I think it’s taken me a few years to realize I don’t like Splatoon 2. Or I’m edging towards it, and hope it’s not the case.
Don’t get me wrong, in the perfect world, where you’re a teenager and have three friends willing to play with you every day, it is maybe the best multiplayer shooter ever made. Balance, tactics, strategic map/ink control.
In this one, where most of us will only ever have the option of playing with random brainlets, and Nintendo’s matchmaking even gets a whiff of you being good, and decides you need to carry the worst of the worst... it’s like it completely falls apart. All those good things become bad things, really, really quickly. If other games can recover from terrible teammates, Splatoon is specifically built to make them far more frustrating.
The only time I ever actually like this game, is when it’s been a while, the aggressive matchmaking has actually fucked off for a second, and consequent games are really fun, well-balanced contests between both teams. That usually lasts about a single play session.
It’s just not fun to constantly play against 2-4 people by yourself, to have all the ink lines being rolled back at startling speed, and fundamentally not be able to do a single thing, because your teammates are doing who knows even what. Alternatively, it’s not fun to have to pick the best CQC gun, and play the game like CoD, in a cracked-out, combat-only, 1 on 4 mind state where you spend 3 minutes not even blinking to win, utterly stressed beyond all ridiculousness for what’s supposed to be an enjoyable game.
As someone who adored this series at the beginning, I... honestly don’t think I’d waste my money on a third one, unless Nintendo actually has some meaningful solutions to all this.