dynamicDiscovery
Since: Dec, 2020
02/22/2024 00:00:00
Thanks; this is everything I\'d want those on the fence to know. Especially since the gameplay is relatively repetitive if you don\'t milk the roguelite features for its worth, it\'d be good to understand whether it\'s for you.
Funny story: I didn\'t find Octo Expansion\'s 8-ball levels frustrating, since much of OE and Alterna is essentially a puzzle-dexterity game (which I love about those). As you said, Side Order is a solo horde mode; in the context of that genre, punishing players for moving the balls liberally would\'ve been a DISASTER.
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Side Order: What We've Been Waiting For?
Side Order had a huge amount of expectations put on it ever since it was announced, and many players who grew sick and tired of the franchise's typical third person online shooter presence immediately clung to it hoping for something enjoyable and fresh from what I've always seen as one of Nintendo's most unique and standout IP's.
After playing a lot of what it had to offer and eventually finally conquering the spire, I'm honestly completely ambivalent on my entire experience. Let me say first though: The aesthetic knocks it out of the park, all of the characters have great chemistry with one another, and as someone who is very into a lot of indie electronic and glitch music, the soundtrack for Side Order is right up my alley. Everything else though, while not terrible, was not very impressive either.
It became very apparent to me early on that all of the levels had one consistent theme: Mob destruction, and while I do enjoy a good hack and slash that's all there is here. It does not matter what the main objective of each floor is, you're ultimately just fighting off massive hordes of enemies and trying to survive on a square arena with varying elevations. There's no platforming segments, no puzzles, no speed challenges, it wears on your mind very quickly if you're not accustomed to this type of gameplay. Ironically, for a campaign that claims to be infinitely replayable, it ends up feeling a lot more repetitive than Alterna, I'm afraid. Even the bosses aren't immune to this either, sacrificing unique gimmicks that previous splatoon bosses had for more horde survival.
Ultimately it just makes me scream for more variety. The environments are there, the character development is there, the overall polish is simply immaculate, but the minute-to-minute gameplay is just exhausting and even though it was great to see Pearl and Marina again I just cannot in good faith say it was completely worth the wait. If you're a roguelite fan you might get more mileage out of this than me, but I think they could have done a lot better with this DLC. Granted I still found it a lot more engaging than the typical turf wars and ranked modes, so I think it still has a place in the game just as something different and substantially less grating than the mode the series became most well known for.