#i already completed octo expansion

[realkeylogger]

SPLATOON 2 STORY MODE AND LEVEL 50+ SPEEDURN

[peachypizzicato]

listen, side order is. a fantastic dlc! a fantastic gameplay experience! its great! i love getting more little pieces of world building and character building n shit!!

but i gotta be honest. the writing (both in the dlc itself and in media that has come after) has really started to ruin pearl and marina as characters for me and that makes me awfully sad

[aggressive-almond-cookie]

So hey, those of you that have played through both Octo Expansion and Alterna, how do you feel like they compare in difficulty to each other? (I guess it might also be useful to compare 'difficulty to complete the main storyline' and 'difficulty to 100%' as separate categories, though I'm curious about either one.) The general impression that I have is that Octo is harder, which makes sense since it’s an expansion, but I don't really have a gauge on how much harder or which aspects of it are harder. So if you have any thoughts/anecdotes/experiences/comparisons you don’t mind sharing I’d love to hear them.

[bixels]

Splatoon 3: Side Order is good, but not great. I still highly recommend it, but if you care about the story, you're going to be disappointed. Quick review: spoilers ahead.

Side Order was the devs experimenting with Splatoon's gameplay loop. The campaign is a rogue-like, and it works amazingly well. Super fun, super challenging, building my deck and fighting through challenges with the stakes of resetting really scratched an itch in my brain. They did a great job with it.

Unfortunately, I feel like priority went to game design rather than story. Much of the mysterious artwork we saw in the first teaser trailer was completely unused; turns out, all of that was just concept art that never made it into the final product. Side Order failed to make me care about what was happening. I don't know why the protagonist had to be Agent 8; it could've been anyone else and the story would've worked the same.

Octo Expansion was the absolute peak of meshing story and gameplay. The campaign's hook is insanely strong; we immediately empathize with Agent 8 because we know from previous lore that octolings like her have been trapped underground for all their lives. We care about her fight to the surface because it's a fundamentally ideological fight for freedom. The plot stuff about Tartar and the Thangs is just nice set dressing; 8's fight for freedom is the real story.

There's none of that in Side Order. I don't particularly care about Marina's metaverse, even if it's tied to Octo Expansion's story. I don't know why Acht is there other than backstory stuff. It really feels like 8 is just told to do something and she does it because she's the protagonist; she has zero personal stakes or motivations in the conflict. This is a story blunder the devs did in Splatoon 3's default campaign––forgetting to give the protagonist a personal reason to fight––that I hoped would be fixed here, but alas.

What makes it worse is that the gameplay and story progression are completely out of sync. I beat the entire game on my third run in 4 hours. With each run, you get up to two keys to potentially unlock bits of story. That means you'll get about one piece of the story every two runs. There are twelve pieces of the story; I got the first and then beat the whole damn game. Now I have to go back and grind to see the remaining story when I've already beaten the final boss and resolved the conflict. I missed the entire story because I never had to reset because I blazed through the gameplay! It's just a real shame that I experienced everything without knowing... why it's happening. The final boss had me asking myself what the hell is going on because I don't know the backstory at all.

Again, I still really recommend. The devs did a great job, but Side Order remains in the shadow of Octo Expansion's incredible success. Like the default singleplayer campaign, there's just a lot of lost story potential here that, while not necessary, would have really elevated this DLC into something amazing.

[zenala-art]

Do you have an infodump on your captain Agent 4?

Firstly, thank you so much for the ask and interest!!

Secondly, I sure do! Conelia's my first and main Splatoon OC so she has. a lot. of lore, and I'll gladly infodump some stuff :D

Let's start with her general reference sheet! I think it makes for a nice introduction:

I think the first thing anyone asks (reasonably so) when I tell them that she's the captain is "Why not Agent 3?" In my agent story, Agent 3 is completely MIA since the end of Octo Expansion, and even without taking that into account, Conelia spends a lot more time with Marie and Callie than he (being very introverted) ever did, and she's definitely more dedicated to being a good fighter. So, when it came to choosing who's going to be the next captain, she was a very clear choice.

Being one of the captains of her competitive team, she was already used to this sort of responsability, too! The NSBS sure can sponsor her dream of being a professional competitive player, and this just meant more time to be spending with the Squid Sisters, which can't be a bad thing in her opinion.

