What are your Splatoon hot takes?

[Yeenom]

Pearl and Marina's relationship has kind of been mangled throughout the series. I think Octo Expansion had the perfect balance, they were clearly in love but that wasn't their whole personality. That is not the case now, I think the main issue is with Marina. Her whole entire personality is Pearl. 90% of her dialogue in Side Order mentions her, she is never seen without her, her palette highly favors her, she doesn't have a single solo song (Aside from Unconsciousness but that doesn't count, that's not a song written and actually preformed by anyone like every idol song and it never got a Grand Festival mix when other story mode songs did). And what's worse is that it's not matched by Pearl at all, her unwavering devotion is not requited whatsoever. I know at this point I'm shouting at the void because this is probably the last time we'll see them in this capacity (We'll probably see them in a few sunken scrolls but I think this is the last time we'll see them preform or have any role in a story) but I think the writers just have no idea how to write relationships. Don't get me wrong, I like them... in Octo Expansion, and I want representation but I think I'd rather have nothing at all than a terrible attempt at writing a relationship. They've definitely done well with minority representation in other ways: Acht, the removal of sex (There's still masculine and feminine traits but it's not as segregated and you can mix and match), canonical genderless restrooms, Deep Cut coming from entirely different backgrounds, but it can still go further.

 

[Grushi]

Just so you know, there's already been a few splatoon hot takes threads before so you can make this one about story modes if you want to differenciate it or something.

And that's a bold one to start with, but I get where you're coming from. I wish pearl matched marina's endless mooning over her because it kind of looks like marina has an unealthy obsession with pearl I won't lie lol.


Here's mine: A roquelike format doesn't suit splatoon's gameplay in the long term.

I think a major part of roguelikes' appeal that splatoon can't replicate is the health bar. Now, I've only played Hades (literally my favourite videogame, PLAY IT), Crypt of the Necrodancer and Slay the Spire, so I've never seen a roguelike that doesn't have a health bar before. But so much of the tension in those games stems from the health bar, and managing recovery items. Mistakes don't punish you that hard, but they add up FAST. It's a lot scarier to get hit by a small enemy and lose 15 HP you'll have to recover later than losing your armor, running away until it recharges and coming back. The latter is still tense, but I think it's a lot less engaging to just live or die, all or nothing, as opposed to taking risks to clear a floor well but doing it fast.

You get to choose between either upgrading or recovering your health and potentially struggling more on the higher floors or sacrificing the HP for a valuable upgrade.
It gives your runs so much long term tension, where every floor matters, in side order, you clear a floor, you're done, no matter how poorly you did, if you cleared it, you won't deal with the consequences. There's also no items in side order now that I think about it, nothing you ever use once to get yourself out of a bad situation but won't have access to later.

There's so much variations you can make with this, you can have permanent items that prevent you from healing in exchange for game changing buffs, poison and chip damage become a way nastier effect...

So with those games, failure comes from making a lot of small mistakes that add up, while in side order, you're basically not allowed to make any big mistake since, to be challenging in any way, the game has to punish players much harder for their mistakes, and actually end their run.

There's other factors too, like the lack of stats you could tweak, or the game having such a high mechanical ceiling that it's almost impossible to balance, but splatoon having recovering health is the main one to me.
Side Order did do a good effort though, don't get me wrong! But I doubt a roguelike mode will ever work for splatoon.

 

[sevenleaf]

even as squidboards' most infamous pearlina guy i gotta say i see where you're coming from lol. i don't fully agree (i'd especially argue that pearl does evidently return marina's feelings, she just expresses it differently) but i will say marina's dialogue was a little heavy-handed in this regard. i wonder if the writers were trying to make her feelings as undeniable as possible? and it still flew over some folks' heads

i agree with @Grushi though that as much as i loved side order there were just... some things missing from the true roguelike/lite experience for me, and i think it comes from certain elements of splatoon just not meshing well with the genre, or with the experience nintendo wanted to give. i'd never thought about the health bar thing (my roguelike of choice does have natural health regeneration, that just doesn't always matter when a robot or a psychic warrior chops your head off in one turn...) but i think it lacked the randomness that makes the experience for me. it's the same set of stages and challenges every time, just in a different order. but you can't really procedurally generate a splatoon singleplayer stage, i guess. danger and bonus stages added a little bit of randomness on top but the clearly forewarned nature of them is a little different than wandering into an area and going oh hey this super powerful item just happens to be in this early game chest! or oh god why is this enemy here i'm like 10 levels too low to fight this guy

 

[Yeenom]

even as squidboards' most infamous pearlina guy i gotta say i see where you're coming from lol. i don't fully agree (i'd especially argue that pearl does evidently return marina's feelings, she just expresses it differently) but i will say marina's dialogue was a little heavy-handed in this regard. i wonder if the writers were trying to make her feelings as undeniable as possible? and it still flew over some folks' heads

Yeah, I see her feelings for her in Octo Expansion, but after that Marina treats her like a god while Pearl stays the same. I think my issue is more the ratio, while obviously I don't want the two to be all over eachother during SO, I'd at least want to see some love towards Marina too. It feels less like they have different love languages and more like Marina is slobbering over an imaginary relationship while Pearl just wants to stay friends.

 

[Mp3]

Pearl and marina aren’t gay
They are close friends who look up to each other
Or in marinas case she has to look down

 

[SAMICOM]

Pearl and marina aren’t gay
They are close friends who look up to each other
Or in marinas case she has to look down

y-y-youuuuu-


https://splatoonwiki.org/wiki/Dear_Pearl take that liberals /j

 

[OnePotWonder]

I can see where you're coming from with the idea that roguelike Splatoon is near-impossible to do well, but I do think there is a solution, and it's a pretty simple and obvious one to implement: Armor.
Making it so armor is more plentiful, more likely to break, and carried between floors does simulate a health bar of sorts. This could work especially well if the developers finally decided to get rid of the (hot take) abhorrently hand-hold-y safety net armor the player has by default, which completely kills of any potential difficulty unless the levels are full of instant-kill conditions like in OE.

 

[OCTöHEAD]

Or in marinas case she has to look down

agfdsgfsdagfs