vert1 Mar 24, 2017 (edited Aug 15, 2019)
Release Date: July 21st
source: (1)
Day 1 - Testfire:
Cool stuff as expected. I played all the weapons. The splattershot seems like the best weapon from the current selection. The change to the roller's jump attack, it's now a jump slash, makes killing someone with it much more satisfying than jump flicks. (It also makes the Splatoon 1's jump flick come out slower or at least cause the user to feel slowed down by assigning it to a less-intuitive input setup.) The jump flicks still kill fairly well as I remember cursing after getting ko'd by a poorly aimed flick. I held my own pretty well with the sniper getting a lot of kills off people coming up inclined parts of the stage and hitting people far away straight ahead of me with the hose special.
Specials are a lot more powerful, yet slower than the firsts game. The special for the charger is my current favorite special. But the coolest moment I had with using the specials came when I cancelled out getting nuked by inkling-seeking missiles by using the powerwave ink attack (the one where you ground slam) special right as the missiles blew up for a massive explosion.
The camera seem to be pulled slightly back more from the original Splatoon. Super jumping to your teammates is a lot harder to figure out without a touchscreen. -_-
Numbers-wise: Played 1 hour and 15 minutes. Played 5 minutes of practice. Played 10 minutes past the time limit. My opponents dc'ed 7 times with 3 dc's being from Japan. 4 times I had problems starting the connection to another Switch device. I am going to look into getting a wired internet connection setup for Switch and see if that helps.
The new inkling look is fairly distracting. I am not sure on whether I like clearly displaying your enemies team and their each individual inkling's weapon type on the top of your HUD. It means everyone can tell if there is a roller (and more importantly, Inkbrusher) lurking if you carefully assess your map before advancing.
Important cool feature I haven't really noticed that is exclusive:
Q: What was HD Rumble like? When and how did it kick in? Wasn't able to play the testfire sadly.
WiiRevolution1: You could feel yourself swimming in ink. And I think when a bomb or something goes off I could tell which direction it was in by the rumble. First time experiencing hd rumble since I only have Zelda. Quite happy with it!
QuixoticNeutral: HD Rumble is a palpable presence. I didn't notice it at all at the Switch preview event, but today I started noticing things like a forward ripple when a teammate activates a jump next to you, a directional sensation based on whether they are to your left or right. The vibration of bombs going off also seems directional.
It's pretty noticeable with split Joy-Cons, though maybe not as much in the other control configurations. I was at a Switch preview event where I tried games like 1-2 Switch (and Splatoon 2 in the other control modes without picking up on the rumble at all), but playing Splatoon 2 today felt like understanding HD Rumble for the first time. It's a standard rumble vibration, roughly, but you can distinguish left from right and discern movement back to front or front to back.
Day 2 - Testfire:
I had a lot more fun this time around. Bringing up the map and jumping to teammates is a lot smoother now. Got a cool moment where I sniped someone in the air from completing their slam special. Even getting teammates dc'd I was able to enjoy practicing my aim against the enemy team. The dualies, which I sucked at using tremendously my first testfire, have become a lot more enjoyable for me to use as I make sure to throw out a lot of scrubbers to travel behind or increase my wide-targeting coverage range. The dart-rolling doesn't seem that useful at least not from when I do it or when I blew out a Japanese player who rolled twice in front of me who otherwise was annihilating my team.
The camera complaint I had about it being pulled back more than it should, I have to take back now. I like how it looks when you are doing airborne attacks. The more distant image of an Inkling creating a bigger gap between it and the viewer (player) as if it is lunging into the foreground.