Why Side Order Fails as a Rougelike - An Essay by someone who ****ING HATES WRITING

[SAMICOM]

THIS IS A WIP.



I'm going to give 2 very popular opinions and 1 slightly lukewarm one. 1: Splatoon is a good series. 2: Rougelikes kick ***. 3: Side order does not do a good job as a rougelike. While I am new to the Splatoon series, Splatoon 3 being my first game, and the genre of rougelikes being even newer to me, you might think that i'm unqualified to write something like this. You are correct, but also shut up.

I don't mean to compare apples and oranges, but the fact that I need to here shows how alienated Side Order is from most other roguelikes, such as The Binding of Isaac in a negative way, which I will explain with 3 points.

Point 1: You've seen one run, You've seen 'em all.

The Binding of Isaac's replayability stems from the sheer amount of POSSIBILITIES. The game has 34 different characters to play as, with over a dozen different final bosses you could choose over multiple routes. Side Order, However, has less than 15 weapons to select, and only one route. 30 Floors, 2 Bosses, and the same exact final boss. Every. Single. Time. The floors in SO are all recognizable after under 20 runs. In Isaac, I constantly see new room layouts even after 1030 hours of gameplay. (it's an addiction and this is a cry for help.) Even after you finish a run in SO, it never feels that good. It's always a lackluster feeling. In tBoI, you unlock new items that make every run feel more fresh than the trendiest squid on the block. These items lead into my next point:

Point 2: Unlocks and Power Scaling

The Binding of Isaac has over 600 items with different effects to collect, many of which are unlocked by beating boss as a character, or via miscellaneous other methods. Side order has weapons that unlock pretty quickly (Which I am glad for) But the Colour Chip upgrading system is somewhere between bad and terrible.

Point 3: Do YOU still play side order?

 

[isaac4]

I definitely agree that Side Order failed to deliver on the concept of a Splatoon roguelike.
Despite all the hype surrounding its eventual release, I rarely ever see it talked about anymore and sometimes I even forget it exists.
It hasn't left much an impact and I would largely put the blame on the lack of variety in terms of rooms, bosses, and upgrades.
Even the chip system left a lot to be desired with some specific chips being completely useless such as the Brella Cooldown and Sound-Wave Damage chips.

I personally don't ever play Side Order anymore.
I did set out to 100% it almost a year ago now but the grind to get everything and the general repetitiveness of it all left me feeling very critical and mostly negative about the mode.

 

[Algae]

I have a somewhat different viewpoint on the roguelike archetype (though I assume you see the third statement as controversial instead of the second).

The only game I got into with random permadeath "playthroughs" is Star of Providence. It's a top-down shoot-em-up with weapon classes whose designs fit the game mode. But with Side Order's slower-paced horde destruction, the only kit with both colors playing to the main weapon (mobility matches the Shooter's agility; it and range make up for the weapon class's core line-of-sight weakness) lacks the same chance to shine. I can't even discern which classes the items and drone colors work with the most, either. Similarly, the chip add-ons barely exist (as mentioned) and are related to auto anyway.

The rooms of Side Order lack not only the breadth, but some of the depth that Star of Providence provides. The latter game doesn't dangle game-breakers as blatantly as even Side Order does, but its rooms interact with its system of weapons to make each run more exhilarating as I play my cards better.

The power scaling in Side Order... it's honestly really pathetic. In Star of Providence, each knock against me counts equally and I don't give up until the world stops for a second and my miniship spectacularly explodes. In Side Order, the strongest upgrades are to your survivability and your attack power. Since the power levels of you and your enemy are really variable at large yet predetermined at a level's start, there's little middle-ground between sleepwalking through a level and struggling to get by before losing all your lives. Speaking of lives, they're only lost if your base armor is lost, which requires you to have already had a disadvantage. Worse yet, extra armors don't carry between floors so I don't bother with more armor capacity.

I love that Star of Providence lacks traditional macrogame upgrades. The unlockable weapon classes (I took a shine to the bullet-blocking Sword and mid-range Pulsar) aren't designed to be superior to the initial ones (like the always-instahit Laser or always-overclockable Charge). Whereas Side Order punishes those who challenge themselves, Star of Providence has a setting called Lethality, a mode where you have more attack power at the start, but your max health is capped at half the initial value. I always use this Intense lethality so enemies have less chances to hit me and I can heal up fast while getting many Shields. (The Sudden Death lethality doubles your power, but you lose if you sustain any damage.)

In conclusion, I would argue that thinking of "roguelike" as a type of gameplay does it a massive disservice; there's a lot of roguelikes on the market that are really mediocre. Assuming SAMICOM's final question isn't rhetorical, I never planned to buy everything from the it/its prawn, and I gave up on the four-something full upgrades that aren't common in any kits (why no support/drone brella why?). I'm not touching Side Order again without better choices of common tones, and maybe better level design. Good night to y'all.

 

[Hokuto]

I have 100% completed three games: Zero Time Dilemma (all cutscenes and achievements), Pokémon Shield (base game Pokédex), and Side Order (all chips, upgrades, purchases). Side Order was the least satisfying experience, which says a lot to anyone who recognizes either of the first two games. Don't get me wrong, the first battle at the top of the Spire contains one of my favorite moments in the Splatoon series, but once the rush of turning the tables wore off and my Eight upgraded enough to obliterate Smollusk, I found myself wondering "is this it?" the third and the eighth and the twelfth time. Dangling tiny lore carrots that taste like dirt. I ate them anyway. (Parallel Canon/Agent 4 got the short end of the stick, again. You cannot prove me wrong.)
Some chip combos were stupid and cruel. All the dodge roll chips were Mobility, exclusive to a weapon designed around its unique mobility options... with favored Lucky and Drone tones. Why does Brella get Power when its exclusive chip is Support? I will throw hands with whoever decided Power/Lucky Roller should have an exclusive Turf chip. I did NOT enjoy the grind.
Important edit: I play some games with the express intent of fulfilling a power fantasy. Instakill Quick Homing Charger and Brush/Stamp Rushdown as game plans don't stay fresh on stale stages, as reliable as they are once your Palette fills up enough.
(Thin silver lining: I do not have nightmares about Cruel Sisyphean. I don't know what the rest of y'all are talking about...)