Here's an overall of my (active) agents:

Asra and Radish are a bit outdated since I've added more interesting things to their lore since I made this picture, but the rest pretty much remains the same!

Conelia really enjoys Asra's company as her first pupil, being much more proactive and giving more pieces of random advice than we see the Captain do in the game. After the events of ROTM, the two of them very often communicate mostly through sign language, since it usually feels more comfortable for Asra (who is mostly nonverbal due to some circumstances in their life, but with Conelia they sometimes speak). She's super excited and wants to teach Asra everything she can, acknowledging that they "have a lot of potential".

She also has a long friendship history with both Agent 3 and Agent 8, but they might not be super relevant to the conversation at hand? I do have this relationship chart from some time ago that could be a fast, superficial view however (don't mind the old designs, drawings are a little old, but the info is still correct):

So yeah, if we talk about the general character, Conelia has most of the attributes usually associated with Agent 4 (the excitedness and general perceived vibe, the "always busy with school" aspect of it, living far from Inkopolis or Splatsville, etc). The most important aspect of her personal life that I feel affects how she handles leadership (and therefore her work as a captain) is having inattentive parents who forced her to be independent since way too young.

It took her some convincing from the Squid Sisters to accept recruiting a new agent, even though 8 is mostly not working with them anymore - she just wants to do everything herself all of the time, even though she knows that workload would be too much for her.

I won't go too far into detail on her personal life right now (or I'd make an actual essay here), but hopefully this infodump was interesting to you :D once again thank you for the interest and the excuse to dump about my ocs in public

[annaki-octo]

Okay, I fully finished Side Order's story with all palettes completed.

Thoughts:

As everyone has been saying already: GAY. SERIOUSLY HOW DID THEY MAKE MARINA AND PEARL SO DAMN GAY IN THIS DLC?? I love them so much.

A lot of people have also been saying this, and now that I have beaten the full game with all weapons, I have to say I agree - an endless mode would be a really good idea.

I also feel like they should have added more bosses. I feel like there aren't enough of a wider variety of bosses in Side Order, I feel like I've fought more bosses in Hero Mode. I never got to play Octo Expansion because I actually only started playing Splatoon 2 over a year ago now. I wanted to make sure I would like the game before spending the money on Splatoon 3 lmfao. And now Splatoon is our special interest lmfao

I feel like the story and lore are just lacking? Not to sound mean lmfao I love Side Order and I like the story, but I do feel like it's not as interesting as it COULD have been. I feel like the trailers and the different promotional art for Side Order really set up a really mysterious kind of story, and lots of theories about like cloning and stuff and I feel like the actual story just didn't end up as interesting as I feel the promotional stuff kinda set it up to be? At least in my opinion.

I love the aesthetics. And the music. GOD THE MUSIC. It's amazing.

I actually like that Side Order is "too easy." It made going up the spire with the weapons I'm usually terrible at using much easier and way more fun than I had anticipated. At some point, it starts to get a little ehhh okay this is kinda boring now but I think that's okay.

I'd love to see speedruns of this.

I think it would have been cool to have different "modes" to play in. Like maybe a mode where you go through the whole spire, but with no color chips, and the rewards are prlz and the higher up you go, the more prlz you get as prize. Or modes where it's all hard floors or all rigorous floors, or all danger, etc.

Speaking of - the danger levels. LMFAO. I love and hate the danger levels. I think

I also think there should've been even more different challenges and stuff.

I think ultimately, I think there just needs to be more variety. Especially considering it's supposed to be a roguelike and how easy and quickly it is to beat the entire game, including the entire game with every weapon.

I love Acht and I so am looking forward to seeing them in future games, I hope!!!

I love Smollusk. I love it so much NFJKDASNK

I had the idea earlier for the final Splatoon 3 splatfest to be Squid Sisters versus Off the Hook versus Deep Cut. I think that would be a genuinely phenomenal way to close off Splatoon 3 :')

[bigblueoctoling]

Thoughts about Suffer No Fools/Deep Cut in general

I really dislike this whole 'shiver and frye mistreat Big Man' plotline they seem to be making with deep cut. Like, from the start they've set up that Shiver and Frye don't really appreciate Big Man, but outright having their own duo group without him just kind of feels needlessly petty. Like maybe I'm looking into this too hard, but it's also, literally the only thing one is capable of looking into with Deep Cut's canonical information. Like... Big Man is already working at a disadvantage of being a male idol who isn't humanoid, it feels kind of pointlessly cruel to pit him alone against Shiver and Frye. And it's not like Shiver or Frye are any better for it.

