Why Splatoon 2 Has The WORST Maps 

Splatoon 3 map designers saw this video's title and took it as a challenge

"i feel like splartoon 3 is gonna have the best maps that we've ever seen" Now here is a statement that aged like milk!

Playing Splatoon 2 felt like they never wanted you to breathe, you can be attacked at any angle, there was like no place to hide on any map. I remember playing Splatoon 1 and loving all the little hidden corners you can hopefully flank the enemies with while most people are focusing on capturing mid. I loved hiding on the Flounder Heights walls. Splatoon 2 was so different and it felt like you'd die so easily

Tower control on camp triggerfish is the worst thing ever created.

Ngl Manta with rails at the sides of the map sounds really cool

To people who are wondering why shellendorf clam blitz is bad. • Too much of a long range advantage •If you leave the long range alone they will score from the roof •Brushes have too much of an advantage on the uninkables making it impossible to chase them down if they have a powerclam •There’s not many ways to get onto the roof •You can score normal clams from the roof •You can score powerclams from the roof by jumping off it then getting back on the roof by jumping across blocks by the basket Combining all of these factors together shellendorf clam blitz ends up becoming a complete mess of who can keep control of the glass.

Imagine making this whole video just for Splatoon 3 to have even worse maps

I feel like knowing Nintendo, their thought process was probably "Oh, we would like it if team fights were to happen more! We should funnel everyone into the centre of the stage so that more fun and cool fights can happen!" but then it just kinda didn't work

“Now maybe this is absolutely gigabrain and Nintendo’s plan is to port over all the bad Splatoon 1 stages in order to port all the good ones into Splatoon 3.” And then Nintendo proceeded to ruin Hammerhead Bridge.

Splatoon 1's maps were experimental, but they felt like they were building a world and environment. splatoon 2 and 3's maps feel like simulated battle arenas.

"You have only have one way to push because this area is terrible and there's no way to climb the wall over here without using glitches" LMAOOOO 😭😭😭

man I really miss splatoon 1 map designs where there were these really fucked off areas wayyy off to the side of mid that could go an entire match without even being used once, but were very useful for creating wide flanks or for specific weapon types to take advantage of. Splatoon 1 maps just feel a lot more experimental and more like classic arena shooter maps like those found in the quake games or unreal tournament. I wish splatoon 3 had map designs that did similar things

8:25 After launch I can confirm Nintendo did port good s1 stages and proceeded to make them worse to unplayable

This aged so badly oh my god I'm genuinely saddened

1. You know what's funny, Splatoon 2 actually does have gimmicky stages. Just that they're "shifty stages" that you can only play during splatfest or pbs and turf war is the only playable mode. A good example is furler in the ashes which has the water dropping mechanic found in mahi mahi resort. (It's as if Mahi got split into Furler and Albacore) 2. If you think about it, you'll realise that most of the splatoon playerbase (who haven't played the first game) are missing out on some of the best maps this franchise has to offer. I played 2 first before getting a wii u to play 1. Mahi mahi quickly became my favourite map simply because of the water dropping mechanic as well as how it reminded me of delfino pier from mk wii (the same gimmick but in reverse as the water is rising and new areas of the stage open up as old areas get submerged) so I found an easy favourite unlike in 2 where I still am not certain on what my favourite map is. Because of this, I feel sorry for those who can only play splatoon 2 and being forced to suffer the worst of what the series has to offer. 3. There are other reasons for why Splatoon 1 is arguably better than splatoon 2 including less input lag, ability to backup save data, better ranking system and free online etc. But that's a topic for another day.

