved tinkering with my loadout for the Den raids, where you face off against enemies of mostly one kind; it was a lot of fun trying to find the most efficient builds against specific enemy weaknesses and get out of there with loot in hand. On that note, the enemy variety is also excellent, with both a wider range of boss Salmonids and some extremely memorable main boss fights to put you through your paces.

Throughout it all, you’ll also get to know Deep Cut better. The story is an absolute joy, with Shiver, Frye, and Big Man finally getting their moment in the spotlight, and as expected in a series that is heavily centred around musicians, the soundtrack absolutely slaps. Your player character is something of a blank slate to allow the story to be told around you, but this is not a bad thing, with the Mechanic’s aloof demeanour creating humour through the contrast with Deep Cut’s earnestness. The trio’s gorgeous characterisation comes out in details throughout the game, such as the descriptions of the treasures you collect – they’re so sincerely confident, which makes their sheer inaccuracy that much funnier.

I believe in you, Big Man

The writing also expands on existing Splatoon lore, and while I think you’ll get more out of the story if you have knowledge of the series to begin with, it’s self-sufficient enough that it shouldn’t be alienating for newcomers to the series either. My main criticism here is that the campaign’s narrative winds up quite abruptly at the end, and you’ll likely walk away with questions that the game doesn’t answer – even if that’s perhaps typical for Splatoon games.

Raiders is also not an excessively long game, and I wish there had been more of it. Even playing on the highest difficulty, replaying dungeons for the scaled-up Spicy challenges, and spending over two hours in our pre-release multiplayer session online, I blitzed through the main campaign in around 15 hours. Unfortunately, the multiplayer session also led to me overlevelling for the last portion of the game, and as there’s no way to formally de-level, I found myself unequipping gadgets and choosing under-levelled weapons to arbitrarily increase the difficulty for myself in the final stretch. The post-game content, however, offers a brilliant challenge even if you’re used to playing at Hazard Level Max, and I’m desperately keen to team up with my Salmon Run friends and take it on together.

Final Thoughts

As a Salmon Run fanatic, Splatoon Raiders is everything that I could ever want from a single-player Splatoon game. Combining some of the strongest aspects from the series’ single-player campaigns with Salmon Run’s fast-paced but technical gameplay, the journey is frenetic, addictive, and highly creative – and it’s the most fun I’ve had in a video game in years.

Reviewed on Nintendo Switch 2 // Review code supplied by publisher

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