They keep focusing on this one trait, the fact that Shiver and Frye are very very hostile to non-splatlandians. I would love to actually enjoy Shiver and Frye being openly aggressive, that's unique for an idol's personality, but rather than feeling tough, they just feel pathetic, trying way way way too hard to look intimidating.

Again, this isn't necessarily the fault of any particular writing of Deep Cut, but rather the complete and utter lack of any meaningful lore about them.

The squid sisters are hard-carried in the personality department; they get the entirety of Splatoon 1, 2, and 3's story mode to show off their personalities.

Off the Hook started out less interesting than the Squid Sisters, since they had to rely on newscasts, but even before Octo Expansion, the fact that Marina was an Octarian was an obvious huge deal from the moment she was revealed, with the splatfests revealing the gravity of Marina's abilities. Of course, then Octo Expansion happened- Octo Expansion feels very directly like it was created for the express purpose of fleshing out Pearl and Marina to make up for them not being in the main story mode. And of course we have Side Order that just doubles down on developing them.

Deep Cut's inclusion in Splatoon 3's story is just like. The most obligatory presence possible. Somehow, despite having direct boss fights, they leave absolutely zero impact whatsoever- it doesn't help that they don't sing their boss music, but they're also just there for no reason to steal "Treasures"- completely nondescript objects of no apparent value whatsoever that have no particular meaning to Deep Cut. No elaboration is given as to why Deep Cut wants this treasure in particular- Alterna is fucking littered with human technology that's infinitely more valuable than a bunch of random metal scraps. There are giant 3D printers just sitting around. And their dialogue is just... complete nothing. As stock as possible, there's nothing to gleam about any of their relationships from anything. Like...

A small aside: The reason why Squid Sisters and Off the Hook are such interesting groups is because of their group dynamic. Callie and Marie have a very deep bond that gets tested and validated after their separation, and Pearl and Marina are just a perfect duo. I'm not even a big shipper type of person but their relationship is so wonderful to see. But what even is Deep Cut's relationship? They're friends? With the way Shiver and Frye treat Big Man it feels like their entire relationship is pure business, and it's honestly more depressing than anything else.

Anyways, getting back to Deep Cut in the story mode, they say one unique piece of information about them- that they do this to help people who are suffering.

This is a fantastic direction to take Deep Cut, and would make their hostility towards inkopolis feel much more cathartic and justified.

They literally never mention it again or elaborate on it any further. Why? What are they even referring to? Poverty? Octarian oppression? General social imbalance?

The lack of elaboration about why Shiver and Frye are so prideful and so hostile, and what sort of suffering they care about, really stands out to me in Suffer No Fools.

Suffer No Fools feels like Shiver and Frye just aimlessly attacking strangers they're completely out of their depth with. The only thing we know Shiver and Frye care about is helping the misfortunate.

With that being the case, Off The Hook are literally the last people on the entire planet you should want to start beef with, even if it's just play-fighting- and in realizing this, I've realized something else about Off The Hook and Deep Cut:

Off The Hook already fills Deep Cut's niche.

Like... Pearl and Marina are the perfect duo in terms of representing social progress. Marina obviously has a very personal reason to care about impoverished octarians- she was one of them, she fought to get to the surface. Pearl, on the other hand, is the perfect emblem of an inkling, extremely privileged due to being born into great generational wealth. However, after meeting Marina, Pearl decided to put her all into using her privilege to elevate Marina's voice as much as possible. And, in doing this, creating Off the Hook, they have had a very real, tangible impact on the acceptance of Octarians on the surface. And this isn't even touching on Octo Expansion- they go out of their way to save Eight, of course, but since then, Marina put her everything into figuring out a way to save the sanitized octarians stranded in Kamabo Co.

Meanwhile, Deep Cut's actual contributions are left entirely unelaborated and unspecified. No known efforts to figure out anything about the Mammalian octarians, literally not a word spared about them.

