Splatoon 3 Splatfest Demo Thoughts

Nintendo held the very first Splatoon 3 Splatfest via a demo on Saturday. Fans got an early look at the game’s new shopping area, lobby, and of course Turf Wars! I checked the demo out and here are my impressions of what I played.

On Saturday, I booted up the Splatoon 3 demo and played it a few times throughout the day. Here are my thoughts on what I played…

Splatoon 3, so far, is a lot like Splatoon 1 and 2 and although there are some differences. The new game hub world for instance! The new hub is super impressive. Just like the other two games you’ll see players hanging around your hub with things they’ve drawn and written. Some of those things will even appear on walls! There are lot more shops in this game than in previous games, though you can’t use any of them in the demo. Splatoon 3’s hub world feels much more alive and jaw dropping than the first two games.

And then there’s the lobby! In the first two games, you would just have to wait and sometimes get to play a mini-game to keep you busy until it was time to play. This time around, there’s an actual lobby where you can practice your moves, see ghosts of your friends, and even visit a Brewster (aka Animal Crossing) like coffee shop. In the full game there will be a locker room here too but that’s not available in the demo. Sigh. Still the lobby is amazing!

There are also some new weapons and I’ll talk about the my favorite new weapon a moment. But first, I have to mention a not-so-good thing. Early in the day I was having some problems with internet disconnection. I thought it was maybe my internet because we were running a streaming show at the same time. We quit doing that and the battles worked fine.

However, later that night, I had some disconnections again! It’s a good thing that the demo happened, and they tested the online. Hopefully this won’t happen as much in the full game!

I did play some battles though and I’m very happy to report that when the game didn’t disconnect, it played very well. Just like Splatoon 1 and 2, the battles are fast and furious. And I was very happy with one of the new weapons that I couldn’t stop using…

That weapon was the Splatana! Yes, the new sword like weapon that throws paint. I absolutely loved this weapon. I’m pretty sure I’ll be using it a lot in the full game. I loved how it threw paint and you could even charge it up to throw more paint. The stamp special weapon was pretty cool too.

Despite the disconnect issues, I had a lot of fun with the Splatoon 3 demo. I wish that Nintendo would’ve let the demo run throughout the weekend instead of just one day! Ah well. It was a lot of fun. Can’t wait to play the full game!

Did you play the Splatoon 3 demo? What did you think of it?