18:10 did they really make scorch gorge and decide "hmm yes this map is too good make it worse" wth that layout looks so much nicer

Half of Splatoon's gameplay appeal is its fluid movement, so it baffles me how Nintendo saw that and thought cramping mid was a good idea. Something you only mentioned once or twice but I think is also important: inkable surfaces giving more options as well as just making the game more enjoyable overall. Wahoo World, for whatever reason, gives you the options of an inkable floor that's only available half the time or an uninkable surface that's always there but will just get you killed anyways because you're being handicapped AND bottlenecked. Goby Arena has the uninkable ramp in the back that makes flanking SO much harder, basically forcing you to go up the left instead. Whether or not it's balanced is besides the point; it still feels terrible. Being forced to equip Run Speed Up just to get across these surfaces faster feels a tad silly to me. Nintendo really likes to brand Splatoon as "Turf War + some other stuff," so it confuses me why they thought large, uninkable surfaces was the way to go.

17:28 is long not flat* Edit: Looks like Splatoon 3 maps are still bad, so we get to do a sequel to this oh joy.

This was a really good video. I have a lot of respect for competitive play but I am and always will be a casual. Splatoon 2 is so severely try-hard even in turf war, compared to 1. it's impossible for me to play the game with my friends anymore because they're sick of dying all the time. And it's all because of the forced mid-fights, just like you said. This video is a clear and comprehensive explanation of Splatoon 2's failure to just be fun. A quick aside, I find it bizarre how desperate the Splatoon 2 devs seemed to be to cater to competitive play. Splatoon 2 was even revealed with the promise of a large competitive tournament in the Switch reveal trailer. The design of stages forces fights, and the specials are team focused rather than individually empowering (aka. fun). It's weird because 99% of their players are not competitive, but casual, and they've done an ABYSMAL job at actually organizing events to begin with. They may as well not have bothered.

"What the hell is this?" Basically all the design choices from early splatoon 2

Even from a solo queue / casual perspective, few of the S2 maps are *fun* to play on. They range from "nah I don't feel like this right now" to "fine." There's no time you think "yes! THIS stage!" for any of the S2 maps except maybe The Reef. (My most hated stage is still probably Moray, though.)

I was genuinely happy when I heard they will port Mahi-Mahi over to Splatoon 3 and now that I've played it on Splat Zones and Clam Blitz I can confidentally say that I absolutely hate the map now. It's all so small all of the sudden, they got rid of the spawn from Splatoon 1 for some reason. It feels like they just cut each side off so that only mid remains. I've been playing Dynamo since Splatoon 1 and Mahi was my favourite map for it, now I can barrely do anything of help because not even the little platforms you could jump on are that high anymore. I don't know if I'm the only one with this problem but I felt like ranting about it. Museum D'alfonsino is fine I don't know why they felt like Mahi Mahi needed to be cramped down.

The one point I think is wrong is that all maps having all modes is a bad thing. The only reason that is a bad thing is because we don't have control over which combinations we get with the rotation system. Variety is never a bad thing when it's optional.

I can finally see why I felt odd playing 2 compared to s1, aside the weird specials that do nearly anything, the maps designs are really boring you only have certain ways to go in the map and if you got a bad team that can't push you're screwed, there aren't paths so you can infiltrate into the enemy's team's base and /or push from the back most of the time And yeah most maps don't have a gimmick that you really wanna play or is fun to use like museum d'alfonsino where you discovered the spinners to get into the enemy's base and the to jump to even more places above or just push from there above

For whatever reason, people get attached to gimmicky or bad maps in shooters. Look at TF2 for example, where 2fort is the most popular map in the game. 2fort is horribly choke heavy and has no time limit, leading to several-hour long stalemates becoming commonplace.

So this is why the game gets stale really fast on a play session

I agree that the splat 1 maps felt more unique. All the splat 2 stages feel the same.

albacore focuses so much on being a beautiful map with beautiful scenery that it forgot how to make the map work for short range. imo its not as bad as shellendorf but definitely needs to be fixed.

19:06 “dont port wahoo” 10 months later… Wahoo in the game on launch This aged well lmaoooooo

Mahi in 1: A dynamic map with good spots for long range weapons and multiple angles to counter them from Mahi in 3: Dynamic? Angles to counter long range weapons? Islands? What is all that nonsense? All you need are wide open spaces for snipers to dominate and no flank routes whatsoever as well as to destroy all the islands, leaving a shell of its former self. Yay!