What the fuck do they have to be proud for? What have they ever done for anyone? All I see are some stuck up egomaniacs who have no respect for anyone who isn't an asset in getting them more money. It honestly feels less like Shiver and Frye are these charitable robin hood figures and more like that was a lie to cover their asses.

...And, of course, I expect this to change in the next Splatoon game. It would be unthinkable for Deep Cut to just have no relevance again after getting nothing in this game. This is a very pessimistic outlook on Deep Cut. But they've given me absolutely nothing to work with, it's difficult to think that characters are good people if you only ever show them being unjustifiably hostile and greedy.

It just sucks. Shiver and Frye are my favorite idol designs, but they're constantly made out to be so fucking lame, and not even in an "underdog group of failures that cares about eachother" sort of way because EVERY DEEP CUT THING HAS TO BE THEMED ABOUT HOW DEEP CUT HATES BIG MAN AND EVERYONE ELSE.

[danndeemo]

Based on this post

How would Agent 8 and Neo Agent 3 react if they found out about agent 4 fanfictions

okay guys I think it's time y'all are finally let in on whatever the fuck neo 3's and cap's relationship is because it will make things easier

neo and cap met when they were both 14 to 15 at the inkopolis plaza, cap wasn't even agent 3 yet. neo was some emotional support to cap back then, but their friendship wasn't really strong. and after cap becomes agent 3 they start talking even less, and then cap completely disappears from neo's life with the octo expansion mission thing. when reunited at alterna neo immediately assumes him and cap are back on good terms. cap remembers their friendship and is a little confused when neo calls him "sir" and "captain" or "commander" willingly. he thought it was to keep the whole "professional" atmosphere. for some time it's peaceful. cap doesn't know that neo actually has a massive crush on him since the time when he left him to go on the mission to the metro. but when neo finally confesses his feelings cap is like, devastated and shit bc he's dating four (who's not around and neo doesn't know of their relationship). cap doesn't know what to even say after such a statement, so without thinking he just says "I'm dating agent 4" and that's when the switch in neo flips and he's like "that motherfucker..." and the only thing stopping him from straight up murdering four is that he still has some common sense left and realizes how sad it would make his crush feel, so he just tries to prove to cap that he's the better partner now (which IS easier bc 4 is currently in the spire at that moment)

so now their relationship is this one sided crush and a guy who's already taken yeah and each time cap sees neo he's like "god not this guy again" but he's still friends at least bc they're in the same team.

damn got carried away there sorry, back to the question.

8 would be like, very confused. his ass does NOT know the horrors of smut fanfiction. after he reads it, he just randomly references it when talking and 4 has to hold back scolding him before his ass spills anything more. ALSO i feel like marina would write same shit but with pearl or like, draw manga bc i think that's canon and 8 is just used to shit like this

but neo... oh god neo would steal that shit and never give back. when he discovers four's fanfiction where cap is like, more submissive and is on the bottom he... man even I'm afraid of what he'll do. that man is a menace when it comes to his beloved captain

[splatoon-countdown]

Well. Should probably say some things. Now that the DLC is already out, I'm probably gonna sound a lot less professional and more chill since I feel less pressured to make this blog perfect.

Future of the blog

I've said this before but yes I am continuing this blog despite the DLC having released. If more Splatoon things are announced I will switch to counting down to them. Right now I'm slowly finishing drawing Agent Eight for 100 days, and as a reminder last day was 71. It's going to be much slower now that the DLC is released, but I WILL still post art.

Main blog

I've been keeping this under wraps for some reason (for some reason I was scared to share it) but you might've already guessed from me reblogging some art from there, but my main account is @captn3. You can find me there for stuff that wouldn't fit to be posted on this blog.

Side Order thoughts

This will be kept under the cut and any other posts with spoiler content will be tagged with #side order spoilers. Thank you all for your support and excitement for Side Order with me.

OUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH DEDF1SH REAL AND IN SUCH A GOOD WAY TOO DJKNFGNDKFJNGKNJDFKGKJNDF Ahem. Sorry. Side Order, at first, was disappointing to me. It felt too short. But when I realized it wasn't really over yet, and the more I played, the less disappointment I felt. Solid DLC, 8/10. I think the Agent Four fakeout was really funny, but in the moment I was really bummed out. However, you could interpret Parallel Canon as having part of Agent Four in there somewhere anyway. For my first completed run, I beat it with Agent Four's Palette, so there's some interesting storytelling going on there with Eight using Four's Palette before anyone else.. But after realizing the palettes needed to be reconfigured, I think Eight would definitely dart to fix up Pearl and Marina's palettes before anyone else. The game was really fun, and they did the gameplay loop PERFECTLY. Other singleplayer campaigns in Splatoon don't really have much replayability, but I love how not only does Side Order encourage you to replay it, even when you 100% everything you still want to play more and more. I love the story, even if it wasn't necessarily as deep as Octo Expansion, it's very charming to see Marina wanting to help Octolings like Eight with their memories, and that leading up to reuniting with her childhood friend Acht. I'll probably have more to say even after this, because as short or small as it may be compared to other things, there's still a lot going on.

[stingrayloveblog]

Whee side order

My thoughts on it! THERE WILL BE SPOILERS!! Youve been warned.

So, here are my honest thoughts. Let me just start by warning further that this is mostly negative.

Took me about two hours and one attempt to beat all 30 floors. Was pretty fun. I used splattershot though because i suck at dualies.

But... it felt very quick. Felt like there was a whole lotta nothing plotwise, too. It was fun, but the plot is pretty weak. Its just another rogue-ai-tries-to-assimilate-everyone plot. Which has already been done. For some reason they keep trying to do octo expansion but again and they keep failing to do that.

Taking everything into consideration, acht really had no reason to be there. You could remove acht entirely and have the same results. And im not just saying that because i dont like dedf1sh. They dont add anything to anything.

I havent unlocked all marinas dev notes but so far theres been her motive of saving the sanitized octarians which......... i have my own personal issues with that. They seem to not be able to decide how they want sanitization to work.

Doing the pallets, i assumed they would give you some memory thing related to the associated character, but you just get a stupid little comment from the post-final boss that doesnt really add anything to the plot or the characters. Also murch is on luna blaster for some reason. I was speculating a lot on who luna blaster and octobrush could be assigned to, but seems like theyre just doing anyone. Murch is very irrelevant to everything as a whole so its kinda just like whatever.

That being said, i feel extremely bad for agent 4 fans. Those humanoid red eyed things with one of them looking like 4 and then them not doing anything with that at all was a huge fake out.

From what i saw, a lot of people were theorizing and expecting things based on all the evidence we got that we never did end up getting because they went an entirely different route. No agent 4 being possessed or whatever (unless thats still true and just unlocked much later, which im hoping because it would make everything a lot more interesting), no implied body swapping, no copybots.

And most of all, nothing from the first trailer we got. With all the concept art. I know it was just CONCEPT art for a reason, but surely you cant just show off all these things and then have the final result be absolutely nothing like it? Then again, splatoon 3 has had more than enough false advertising already, so i guess it was wrong to expect things to be as shown. I just really really liked the giant hostile architecture black spikes picture. And theres none of that at all.

Basically, everything that was expected was significantly cooler than what we got, and to be completely honest, i dont think it was worth splatoon 3 being in really bad shape for such a long time. I dont think it really justified the amount of dumb things that happened over the past few seasons.

I do still think its fun, and i absolutely am going to try to collect everything, but it was significantly less interesting overall than i anticipated.

I do think the final boss attacks syncing with the rhythm was cool. But other than that the level design is extremely repetitive and there really is no variation. Im only enjoying it now because ive used weapons that i like/dont mind using, but once i have to start using weapons im bad at i just know itll be insufferable.

Overall, i am unfortunately disappointed but i still have hope that maybe there is something more, because surely that couldnt have been it.

Also just because it doesnt go along with any of my oc stories at all and i am absolutely not changing anything on my end because frankly im sick of doing that

[snailvibes]

How about some angst. After seeing how skilled Agent 4 is in defeating him, DJ Octavio has Maya kidnapped and uses his hypnoshades(he makes them harder to take/shoot off) to turn her into his perfect soldier. How would the squidbeak splatoon react.

Very funny fact I actually had a plot line like this in a splatoon fic I had YEARRSS ago like in my wattpad days😭 (it’s deleted on there now tho lol). I’ve also kinda made art for this idea with that one bad end agents piece I did ages ago but I never put more thought into it aside from drawing it.