 

[missingno]

I grew up on Nethack and Shiren the Wanderer. I have some big Opinions™ on a lot of modern games that call themselves Roguelikes. There are two kinds of problems I have with the genre today:

• -lites. These games should not be invoking the name of Rogue at all, and any developer who does so should be tied down and forced to play Rogue (1980) to completion. A central tenet of the original Rogue is that every run is self-contained. You cannot grind to better your future runs, you can only grind your own skill as a player. I want a different name for games that do not follow this principle, one that does not contain the name Rogue at all.
• Isaac Syndrome. This is what I call games that are too bloated to have any sense of balance or polish. They allow for combos broken enough to trivialize the game, and the player quickly learns to just hunt for those things they can break the game with. If the game is packed with a trillion ways to do this, I totally understand the appeal of every run being a new kind of power fantasy. But this is not what I want to see in the genre. A good Roguelike should never allow the player to get too comfortable, never allow them to get to a point where their build has solved the game and they have no further need to make meaningful decisions for the remainder of the run. They should always be adapting to new threats.
  • As an aside, the modern game I see as the pinnacle of good Roguelike design here is Slay the Spire. Spire is brilliant for the way it actively punishes the player for trying to chase after just one kind of syngergy. Many enemies are designed to hard counter decks that do only one thing, so you need to have a well-rounded deck that can solve multiple different kinds of fights. I also like that card removal carries a hefty enough opportunity cost that the best way to deal with your crappy starting cards is often to just dilute them with a big deck. Other deckbuilders that allow microdecks to be strong suffer because clicking Skip over and over results in less decision-making. Spire is good, play it, and take notes if you're a game designer.

I came into Side Order knowing full well that Nintendo was never going to make a proper Roguelike. Nintendo wants this game to be accessible to general audiences, kids and casuals. Which means it could never be what I want out of the genre.

Hacks exist to offer the power fantasy, and ensure that anyone can grind their way to completion no matter what your skill level. If you max out all the Hacks, the game becomes comically trivial. Many modern Nintendo games include a Super Guide feature meant to allow players to cheat or bypass anything they feel stuck on, this is effectively Side Order's version of that.

But for those that do not want the game to be trivial, you have the option of turning Hacks off. You can even customize exactly how many Hacks you want to use to fine-tune the difficulty level. So now it actually can be a proper Roguelike, right?

The problem is that it is painfully obvious that the game is not designed for this. One of the biggest problems is how low your base DPS is, against hordes that respawn faster than you can kill them. Zones floors especially are the worst, because you can get stuck in a state where you can't make progress at all.

You can play around this, it's not like Hackless is unwinnable, but the way to do so makes the game fall apart even further. Just learn which floors are deathtraps, and never go to those floors. And when you do that, the cracks begin to show. @Algae put it perfectly in that there's nothing in between sleepwalk or getting hopelessly trapped.

But once you start playing like a coward, you realize that your build doesn't actually matter all that much, you can clear an 8-Ball floor naked. And if you're choosing floors based on safety rather than reward, you're not making decisions about your build anymore. Build doesn't really matter much in the end, whatever you end up putting in your palette will always be enough for Overlorder.

You can try to manually balance the game yourself using only a few Hacks. But even that has two big problems. One is that there is no clear standard for what should be the intended experience here, which Hacks do you enable? And once you've learned how to play the game like a coward, you're probably going to continue playing that way even with Hacks.

Side Order has some really cool ideas in it and an excellent core loop. But a lack of balancing prevents those good ideas from shining through. And that's always how it was going to be, because everything that a good Roguelike should be would've alienated a large portion of Nintendo's target audience.

 

[SAMICOM]

• Isaac Syndrome. This is what I call games that are too bloated to have any sense of balance or polish. They allow for combos broken enough to trivialize the game, and the player quickly learns to just hunt for those things they can break the game with. If the game is packed with a trillion ways to do this, I totally understand the appeal of every run being a new kind of power fantasy. But this is not what I want to see in the genre. A good Roguelike should never allow the player to get too comfortable, never allow them to get to a point where their build has solved the game and they have no further need to make meaningful decisions for the remainder of the run. They should always be adapting to new threats.

If you are referring to Isaac from before the Repentance DLC, I absolutely agree. Post-DLC, however, most if not all of the item bloat, pathetically easy game breaks, and overall pitifully easy difficultly has been toned back or removed for an overall more enjoyable experience. No matter how strong you are, Mother, Hush, and Delirium are always a good challenge.

 

[OnePotWonder]

I have a fairly unique perspective on Side Order, as I've more than 100%ed it, but haven't played other roguelikes before. It's clear what the mode is trying to do, but it fails to full send it. It seems like a stepping stone from the way previous Splatoon campaigns were handled to a proper roguelike format, only really needing more focus on the amount of content available and more time for the story to come into its own to be a really good singleplayer mode.

Side Order wasn't great, but it shows that the future of the series' singleplayer is looking bright. I could absolutely see a singleplayer Splatoon spin-off that leans farther into the roguelike formula.