Splatoon was a bright spot of the end of the Wii U, coming out in 2015 and being fun and beloved. It was a part of the initial Switch reveal and soon enough, Splatoon 2 was announced at the start of 2017. When the game came out in July of that year, we were high on it, as Neal Ronaghan said in his review that “Splatoon 2 is the best online game on Switch and with more updates coming down the road, could stay that way for a very long time,” which definitely held true. Splatoon 2 with its new additions and modes is certainly an impactful game on Switch. But how do we feel about it now?
Neal Ronaghan: Splatoon 2 is where my affinity for Splatoon peaked, I think. The single-player, which was my secret favorite part of the first game, was still awesome. The eventual DLC expansion Octo Expansion went even further with that, too. Playing online still feels like magic at times, as this game does such a great job of mixing and melding different skill levels and still letting you succeed. You can be aggressive and a savant, or you can just patiently clean your areas and avoid combat. It’s truly Nintendo’s take on an extremely violent style of shooter and it’s awesome.
Salmon Run is easily the most memorable part of Splatoon 2 for me though, but part of that is because I spent the early weeks of the game posting regular articles about when the asinine Salmon Run calendar was in a fruitless attempt to organize groups to play Salmon Run. It’s still a helluva horde mode and it’s one of the things I miss most with my current Splatoon-less existence. I hope the inevitable Splatoon 4 on Switch 2 makes me jazzed about the series again (and the online doesn’t endlessly pratfall for me, but that’s a story for when we get to Splatoon 3).
Syrenne McNulty: Splatoon 2 is Splatoon 1 but different and on the Nintendo Switch, which makes it more popular. I think the thing with Splatoon 2 that continues to be a hit for me every single time is I really enjoy the single-player campaigns of these games and the single-player DLC.
In fact, I think that the Octo Expansion for Splatoon 2 is the best content in Splatoon 2. I am just not a person that likes playing these games online. I think that the onboarding experience of starting you at a low rank that you have to grind and grind and grind to get to a higher rank to match with players that have reliably played enough of the game because I have played enough of video games, shooters, games where you are doing resource management and home base management enough that at lower ranks I am consistently at the top of my team whether we win or lose in a way that is frustrating. However, when I get to higher ranked play I frequently end up doing just as well but at the low end and I feel like I am letting my team down and I don’t necessarily always feel like there is an in between. I don’t think that it is a satisfying multiplayer flow.
The matchmaking doesn’t give enough satisfying or conclusive information about what you could be doing better at any given time just because the communication options are “over here” and “boo-yah.” I think that the cosmetics are really nice, but once I find the cosmetics I like I tend to not actually be too directly incentivized to keep grinding them out and this resulted in me playing enough Splatoon 2 until I reached about rank 6 and then I stopped. I think I reached rank 13 in Splatoon 1 on the Wii U and did not find that especially compelling to go beyond either. Stay tuned for Splatoon 3 where you’ll hear that I got even less far.
I think that Salmon Run was an inspired addition although it not being available as a permanent feature was immensely frustrating.
Donald Theriault: First of all, I’m glad that they condemned Moray Towers after this game and hope they repeat the process with its brother-from-another-devil Flounder Heights after Splatoon 3. Most of the stages that were carried over from the original game were the good ones, so why did it feel like I was drawing into this stage 95% of the time when I was playing for fun and every single rotation when it was time for a Splatfest?
I’ll cop to not spending a lot of time in the single player modes even with the existence of the Octo Expansion, but what I did play was a fun time with some amazing moments in the endgame. I always tend to focus on multiplayer modes but they never quite managed to get the balance of specials right even with multiple attempts to make Tenta Missile spam not an automatic win for the team deploying it. The online held up better in 2 than it did in 3, which is kind of bad when you remember that online play went behind a paywall during Splatoon 2’s useful life.
The biggest missed opportunity with Splatoon 2 though was the inconsistent availability of Salmon Run. If it was something I could dip into at my leisure I probably would have played it more than the PvP modes, but after one too many times when I wanted to play the mode and it just wasn’t operational I had to give up on it. This is definitely a mode that needed a few more years in the oven to be great.
Melanie Zawodniak I really took Splatoon 2 for granted in 2017. Released only two years after the original Splatoon, I think this game actually delivered much more than it needed to for how obviously it was just meant to be the same game on a console that actually had some life in it. The biggest addition to me is in the PvE mode Salmon Run, which I have frankly played more of than the game’s signature Turf Wars. Based on my later love of Deep Rock Galactic and Lethal Company It turns out I have a weirdly specific soft spot for 4-player cooperative experiences where you roleplay a minimum wage worker at a terrible corporation that does not particularly care about your safety, and Salmon Run scratches that itch within the beautifully unique framework that the original Splatoon invented. Years later Salmon Run would continue to be my most-played mode in the much-less-impressive Splatoon 3, and I will always love Splatoon 2 for introducing it to the series.
But while 4-player co-op is well and good, I’m a competitive kind of player at heart. When Splatoon 2 was released, I was knee-deep in Overwatch and Rainbow Six: Siege, and I would stay up late every night playing one or the other with my friends. In both games we played so much that we would queue into the ranked competitive modes, which we always enjoyed because it gave us the opportunity to employ actual tactics and teamwork. That kind of thing would be an absolute blast with Splatoon’s unique mechanics. So why is the process of getting into a lobby with friends so awful? Like, I don’t think it can be stressed enough that Nintendo released an online multiplayer video game in 2017 that did not feature the ability to party up with friends. The only way to play with friends would be to join a lobby in progress, which would almost certainly be full and starting their first game by the time your friends list realized the lobby existed. At that point you’re looking at a three minute wait while your friend plays without you as you hope that someone leaves the lobby at the end of it to make space for you. And if you’re actually trying to play with a full team of four? Then you’d better find something to pray to because there is no god in Splatoon 2’s lobby screen.