Obviously this would be pre splat3 considering Octavio wouldn’t do this splat3 - post splat 3 cus busy in the desert and then redemption arc, so tldr this won’t include neo 3 or deep cut.

Most prominently Marie would fucking FREAK out. Since you word it as it’s after he sees how skilled she is at defeating him and we can see he’s obviously capable of getting out again, this would probably not be long after the end of splat2’s storymode and Marie who is still coping with losing Callie and just now getting her back would NOT handle this well, like even just realizing Maya is missing and Octavio’s out would completely set her off. Callie would be panicking almost as much as she’s also very much still recovering and now has to deal with facing Octavio all over again because there’s no way she’d let Marie get her back alone. Add Craig Eight and Three into the mix with them coming back from octo expansion; Ashley is essentially just like “oh wow cool new agent- anddd already a new member of the brainwashed club got it.” Lucky I think would choose not to get involved and leave it to the others and Craig is essentially just “WTF happened while I was gone.”

Going into a scenario where it’s farther in the future though so everyone’s already built connections: Ashley is PISSED more than anything because of her already strained and broken relationship with Octavio and this would make it a million times worse, along with being angry that their girlfriend has to go through another thing in her life. Seeing her actually brainwashed and being that perfect soldier would be what gets that anger to turn into just fear, because it’s a similar reflection of herself under Tartar’s control.

Lucky knows Maya can handle herself, but she’s more scared for her than she’s willing to admit, considering she has no memories of her former leader and only has the stories everyone else has shared of what he’s done, and she’s never gone out of her way to interact with him. Similar to Ashley, seeing her brainwashed from the glasses just reminds her of her fight with three in the elevator, but similar to then she’s more willing than the others to fight her to try and yank those glasses off her face.

I don’t think Marie would be able to even properly fight her. I think she’d still feel guilty about shooting Callie in the face even though it needed to be done, so having to actually go outright fight her daughter would be way too much to the point that I don’t think she could even bring herself to do it. Her focus would be more on trying to snipe down Octavio in the background of the fight if he’s there, and if not, letting the others handle Maya so she can go hunt him down while his “perfect soldier” is distracted, mostly because she can’t even stand to stay there and see her like that and she’d want to still be useful. Callie I think would be in a similar situation with Marie, but staying behind anyways. She knows how disorienting it is to come down from being brainwashed and I think she’d focus on that and staying behind at the fight to be there for Maya when they get the glasses off to keep herself distracted from how horrible she feels about this even happening to her.

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 28/12/2023

Fly Octo Fly (ft. Glenna)

Season 3 Featured on: STRINGS OF FATE ~ SiIvaGunner: King for a Day Tournament Original Soundtrack

Ripped by MtH

I've been showing a lot of love recently to the King for Another Day Tournament, so I thought it'd only be fair to turn the clock back a step to the tournament that came before it - the ORIGINAL King for a Day Tournament from Season 3! And though its stakes certainly didn't feel as high and emotionally charged as the ones of the second tournament, like I talked about in 11 Minutes of City Pop and Lifelike Waterway, there was one thing it absolutely wasn't short on: HYPE.

Though quite intentionally, completely disconnected from all currently ongoing lore on the channel, there was an undeniable excitement in the air surrounding the original KFAD, seeing so many of the channel's best rippers go full hands-on-deck with arrangements of insane quality. There's a lot of favorites to pick from here, but the standout star contestant of this first tournament in particular has to be Off the Hook ft. Glenna Nalira (later changed to Paruko).

While they were out immensely early in the second tournament, their selection of demo rips hit the channel like several oncoming trucks in their sheer quality and following popularity - likely due to the recent release of the Octo Expansion for Splatoon 2, the hype for Splatoon music was higher than ever, and rippers like MtH were sure to capitalize on it. Fly Octo Fly was originally the final boss theme to the aforementioned Octo Expansion, and this is an excellent arrangement of a fantastic theme already, yet its given flavor with a now-primarily "chiptune" driven sound. It so perfectly conveys that Paruko's addition to the group isn't JUST Dead Line sneaking in their favorite character into the tournament as a guest, but that their particular brand of in-universe Splatoon music was going to have an immediately visible effect on the group's arrangements.

