Splatoon Raiders is not a competitive shooter. That distinction alone sets Nintendo's first major spinoff apart from the series' multiplayer foundation, and it's the right call. What the studio has built instead is a brutally challenging action RPG that respects player creativity and rewards experimentation in ways the mainline games never could.
The setup is straightforward: Shiver, Frye, and Big Man venture to the Spirhalite Islands hunting treasure to pay off Splatsville's debt, battling waves of Salmonids along the way. That's the frame. What matters is what happens inside it. You play as the Mechanic, an Inkling or Octoling with a gift for crafting, and your job is to get incrementally stronger by tinkering with builds, testing them in varied missions, and hunting for loot that sparks new strategic ideas. It's a loop that works because each piece fits perfectly. After 40 hours, it still hasn't worn thin.
The visual identity alone signals that Raiders is doing something different. All 11 weapon types return, but they're stitched together with duct tape and salvage instead of the polished toy aesthetic of earlier games. Your Splattershot's ink tank might be an old soda bottle. Your Stringer could be a broken tennis racket. That scrappy homemade look isn't just window dressing. It signals the core theme: making the most of what's already in front of you. And mechanically, attacking enemies, covering ground, and swimming through ink feels better than ever, helped along by the Switch 2's improved HD Rumble.
The real innovation, though, sits in Gadgets. These are special pieces of equipment that exist alongside your main weapon, and they're the foundation of Raiders' entire build system. Each Gadget belongs to one of three classes determined by which ink tank you equip: Speed, Power, or Tactical. Speed gives you mobility tools like the Jump Bomb for escaping danger or the Flywire grappling hook for closing distance fast. Power Gadgets let you charge in for heavy hits, like the Splatchet's sweeping slash that can delete some Salmonids in one blow. Tactical is the wild card, offering strategic positioning tools like Bombloons, ink-filled explosives that chain together and detonate with force that scales with how many are deployed.
The magic happens when you start combining them. You can equip two Gadgets at once, and the number of synergies explodes from there. Use Jump Bomb and Flywire together and you become an acrobat who never touches the ground. As you level up and unlock skills for each Gadget, the possibilities multiply. Take Bombloons: you could make them as explosive as possible, covering more area and dealing more damage. Or you could focus on the tether between them, which also damages enemies, and keep them deployed longer for passive destruction. There are hundreds of potential builds waiting to be discovered, and the game actively encourages you to keep all three Tank types leveled up by offering unique mission rewards for each one.
One weakness: the crafting menu badly needs a wishlist system to track materials across upgrades. Right now, you have to screenshot or memorize what you're hunting for.
Difficulty Selection and Encounter Design
Raiders doesn't pretend to be easy. The Salmonid army is relentless, and your base weapon alone won't carry you through. Three difficulty levels exist, but they only change damage taken, not level design or rewards. Even on standard mode, the encounters demand respect and smart strategy. Pick Survivalist mode like an S+ rank Splatoon 3 player would, and you get tense firefights where victory and defeat sit separated by razor-thin margins. Failure matters here. Lose a mission and you're back at base rethinking your build, maybe grinding a side mission or two, then trying again with fresh tools. That cycle wouldn't work if the game was a breeze. Raiders nails the balance completely.
The campaign also refuses to hold your hand. Each stage displays a threat level upfront, but nothing stops you from charging into something way above your paygrade. You might get crushed. But when you find a way to clear a mission you had no business winning yet, the payoff is enormous, especially if the game rewards you with a rare weapon or material drop. Missions take only a few minutes each, so losses never feel like massive setbacks. Instead, they feel like progress. You notice enemies going down a split second faster. Your health lasts a bit longer. Better Gadgets are ready to deploy. The numbers literally climb on screen, but more importantly, you feel yourself growing stronger.
Pacing is nearly perfect across the 18-hour campaign. You grow incrementally with each success, but the Salmonid army always stays one step ahead with increasingly difficult stages that demand new solutions. Yet you never feel like you're grinding or replaying the same level endlessly, because there's always a new stage waiting.
Raiders offers five main level types, each with different objectives and unique rewards. Standard levels are linear paths with platforming challenges and optional collectibles. Multi-level dungeons force you to clear each floor under time pressure, demanding efficiency and raw damage. Salmonid Dens focus on specific enemy types and require lateral thinking, like using the Speed Tank to race up a mountain against the clock. Crystal mining levels let you fill a meter halfway to clear, but you can push further for bonus rewards if you're confident you can extract before losing all lives.
The real standouts are Sampler Dungeons, Splatoon's answer to Breath of the Wild shrines. Each one locks you into a specific Gadget loadout (usually a souped-up version) and walks you through puzzles that teach you why that tool is powerful and how to use it creatively. These are excellent tutorials that made me want to upgrade my own Gadgets to pull off the same combos in regular missions. They're also devilishly fun.
Enemy variety matters everywhere. Salmonids from Salmon Run return, but Raiders uses handcrafted levels instead of random waves, turning encounters into puzzles. A Smoker's giant bubble shields allies. A Big Shot's shock wave pressures you out of the ink. Different combinations create encounters where split-second decisions matter. Surround yourself with the orbiting Splatellite Gadget or use updrafts to go airborne. There's always multiple ways to win. And on top of the standard missions, Spicy versions of every level ramp up difficulty and enemy count dramatically, demanding even more creativity and strategy.
When you win, you get different rewards depending on the mission type: money, new buffs, crafting materials to upgrade Gadgets, or skill points. That means when you need something specific, there's always a level type built for it, and you're constantly rotating between them. Add in excellent boss battles sprinkled throughout and the endless build shuffling, and Raiders never stops feeling fresh.
The graphics don't look drastically different from Switch 1 games, which was initially disappointing. But the sheer number of enemies crammed on screen without slowdown is genuinely impressive, and the art direction makes up for any visual shortcomings anyway. The scrappy weapon designs and colorful chaos matter more than polygons.
Author Emily Chen: "This is the strongest campaign Splatoon has ever offered, and it's already one of the best Switch 2 games so far."
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