Topic: Next Nintendo Direct?

@Dev-N that's surprising to hear, personally I was highly let down by Side Order. It's not bad, but it wasn't great either (imo)

@squiddu-real @CaleBoi25
Oh man, I LOVED Side Order.

But I did play the heck out of it to 100% it. I think if you just stick to a couple of your favorite weapons and play styles, the gameplay can stay pretty narrow. It was fun using weapons I didn’t like but then finding neat chips for them that changed the way they played.

@Dev-N
Totally agree - it was amazing.

@rallydefault it wasn't narrow gameplay, it was narrow variety. the tiny number of bosses, the feeling it could've done with at least one or two more types of rooms and much more variations of them on top of that... it's the most diet coke rougelite i've ever seen.

@squiddu-real
It's only DLC... don't you think it's a bit much to think it would be as robust as a full roguelite game? For what it is, I think it's a great value and tons of fun. I didn't mind the lack of variety in bosses, either. But then again, I also loved Hades, and that has the exact same bosses every time (slight variation in the first).

Anyway, Splatoon 3 just got rated for Switch 2. Things are looking pretty good it's gonna act as the base game for addons like Raiders.

@rallydefault do you think im asking for full robust roguelike? no, even for dlc it doesn't meet a comfortable threshold for me, that doesn't feel like a good excuse. again, it feels like they're banking on me playing it to 100% to get the proper value out of the price, rather than having enough variety im not basically repeating most of the same stuff ten times over just to see a few new pieces of dialogue.

it feels like trying to stretch content too thin. rougelikes depend on variety - they're usually things you keep playing to discover new stuff and hopefully get closer to beating it - you can't make a rougelike out of table scraps and expect me to think that's totally normal just because it's dlc.

@rallydefault I also 100%ed SO, and I'll be honest... I will probably never play it again unless I really want to play a roguelite and for some reason can't access any others. It's not bad — it just doesn't have enough variety (at all) or difficulty (unless you go all-in on self-imposed challenges like monotone, limited chip, no hacks). Again, it's not bad, just disappointing

@squiddu-real
I mean, yea… it seems like you expected it to be of the same content quantity as a standalone game. Like I said before, I think it has pretty much the same variety as something like the original Hades in terms of enemies, stages, bosses, weapons, etc. It doesn’t have as many difficulty toggles, though.

But I’d say that’s pretty nice for dlc.

@CaleBoi25
I really like it. I like the feel of Splatoon gameplay generally, though, so that helps a lot.

@skywake These were the April 1st party releases of the Switch era:

• 2017 - MK8 Deluxe
• 2018 - Nothing
• 2019 - BoxBoy + Box Girl
• 2020 - Nothing
• 2021 - New Pokemon Snap
• 2022 - Switch Sports
• 2023 - Advance Wars 1+2
• 2024 - Nothing
• 2025 - Nothing

Rhythm Heaven would fit right in there alongside BoxBoy/Advance Wars and you'd likely have some big 3rd party support supporting it. Xbox for example, crammed a lot of PS5 releases into April the past 2 years so they may do the same with PS5/Switch 2 this year.

But honestly for me Rhythm Heaven's up there with Fire Emblem as the most interesting 1st party releases confirmed for 2026 so far.

@rallydefault i mean, call me crazy, but i feel like that's a disservice to hades.. i recall seeing many of the same stages show up on different runs of floors in side order, it did not take long at all to hit repeats. if anything, shouldn't that be the easiest to add more variety to? more stages? they're all just a bunch of cubes and ramps...

i find it very silly to defend dlc for lacking in variety when octo expansion has been here the whole time, the splat 3 story mode has been here for a while, and yet the game genre known for being easier to spend less on developing is the spot where they lack?

this is a fairly big dev team, not an indie studio. hades did great for it's scope, side order only vaguely gets close and that's terribly poor when there was definitely far more budget and opportunity put into the splatoon team.

@squiddu-real
Not a disservice at all - I love Hades! (I'm about to start the second game soon.) I'm the type of person who prefers simplicity paired with excellent gameplay rather than complexity paired with muddled gameplay. I know those things aren't always mutually exclusive, but more often than not those pairings seem to hold true. Side Order is pretty small, all things told, but the gameplay and relationships with the stages, palettes, enemies, etc. are rock solid. It's streamlined and super fun to play, very easy to hop in for a few minutes and revisit from time to time. Pretty darn good for dlc, if you ask me.

I think pointing to the size of the dev team and money behind it is aside from the point: Side Order is still just dlc. It's not a full game and was never meant to be a full game. I think they did a fantastic job for a piece of dlc in the roguelite vein. You're reviewing it as if it's a full game, which is your prerogative, but I'm choosing to live in the real world.

Further, I think your stance here is pretty illustrative of how modern consumers tend to have highly unrealistic expectations for... pretty much everything.

@rallydefault i saw no rebuttal for my point about the other story modes, which are fair comparisons given that things like octo expansion specifcally aimed around that scope. you realize that was a fairly beefy dlc around a similar price, yeah? so again, i must ask: why can't side order, in a genre known for being simpler to develop, get close to those levels of variety in a genre specifically built around variety? a rougelite is barely a rougelite if i can see nearly everything it has in one complete run, and being dlc does not mean totally ignoring that.

@rallydefault @squiddu-real for the sake of the others here, perhaps we ought to move this conversation to the Splatoon 3 forum haha

@CaleBoi25
I think we have very different tastes because I sort of hate the Bananza dlc lol

@squiddu-real
I’m not really trying to rebut what you’re saying because you hold an unrealistic expectation for the scope of dlc to begin with. And now you’re just being hyperbolic with “seeing everything in one run.” Don’t really see where we can logically progress from here.

@rallydefault very convenient you left out me saying nearly everything to make it seem more hyperbolic.

also, wasn't the point that we move this over to the other thread?

@squiddu-real
The point of this was to move it to another thread? lol sorry?

No, my point is that your expectations for dlc are unrealistic. Side Order was an excellent dlc.

@rallydefault caleboi was right up there dude, did you somehow not see it

@squiddu-real
No, was on my phone, sorry.

@rallydefault you're messing with someone who has gone through the entirety of the nintendo music forums twice, don't test me or something

anyways im hoping for a direct late january almost solely to shut people up convinced this thing has no games but nintendo's gonna be dead quiet about stuff until monday most likely

I assume they'll be pretty quiet next week too. It's usually second week of January when they really get into things.

I think late January direct is pretty plausible but it would be funny how insane everyone would go if Nintendo waited until late February or March.