Splatoon Raiders is a real surprise for this franchise. Every previous game in the series has thrived on its PVP, pitting Inklings against each other in battles for territory where ink coverage, not kills, decides the victor. Players rely on a mix of gadgets and makeshift ink blasters — the Splattershot, the Roller, even sniper-like weapons — all built around the simple joy of covering more ground than the opposing team and splatting anyone in the way.
The series has always stood out with one of the most distinct art styles in gaming, colorful and charming in a way that sparks a unique sense of nostalgia. When I first heard about Splatoon years ago, I couldn’t help but compare it to the cartoons I grew up with — especially Nickelodeon over Cartoon Network. There’s something about the ink-soaked aesthetic that taps straight into that channel’s old slime obsession, dumping green goo on kids purely for fun. It’s oddly specific, but it’s definitely there.
Overview
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Developer: Nintendo
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Publisher: Nintendo
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Platforms: Nintendo Switch 2
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Release Date: July 23, 2026
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Price: $49.99
A Bold PVE Pivot
Splatoon Raiders throws that formula out and goes all in on PVE instead. Fans of Borderlands, Phantasy Star Online, or any grind-driven character builder are going to feel like they’ve found the game they’ve been waiting for — and I mean that as the highest compliment I can give in this review.
Splatoon Raiders is one of the most fun games I’ve played on Switch 2. But it’s also inked in a handful of stipulations that feel less like ink and more like whiteout, quietly erasing some of what makes the loop work.
A Cast Full of Personality
The cast is small, but every one of them is bursting with personality. Shiver, an Octoling who instantly becomes the breakout star of the roster, plays as a free-spirited, sultry presence with an odd but memorable hook: she can tame sharks. Frye comes off as her more energetic counterpart, constantly the one pushing the pace. Big Man rounds things out as a walking manta ray — the goofy simpleton of the group with a surprising knack for music.
You don’t play as any of them directly, though. You take control of the Mechanic, a fully customizable, nameable character who suits up to fight back against the Salmonids — monstrous fish that have overrun the Splatlands.
The Loop – Simple, Addictive, and Deep
The gameplay loop itself is simple on paper and addictive in practice. Raids, mining excavations, trials, chest hunts, and a rotating cast of side objectives all feed into the same core pursuit of building out your Mechanic — and that pursuit stays rewarding well past the point where most games like this start running dry, including well into the endgame.
Progression is tied to three tank types, essentially your class system. Three felt a little thin to me, and I’d like to see the roster expanded in an eventual expansion, but what’s here is distinct enough to matter:
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Speed Tank — built around mobility and faster, more aggressive combat tactics
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Power Tank — strips mobility away in exchange for raw damage output
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Tactical Tank — plays the most cerebral, letting you deploy a turret to handle chip damage while you focus on your primary weapon
Perfect Progression Pacing
The best part of the whole progression system is watching how deep the Mechanic’s toolkit actually goes. The pacing here is close to perfect — a slow drip feed that never lets you feel like you’ve plateaued. You start with nothing but a basic ink rifle. A few hours in, you’re lobbing splash grenades, dropping turrets, jumping and dive-bombing enemies from above, and actually having to think several moves ahead, because the Salmonids will absolutely overwhelm you the moment you stop using your kit intelligently.
I played through the entire game on the hardest available setting, Survivalist, and I can say without hesitation that it’s a legitimately challenging game on that difficulty.
The Difficulty Problem
That’s where a small gripe sets in, though — because like a lot of games released in recent years, Splatoon Raiders doesn’t actually reward you for taking on that challenge. If you’re not interested in a real test, nothing is stopping you from just dropping down to Tourist mode — the easiest difficulty — instead.
That single design choice unravels more than it should. If the entire point of the game is building your Mechanic and growing stronger over time, there’s no real reason ever to pick the harder difficulty, because the game hands out the same growth regardless of what setting you’re on, with zero tradeoff for playing it safe. For a genre where the grind and the character build are the entire appeal, that’s a strange thing to leave untapped. It turns the difficulty slider into pure bragging rights and not real rewards. It becomes more noticeable the more time you sink into the game, which — given how addictive the loop is — you will.
Customization Gaps
The customization side of building your Mechanic has its own gaps, and they’re hard to ignore once you notice them. Stack this up against something like Phantasy Star Online and the options feel downright frugal — just six haircuts per gender option.
Ink color is an even bigger miss. Rather than letting players pick their own, the game randomly assigns it every time you load in. There’s a setting that lets you lock your ink color, but it’s a half-measure at best, since it only lets you choose between two colors. A game built around the idea of creating and growing your own custom character needs to offer a lot more than what’s currently here.
Verdict
Splatoon Raiders delivers one of the most satisfying PVE loops I’ve played in a long time — propped up by a small but magnetic cast, a progression system that knows exactly how to dole out power without overwhelming you, and combat that keeps escalating in complexity right alongside your Mechanic’s kit.
It’s a real tonal shift for the series, and it works far more often than it falters. Splatoon Raiders holds its own alongside the grind-heavy RPGs it draws from, but there are still a few blank spots to fill before it can claim a spot at the very top.
