Quick Summary:
Splatoon 3 is a pretty large game that was one of the highest selling Nintendo games of all time! As of March 31st, 2024, there have been 11.96 MILLION copies of this game sold worldwide, making it one of the fastest-selling games in the Nintendo franchise. This game series is widely known worldwide, and has built a solid name for itself since the franchise has 2 previous games! The Splatoon games are known to have lots of game modes, story modes, special events, and overall have a lot to offer for players! If you don’t enjoy a certain game mode, simply choose from the wide variety of game modes Splatoon has to choose from. You can choose between single-player modes and stories along with multi-player games modes.
To sum up the game, Splatoon overall has fun and bright colors, human-like squid characters, along with a few main characters throughout each game.
Characters and Game Importance:
In this section, I’m showing each of the characters that need to be known within each game. That being said, I’m also going to include the importance each of these characters have within each Splatoon game, whether it be they were a boss, a supporting character in a game, etc. (Possibly a little backstory for a couple characters as well.)
Within the first Splatoon game, which was available on the Wii-U in May 2015, starred two main “idols” of the game, Callie and Marie, who call themselves the Squid Sisters. Despite the name of their group, they’re actually cousins! The Squid Sisters act as guides within the game mode: Octo Valley. In the second game, Callie goes missing! She was being mind controlled by DJ Octavio, and winds up fighting against the protagonist as the final boss! In Splatoon 3, Callie and Marie are supporting characters in the story mode, but don’t do anything major.
Splatoon 2, which was released in July of 2017, (shortly after the Nintendo Switch released) hosting 2 new idol characters whose names are Pearl and Marina, and their group is called Off the Hook! In this game, Marina is considered an Octopus (Octoling), which is considered a “newer” breed of humanoid animals within the second game. In the previous game, you were only able to be a squid character (Inkling). These idols are within the Splatoon 2 story mode: Octo Expansion as aiding characters to help the protagonist and act as support within the game. Pearl and Marina appear within Splatoon 3: Side Order as well!
Currently, in Splatoon 3 (the newest Splatoon game at the moment), there are now 3 new idols! There’s Shiver, Frye, and Big Man. Big Man is actually a Manta Ray, which is a newly introduced species in the Splatoon franchise. They are all quite different personalities, and are a very unique group of people who call themselves Deep Cut! This idol group appears in Splatoon 3’s story mode: Return of the Mammalians, although, are revealed as the antagonists fighting against the protagonist!
In Splatoon 1’s story mode: Octo Valley, the protagonist you play is known as Agent 3, the main protagonist. This agent works towards finding the Great Zapfish, which is the city’s main source of power and electricity. Agent 3 is known as the third agent because Callie and Marie, the idols in the first game, are agents 1 and 2. This agent returns in Splatoon 2 along with Splatoon 3 in different story modes! Agent 3 becomes The Captain in the Splatoon 3 story mode: Return of the Mammalians, which takes the place of Cap’n Cuttlefish who is now retired, and is sort of “replaced” with a new Agent 3.
Things tend to get a little confusing, especially since there are two “Agent 3’s” in the Splatoon game franchise. The Agent 3 in Splatoon 3 was labeled as Agent 3 by a character named Cap’n Cuttlefish. This is because the previous Agent 3 became The Captain as I mentioned before, meaning the new agent took the Captains empty spot of Agent 3. This agent also has its own little sidekick and or pet character who is known as Smallfry! In Splatoon 3’s story mode: Return of the Mammalians, the new Agent 3 goes against the idol group: Deep Cut who are searching for treasure. After getting past them, Agent 3 has to focus on defeating Mr. Grizz, the final boss!
In Splatoon 2’s main story mode: Octo Canyon, the main protagonist is known as Agent 4, who is the newest recruit in this game. There are 2 different story modes within Splatoon 2, in which you only play as Agent 4 in Octo Canyon. Shortly after being recruited, Agent 4 fights to find Callie and the Great Zapfish, which have both gone missing while Agent 3 and Cap’n Cuttlefish are out on vacation!
The second story mode in Splatoon 2: Octo Expansion is where you meet the new protagonist, Agent 8, who has been wiped of their memory. Agent 8 is set on a mission to escape the cavernous subway system in which they’ve fallen into. This newer story mode in Splatoon 2 was added around a year after the game was released. It has not been confirmed who is Agents 5-7, although it is speculated that Agent 5 is Pearl and Agent 6 is Marina. At this moment, there is not any speculation of who Agent 7 may be! Agent 8 is the first time Splatoon players were able to play as an Octoling character rather than Inkling characters.
Agent 8 returns within Splatoon 3 game story mode: Side Order to defeat the Overlorder, also known as Smollusk. The Overlorder was created by Marina, who began to develop its own mind, wishing to make everything orderly. Marina also made a world called the “Memverse”, which Agent 8 has to go through and ascend “The Spire of Order” tower, which is 30 floors high, and defeat The Overlorder with Pearl and Marina!
One of the characters you NEED to know when you play any of the Splatoon games is Cap’n Cuttlefish! Cap’n Cuttlefish was part of the Inkling Military that fought against Octolings (which were an enemy back in the day). He’s within each of the Splatoon games, and generally works as an aiding character for the protagonist playing the story modes in different games.
