Tech Radar Gaming (5/5) – “Splatoon Raiders offers an incredibly compelling, single-player take on the series’ trademark ink-spewing action. It’s all underpinned by the same excellent shooting mechanics that make online matches of Splatoon 3 such a blast, now smartly recontextualized in a wholly player versus environment (PvE) format and enhanced with a plethora of satisfying progression systems that allow you to experiment with countless impactful character builds.”

Pocket Tactics (10/10) – “Splatoon Raiders of-fish-ally earns our seal of approval as a fantastic game in the franchise. Whether you go it alone or get help from other players, searching for loot and mining ore has never been so fun, thanks to the amount of weapons and gadgets you can equip to blast enemies out of existence. Plus, you get to hang out with Deep Cut, which is always a fun time.”

IGN (9/10) – “Splatoon Raiders is an amazing action RPG with an expertly executed loop. It has fantastic new powers with crazy upgrades that are worth chasing, tough battles that force you to put care into your build in order to overcome them, and a huge variety of fun level types to jump between. The pacing, balance, and difficulty curve are very impressive: I always had to work to get better, but none of the campaign ever felt like grinding or needless padding. Raiders stays fresh by constantly introducing deeper ways to customize my abilities that spark new ideas for creative combinations. I reached the credits more than 20 hours ago, but thanks to an overpowered endgame worth coming back for and the option to seamlessly play with friends online, I’ve got plenty of raiding left to do. This is the best Splatoon campaign yet and one of the top games on Switch 2.”
Game Informer (8.75/10) – “Splatoon Raiders is the kind of game I struggle to put down. Most raids only take minutes to complete, and the steady feeling of upgrading your abilities constantly tempted me to play “just one more” to test out the latest tweaks I made. Though Splatoon’s single-player content has always been underappreciated, Splatoon Raiders makes it difficult to ignore, shining a bright light on the series’ oft-slept-on side.”

Destructoid (8.5/10) – “Splatoon Raiders is a looter shooter wrapped in Nintendo’s kid-friendly world, but it’s not to be slept on because it’s genuinely awesome. While not as deep or complex as some other games in the genre, its charm, loot chase, and satisfying gameplay loop make it one of my favorite games of 2026 so far.”
Games Radar+ (4/5) – “If you’ve had a hankering for a solo twist on the loot shooter genre, you’ll love this, as it does that extremely well. A successful non-PvP outing for the series, Splatoon Raiders has room for improvement, but nonetheless offers a fun adventure that’s not quite like anything else.”

VGC (4/5) – “Splatoon Raiders shows that Nintendo’s online multiplayer series works just as well in an offline solo setting. It’s very much a game with a single, simple loop – shoot everything, die, upgrade, shoot everything again – but it delivers this loop with such engaging, enjoyable action that you don’t need to worry about repetition creeping in, you’ll happily open the front door and invite it in for dinner.”

Eurogamer (4/5) – “And as with Bananza, what I’m left with at the end of it all is a sense of astonishment. This game is so carefree in its mayhem, so uncluttered in its thinking, that it absolutely reeks of youthful confidence. Let’s spin this PvE mode off into its own game! And let’s not worry too much about whether you can follow every second of the action when things get wild. Better to let them get wild in the first place!

“This is the trick with Nintendo, I think: a sense of eternal youth when it comes to its design. And for now, that youthful energy is pursuing apocalyptic simplicity. Not bad.”

Giant Bomb (3.5/5) – “After rolling credits, Raiders made it clear that there is still a good amount of post-game content to check out. I do commend the game for offering so much more to do after beating the campaign, especially since it was already a meaty experience. I just don’t feel much of a drive to play more of Splatoon Raiders. I had fun drowning all of those salmonids in ink. But just like them, I’ve had my fill.”

Metro Game Central (6/10) – “The best parts of Splatoon Raiders are highly enjoyable but it’s still a very slight and thoroughly unnecessary game. It’s a minor diversion, that for veterans of the series only makes the wait for Splatoon 4 more painful, while for those new to the franchise it’s enough of a mixed offering to make them wonder what all the fuss was about in the first place.”

The Guardian (2/5) – “This is the biggest surprise about Splatoon Raiders: it is pedestrian. If you’ve played one of dozens of modern cooperative action games, you’ve played this. You have upgraded your gear and compared weapon stats and divined synergies between abilities in order to throw your character into the meat grinder over and over again, watching overwhelming hordes eventually become trivial as your stats improve, your arsenal more varied. There is only so much that Splatoon’s ink-fuelled weaponry and charming DIY design sensibilities can do to elevate this experience. Like its archipelago setting, Splatoon Raiders is far removed from what makes the main series so charming, and what’s left here feels a bit too much like watching paint dry.”

So there you have it! It sounds like a pretty successful spin-off for the Splatoon series, albeit one that may speak to some more than others. There are a couple of low-scoring reviews here, to be sure, but it’s worth considering that the average on Metacritic is currently 80, which is pretty darn good.