Splatoon 3 - Side Order - A Short Order
8I'm sure that by now, many, many people who have bought the Side Order DLC for Splatoon 3 has already reached the end at least once. (It seems that for 100% completion, you'll need to reach the end at least 12 times.) Well, I haven't done that so far. Part of it is because I'm taking my time and not rushing. Part of it is because I have other things to do around now and I don't have all day to play it.
And part of it is because, well, I'm not too great at it. You see, Side Order, if you're not familiar with how it works, is Nintendo's take on the roguelike. (You could argue that the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series were a previous batch of Nintendo-owned roguelikes, but they are not only technically owned by The Pokémon Company, they were outsourced. Side Order is, to my knowledge, Nintendo's first take on the genre to be done completely in-house.) According to the rules of the genre, you go either down or up (in this case, up) a series of floors in a large dungeon, all of which have randomzied layouts, until you reach the boss at the end (which is not randomized). Failure at any point results in you getting tossed out of the dungeon and losing whatever you acquired from within. The roguelike was invented and developed at the programming department at the University of California, Santa Cruz in the early 80s. Many of those rules for roguelikes today were originally designed to get around limitations in computer technology at the time--for instance, the randomized layouts are because computers at the time didn't have the memory capacity to store pre-made layouts, so they programmed components of a dungeon and a randomizer because it was the only way to make a video game that large and varied. Originally, a roguelike was also intended to have brutal difficulty, but with home video games having become further divorced from its arcade roots, fewer people are interested in arcade-type game structure, fighting games aside.
And as for the story, in Side Order, Agent 8 is pulled into the Memverse, a virtual simulation created by Marina whose original purpose was to undo the effects of Sanitization from Splatoon 2's Octo Expansion. Order, an AI from inside the Memverse, goes crazy and seizes control of the Memverse while pulling other people into it (such as, well, Agent 8), and Pearl, in the form of a drone, and Marina request your help in overcoming Order. It will wait patiently at the top of the Tower of Order, on the 30th floor, which you can only reach by going up its elevator and completing the objective on each floor, one by one. You get Color Chips, which power up Agent 8, the weapon selected, or the Pearl drone, when reaching each floor. Each loss results in a boot out of the Tower of Order but also Prlz, based on your progress, which you can provide to Marina for permanent upgrades, such as more lives, higher defense, better attack power, more abilities for Pearl, and a bunch more.
I'm thankful for advances in video game design since then, because frankly, the roguelike clashes with my own play style. It's why I avoid them. I improve at a game mainly via memorization and planning ahead, so randomized layouts are my kryptonite, as it takes away both my ability to memorize a game and figuring out a winning game plan. Having to start over and over after investing a bunch of time towards something also feels frustrating to me, even with Side Order's mechanic of permanent upgrades. While I don't mind failure within a video game, failure accompanied by having to redo a lot of stuff feels tedious to me, less like fun and more like work. It probably says something that, after a few days, I still fail, usually between Floors 20 and 24, no matter how many upgrades from Marina I've gained, and that the only places I feel I've been getting better are the bosses encountered on Floors 10 and 20, which are NOT randomized except for which ones you'll face.
I will continue to play Side Order though, to at least try to reach the end. By the looks of things, fully upgrading Agent 8 will eventually turn the Tower of Order into a piece of cake, which is probably necessary to unlock everything else.