Splatoon Raiders Review: Round and round we go

A small gameplay loop doesn't make for a lot of variety...

Splatoon, as a franchise, has grown on me over time. Wholly unique, it debuted on the Wii U as a shooter-but-not; you technically could join the team-based game and win rounds without eliminating a single opposing player. Instead, Turf War was about using your ink-based weaponry and painting a battlefield in your colour; emerge from the round with the majority of paint on the field, and you won.

When I originally reviewed Splatoon, I bemoaned a lack of variety — it was Turf War, and more Turf War. Splatoon 2 added Salmon Run — a single-player campaign — to the mix in an attempt to add some variety. I didn’t play or review Splatoon 3, but Jay sure did… and it didn’t pique his interest.

Now, Splatoon Raiders, a Switch 2 exclusive and the latest in the franchise, has removed Turf War altogether and has gone for more of a Salmon Run-like experience.

As a result, Raiders is the closest thing to an extraction shooter that Nintendo has made to date. Playing as a Squid Kid, you find you and your friends marooned out in the middle of a vast ocean; it’s up to you to travel to new islands, attack the Salmonids there, and harvest as much bounty as you possibly can. Rinse, repeat.

This narrow gameplay loop sees you enter a level, paint the ground to travel to resources faster, eliminate enemies there, and occasionally take on a big boss. You’ll then reinvest key items back at your base to upgrade your skills, level up, and take on bigger challenges (or, at least, similar challenges attached to higher level requirements). There’s not much to it.

Challenge does escalate as you progress, sometimes through level caps and other times through new enemies; one, in particular, has a shield and means you need to travel behind it to attack a vulnerable point. Honestly, I wish there was more variety of this manner to keep things interesting.

Pretty early on, I found myself with myriad of weapons to choose from, but didn’t see the point in switching from my original weapon. It levelled up with me, dispatched enemies easily enough… and I suppose that’s part of the problem. At every point playing Splatoon Raiders, I merely felt like I was going through the motions. Bouncing between it and Marathon — as I’m level 60 and want to hit level 100 before this season ends simply so I can get my final PlayStation Trophy in it and never play it again — I felt like both games were more of a job than anything resembling fun.

Raiders does offer up limited multiplayer through local wireless play and through an online “help others” feature. I didn’t test either as I wasn’t having trouble passing levels in terms of the former, and I was unable to test out the latter due to timing limitations.

Back in 2015, I said that Splatoon was “a great little idea without a whole lot of follow through,” and that’s how I feel about Splatoon Raiders. By removing Turf War and transitioning to something pretty close to a first-person shooter, Nintendo has taken what makes the franchise unique and discarded it. The result is a rather bland experience that I’m not all that keen on recommending. It, of course, has the usual Nintendo polish — solid visuals, great music and the like — so if you’re a fan of the franchise and really, really like Salmon Run, this one’s for you.

Splatoon Raiders is a Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive, heading to the platform on 23 July 2026.

Splatoon Raiders 23 July 2026 Switch 2   Buy on Switch 2: Nintendo eShop, Amazon