While this character has more importance in Splatoon 1 and 2, he still makes an appearance in the beginning of Splatoon 3’s story mode: Return of the Mammalians as a quick starter boss. This character’s name is DJ Octavio! DJ Octavio knew Cap’n Cuttlefish in the past, and they were actually alright with each other until the rise of the sea levels, which led to The Great Turf War. In the first game, Octavio stole the Zapfish from Inkopolis, requiring the protagonist to fight him as the final boss to get it back. In the second game, he managed to steal the Zapfish a SECOND time, having the new protagonist fight once again to get it back. Although in the third game, he was not the one to steal the Zapfish, but the protagonist fights against him to get further into the story!
Mr. Grizz, the final boss in Splatoon 3’s story mode, is attempting to bring back mammals from their extinction in this world, which would make all fish species in the world disappear and go extinct! He kidnaps Cap’n Cuttlefish along with the Great Zapfish in order to power his rocket machine full of “Fuzzy Ooze” that would collide with the planet to convert all life to mammals! Personal opinion here, this final boss battle took me FOREVER to finish! It takes a lot of time and patience to beat him.
Game Modes:
For game modes, I’m only gonna list the more current game modes within Splatoon 3. This is because there are some game modes that were in previous games that are not in the newest game, and it would make this list a little long!
Regular Battle: These battles are one of the more simple options, and a better choice for beginners since it’s not ranked! In the Regular Battles, there are 2 teams of 4 placed on opposite sides of the map. Each team is required to fight to gain the most paint coverage on the map to win!
Anarchy Battle: These battles are a new option in Splatoon 3 that was not in any of the previous games. There are two modes for Anarchy Battles: Open & Series. The Open Battle will place you into a quick battle and give you a few points if you win, and take away a couple points if you lose. Open battles can be played solo AND with friends, and is generally a bit more easy-going than Series.
The Series Battles require you to give up over 100 of your ranked points to play a series of battles. If you lose 3 times, you lose a LOT of ranked points. If you win 5 times without losing 3 full times, you gain a lot of ranked points to possibly help you go up in your rank! Ranks start at a C- and go up to S+. With each rank, the battling gets more difficult, as the higher rank you are, the more skillful you’re considered. To make a full rank up, you have to go through a Rank Up Series, which you have to win only 3 times, but you can only lose 3 times as well. If you win this Rank Up Series, you, of course, go up in ranking. If you lose the Rank Up Series, you stay at the previous rank you were at.
In Anarchy Battles, there are a bunch of different games! Splat Zones, where you have to keep the square in your color longer than the other team, Tower Control, where you have to attempt to claim the tower and make it to the opposite side of the map before the opposing team, Rainmaker, where you have “The Rainmaker” which is it’s own weapon, and you have to make it to the goal on the enemies side of the map, and finally, there’s Clam Blitz, where you collect clams and after collecting so many it turns into a ball that you throw into the net on the enemies side of the map! First team to make it to 100 points wins!
X Battle: Players will only be able to unlock the X Battle option once they reach the rank S+! Once unlocked, you have to play 5 quick battles that serve as sort of an evaluation to find out what your general “X Power” is. Once you find your X Power, you are placed into battles against people with a similar score.
Challenge: Challenges come around every once in a while, and offer different themes each time. The themes usually relate to the types of weapons players need to use, whether it be what special the weapon has, the actual weapon itself, the power ups, etc. The battles were simply the regular battles where you gain your turf and attempt to gain the most paint coverage for your team.
Splatfest Battle / Tricolor Battle: These battles occur during Splatfests, where there is a theme and you get to choose which side you’re on. Whenever you choose a team, you go into these battles to fight against those on the opposing teams. Splatfest battles are against one other random team, while the Tricolor battles are all teams against each other at once! Whenever you win any of these battles, you gain more points for your team. In these battles, they’re all related to the original turf covering goal: gain the most turf in your paint color. In Tricolor, with everyone fighting against each other, there’s the “defense” team (has 4 players on this team) that protects the Ultra-Signal. The “attacking” teams are the other two teams fighting to get a hold of the Ultra-Signal. (The Ultra-Signal, when obtained by an attacking team, sets out a sprinkler that shoots out more of your ink color to help you possibly win.)
Private Battle: These battles are sort of in the title. You can make a room, invite your friends to play, or honestly just make a room to hang out and have fun!
My Personal Opinion:
I never got a chance to play the original Splatoon game, but I have played Splatoon 2 and 3, and I’ve always enjoyed the game! The game has amazing graphics and has such a fun style and lots of colors! Nintendo is still constantly working on updating Splatoon 3, fixing bugs, adding more details, etc.
The Story Modes have always been entertaining and give quite a good challenge. It generally takes me HOURS to complete any of the Story Modes, and I enjoy that honestly. A lot of stories in games go a little too quickly in my opinion, but Splatoon makes their stories well-paced and enjoyable. While of course there’s points where you get stuck and get frustrated, but that’s to be expected!
All in all, the games are great, the quality is great, the stories are great, and I can honestly only say good things about this game! If you ever get the chance to play any of the Splatoon games, (and if you have a switch) PLAY IT!! I promise you, the games are worth it and are incredibly fun to play.
