You want me to do some podcasting?
Welcome back! Today, for episode 99 of pocket and for our first episode in our DLC theme, we’re going to be talking about the Rogue-lite addition to Splatoon 3, Side Order. Adding roguelike gameplay to Splatoon’s third person shooter mechanics works pretty well, giving you bonuses upon choosing rooms that are mostly similar to the gear abilities you’d get in game but with a higher potency and having a permanent upgrade system in the form of Marina’s hacks, but is let down slightly by the difficulty. Taking on average only a few runs to complete, the game gets into the territory of grinding out wins kind of early in its runtime. Not to say that just playing the game isn’t still fun, it just lacks the bite that make the genre as compelling as it is. The other aspects of the genre like feeling like an unstoppable monster at the end of a run are still there though, though the game notably lacks complicated build synergies, though that isn’t a hallmark of every roguelike. As for everything else, you can see the care that was put into the visual design like all Splatoon games. An effort was made to make everything still seem cool and presenting a wide amount of visual variety despite the game’s washed out themes. The narrative is pushed very slightly forward, with a focus on the development of Pearl and Marina’s characters, which is welcome but not groundbreaking by any means. We’re going to be talking about builds and progression, the incorporation of characters into the mechanics to help strengthen your bond, and this and other Nintendo games’ DLC and expansion releases and why they’re so weird sometimes.
Thank you for joining us this week! It’s always fun to revisit Splatoon every now and again, and especially with how strong the DLC was for the last game, this was one I was excited to try. If you’re a roguelike fan, I’m mostly sorry this is gated behind a fully different game so you aren’t able to just try this on its own. Let us know your thoughts on this one over in the Discord or in the comment section! We’re hitting a big milestone next time as it will be the 100th episode of Pocket, so we hope you’ll join us for that. We’re pausing the DLC theme to celebrate and talking about Super Mario Land to refer back to our first episode on its sequel, so it’s going to be a special one!