There's little else to say beyond just pointing to the arrangement itself and telling y'all to go listen to it - the work MtH did to merge the fantastic Off the Hook sound with a wholly new bleep-bloopy style to create something that, genuinely hits harder than the original theme to me at this point, is simply amazing. The original KFAD is absolutely deserving of a rewatch for me, and rips like Fly Octo Fly (ft. Glenna) only further assure me of that.

[moonsidesong]

finished the last palette! my final thoughts are that i enjoyed side order a lot. i don't think it was nearly as good as octo expansion but i....... think it would be very difficult to top octo expansion. i wanna go back in to complete all the color chips and buy all the items and upgrades, but i think ill take a break from that for now.

like a lot of people, i wish there was more to the story, and i really wish the final palette felt like more of a real finale, but off the hook got more screen time and acht is a really cool character so i dont REALLY have too much to complain about lol.

the music and sounds are AWESOME and probably my favorite part of the whole thing. i really recommend playing with headphones, at least for some of it. it's really great there's already so many high quality game rips floating around, but i really really can't wait for the eventual CD to releaseeeeee 😭😭😭😭 i want that music in my HOUSE

overall i had fun! solid experience. except for when i had to use the splatana stamper i really really really don't like using the splatana stamper just in general. that's not really a criticism so much as it is i just kind of hate when that weapon is in my little octo hands

[themainspoon]

Just cleared Side Order for the first time and I'm honestly a little shocked at how short it was. I know the focus of the DLC was on replayability, but even considering that it still feels very short. After about 4 runs I decided to try the lunar blaster pallet out to get some keys, and just somehow ended up clearing it first try?

Like, I know you have to clear it with all the palette's, but since each palette has 3 keys associated with it and there seems to be about 30 lockers that means there's only 10 palette's total. Which means that once you clear the tower for the first time you're already 10% of the way to completing the DLC. That's still WAY shorter than Octo Expansion was.

I had a good time and it's definetly a fun DLC. But I can't help but feel a little disappointed that it isn't longer. I just hope that final locker contains something akin to an Inner Agent 3 or After Alterna. Because I was hoping for something a little more substantial to chew on.

[temporary-woomy]

even though there’s already 12 (i think? haven’t played side order in a little while) pallets i feel like adding more would be cool! like giving cuttlefish a bamboozler, agent three with a modified (hero shot?) shooter (like with different chip preference, different base stats, etc.), and if murch and sheldon are getting pallets i feel like the other shopkeepers should get some too.

Flo (or Flow? the hat one from splat2) - probably a tri slosher or dread wringer maybe. one of those “looks innocent from afar but then once you get within range of someone who mains these your dead pretty much instantly somehow” sloshers. (most common: drone, second: can’t think of what would go here. sub: haven’t thought that through, special: didn’t think about that)

whatever the jelly shirt guy from splat2 is named - he seems like the type to use a snipewriter and i do NOT know how to elaborate on why, he just seems like that kinda guy.

the cool show guy from splat2 - dynamo. no further explanation needed. unless a further explanation is needed. (the explanation is that he seems like type of dynamo main to be super chill but then absolutely crush you in battle) (high preference power, low pref mobility bc the shoes. idk if this is callie’s kit or not. i’m hoping it’s not.)

Annie (splat1 hat) - tenta breaks absolutely because she’s so timid and stuff in game? (i have a bad memory…) (high pref support, low pref range)

(don’t know or remember enough of the other shopkeepers to provide any insight on what their pallets would be but Iso Padre (is that how it’s spelled?) should totally get a pallet too.

sorry if this is too long!

maybe the main part could be just the og pallets and the additional pallets are unlockables? i saw this fake leak where talking to cuttlefish in alterna gave you his pallette so maybe our side order would hint at you that there's new pallets to complete as post-game. like the secret boss in Octo expansion

[the-ultimate-tree]

My initial thoughts on side order

(Written pretty much as soon as I finished it. So don't expect these thoughts to be super coherent and/or accurate)

Putting in a "read more" here because WOW did this thing get long.

Before we start, I have only finished the main story of Side Order so far, because I've been playing it all day. If I tried to get any closer to 100% completion than I currently am, I'll be here all night as well.

