Splatoon was always a series that I had a fleeting interest in. With each new entry, I'd play it for a week or two before never coming back again. Granted, it's mainly because I'm not a multiplayer person, not because the games were bad or anything.

But Splatoon Raiders is the first single-player-focused entry, taking the best aspects of the series like the shooting and weapons to create a fun mission-focused campaign mowing down tons of enemies. But some parts that made Splatoon initially stand out are missing here, namely visual customization. Still, Splatoon Raiders is a gnarly experience.

The story reads more like window dressing than anything. When you're hanging with the Deep Cut trio consisting of Shiver, Frye, and The Big Man (talking sting ray), you get to learn a bit more about their personalities. However, don't come in expecting any profound lesson from Splatoon Raiders. The real hook is in the gameplay.

The gameplay mechanics here are pretty much the same as the other Splatoon games. You shoot ink at your opponents, and the splattering colors the ground. While your running is incredibly slow, diving into colored ink dramatically increases your movement speed. This allows you to maneuver around the arena more easily and flank your enemies.

There are also different mission types and levels, such as longer linear missions that involve both shooting and platforming, as well as other ones that require you to collect orbs before time runs out. The map provides plenty of variation to keep the experience feeling fresh.

Splatoon Raiders also places much more emphasis on buildcrafting than its usual multiplayer-centric brethren. It's partly because multiplayer games have to balance player skill and loadouts, so build customizations are kept somewhat minimal. But with the single-player focus here, you're free to become as powerful as you want against NPCs. It's so much fun tinkering with all the different gadgets and weapons to make your character unique.

My favorite gadget ended up being the Shot Pot, an automatic turret that provided additional firepower while I went around smacking enemies with the Splatana at close range. You can also augment parts to your gadgets to give them additional attacking properties. Within a certain number of slots, you can increase parameters like their attacking range, fire rate, and damage.

As you clear more islands, you'll unlock Relics that give your character powers. For example, one is called Lifesaver, which increases your HP recovery rate, and the Ink Pro, which reduces the amount of ink consumed when you fire your weapons. Altogether, weapons, gadgets, and Relic powers give a high level of customizability that always encourages you to experiment with various builds.

Splatoon Raiders isn't entirely single-player, though. You can engage with its co-op mechanics by joining two additional players online to tackle the harder levels in the campaign and post-game. There's a surprising amount of replayability with each level getting “Spicy” and “Super Spicy” variations with more difficult enemies. While I did experience a singular instance of my teammates dropping mid-level due to connection issues, the co-op functionality worked smoothly and quickly.

The most disappointing aspect of Splatoon Raiders is the limited fashion customization compared to previous games. You can't individually pick out your shirt, pants, or headwear here. Instead, you'll unlock various whole costumes to equip. Splatoon Raiders trades cosmetic customization for a more gameplay-centric build personalization. It's quite a shame that the game doesn't have both when it could've easily done so.

Despite its faults, Splatoon Raiders is my favorite entry so far, even if it's because of the genre switch from multiplayer to single-player. The addition of co-op was a clever approach to retaining some of that teamwork that Splatoon is known for, however. The engaging customization was just the ink I needed to sign over my time to this series for a long time.