It was very fun to play (so fun that I spent all day playing it, as previously mentioned). I think that a part of that is down to how different it is from the three Hero Modes, and from Octo Expansion. Going up the tower was never too frustrating (which may be partly becasue I am primarily a shooter/dualies main, ie the two palettes you get first if I'm not mistaken) but it was difficult at times. Which is good! There weren't too many floors, but there weren't too little either. And I really enjoyed the colour palette system. It was very fun how you just gradually get higher and higher in strength, but you almost don't notice it as you're going because youre almost always only getting one pallette chip at a time. (Also I like being overpowered, which was the case in the bonus levels with chip saturation, which were my favourite levels). I also liked the variety and randomness in the levels a lot, and their gradual difficulty increase. Maybe I should play more roguelites. The danger stages were very fun as well, and the ones with the lights out were genuinly quite creepy. They also added even more variety than the gameplay already had, as you couldn't predict when they'd show up.

I was a massive fan of almost everything about the Jelletons. Primarily the fact that their existance meant NO MORE OCTARIANS. Not that I dont like Octarians, I just think we've been fighting against them for far too long. I also really liked the Jelleton's general apperance and skeleton fish theme, and the jelly part. They looked really cool. The main thing I don't really like that much about them is the lack of explaination about what they actually are. I know we can kind of explain it away with "ohh simulation blah blah blah" but still. It bugs me.

The story is quite a different beast all together. It was pretty good. I l liked the insight we got on things such as Pearl and Marina's relationship (it all but confirmed Pearlina as canon in my eyes). The only problem was that it didnt entirely make sense. What the fuck was order's deal. How did it even get there. I was just. Confused. And my confusion wasn't really helped by the final boss, and the aftermath of said boss, like... is it an octoling of some kind? I just don't know. Maybe it's revealed in the post game somehow. It was cool, dont get me wrong, but... why was it there exactly? Why was it the antagonist, especially when the Telephone is right there. I know it was implied to have died at the end of octo expansion, but we didn't exactly see it die. It just kind of faded out into light, and we never saw it again. It was also on the side of order in the FinalFest of Splatoon 2. Having the Telephone as the antagonist would especially make sense because of the original purpose of the Memverse, that being, to unsanitise the sanitised Octolings (and other creatures). It stands to reason that if the Telephone had found out about it, it would be more than a little bit angry, seeing as it is the one that sanitised all those octolings in the first place. I thought the telephone would make sense as the villain even before I found out about the existance of order (not that much before mind you, it was during the boss fight against marina, because the stuff that was holding her was turquoise and looked a little like sanisised ink, because of the colour). Also, the whole plot to take away the free will of the people of the world using the program that was meant to save them from sanitisation does feel like something the Telephone would do. At least it feels like that to me. Maybe it would just want to resanitise them, I dont know.

The boss fight against Marina and the section leading up to it was my favourite part of Side Order. There were so many unknowns at that point! Like who was doing this, what did they want, what had happened to Marina, etc etc etc. And in the part leading up to the fight against her, those unknowns kind of came to a head, and I was wondering what would happen after the boss fight, because surely this couldn't be the end? It was not the end. I quite like how both of the Splatoon 3 storylines have sort of "false starts" before the story really begins. Hero Mode had it and now Side Order has it too. It's a shame that Splatoon 3 has seemingly exchanged the story making sense for cool openings. At least both Splatoon 3 Hero Mode and Side Order are very fun to play. Also Ahato was there! (Or Acht or Dedf1sh if you'd prefer to call them that, I'm just used to calling them Ahato). They are my favourite character in Splatoon, and have been since I found out they existed, which was in the days of the Octo Expansion.

i was very much a fan of the whole colour thing, with saturated colour v greyscaling. i really liked the visuals of it, and how the saturation of the colour kind of represented power and free will and stuff like that. Just the visuals of the game in general were exellent.

A very minor thing, but I like how Side Order pretty much confirmed that coloured fingertips is a thing that Octolings get with age, since Agent 8 in the Octo Expansion didn't have them, and they do have them now in Side Order.

Thank you very much if you read this far! I hope you enjoyed reading my extremely rambly thoughts. I might make another post if I have more Side Order related thoughts and/or when I finish the post game.