Think about this.... in splatoon 3, they went out of their way to make the best stages worse.....let that sink in.

19:06 "Don't port wahoo" that didn't age well

I swear I'm not a bot guys, I just have way too much free time on my hands.

WHAT THAT'S WHAT MAHI LOOKED LIKE!??!?!?!?? HOW DID THEY MESS THAT UP!?!?!?

18:48 living in a post spoon 3 launch world… it’s ironic what chara says with mahi in the background since s3 made it so tiny and destroyed the flank islands making it one of the most cramped and In fun stages of s3

i wonder if chara will make a splatoon 3 version of this seeing how splatoon 3 is at its current condition

My guess is that some kind of development overhead happened at the last second and the dev team was forced to rework all the maps to be "simpler" in 3

I've love to see you do a vid on the shifties, all of which were highly gimmicky and experimental, if you think any of them might serve as the foundations of a good ranked-mode stage. I think many of the gimmicks are a little extreme for ranked modes, but perhaps if you toned them down a little that would work well, or even just turned the gimmicks off for ranked like they do with Mako. Plus, a lot of us didn't play in many Splatfests and would love to see the stages shown off and talked about more.

the splatoon series is like siblings in away 1 - very good, favoured in many ways, is the role model of the 3 2 - the awkward middle child that not a lot of ppl like but does have notable features/achievements 3 - (HOPEFULLY) as good if not better than 1 and 2 and builds on both games ideas i just want a more fair game in terms of balancing :/ chargers vs splatlings debate shouldnt exist, maps favouring X amount of range is dumb to even think of, spam specials will bring this game to its knees (similar to what happened/happening in 2), etc

This problems really affects me and I hope it gets fixed. I constantly find myself feeling cramped on Splatoon 2 stages especially if I play weapons I'm not used to. It also supports the fact that I don't have a favorite stage out of all the new ones in Splatoon 2.

Prochara : I feel like splatoon 3 maps are going to be the best in the series Nintendo : understood, we shall use tetris blocks as our map design and give them cover that feel out of place instead of blending them in the map to make them look like they are part of the decor. Oh and uninkable walls, lots of them, this tottaly won’t almost completly invalidate the existence of one of our new movement options.

Splatoon 2: 1-2, maybe 3 viable methods of reaching mid Splatoon 1: Chara could spend a whole 15-20 minute video enumerating all the ways players could move into mid XD

At first, I was thinking "what is he on about" but now, I'll never look at splatoon 2 the same again. (I have noticed some of this myself, I just never thought much of it.)

10:37 the sad thing is that if they gave it the split top layout that SZ and TC have it wouldn't be so terrible.

its so fucking funny the maps u showed as bad examples ALL came back to 3

So you got a game with strong melee choices and the way to balance it is by forcing everyone down a hall way? Brah

"I feel like Splatoon 3 is gonna have the best maps that we've ever seen" ooh, yeah about that...

“I feel like splatoon 3 is gonna have the best maps that we’ve ever seen” yeah so that unfortunately didn’t fuckin happen lol. It’s actually baffling to me how everything in splatoon 3 except map design feels significantly better than any of the previous games but the maps feel 10x worse than ANYTHING in splat 1&2. How do they keep dropping the ball this hard on it when they nearly perfected it 7 years ago…

Great video. I prefer Splatoon's gimmick stages because they were unique and chaotic in their own way in comparison to 2. Honestly I would still be playing 1 if my disk wasn't scratched. :(

Still finding the concept of eight Inklings filing their passports, packing bags, clearing security with ink weaponry (a headache, I assume) and boarding a multihour flight to play a three minute match at Museum

I have an idea. You could do a video about the rainmaker projectile. For example, if they bring back rainmaker in Splat 3, should it shoot like the one in Splat 1 or 2. Or maybe you have another idea, how the rainmaker could function. I feel like the rainmaker projectile in Splat 1 was too powerful, but in Splat 2 it's too underwhelming

Just a question am i the only one that loves shellendorf (idk the English spelling but I’m talking about the stage with glass)

This video aged like milk

9:26 did you just call blackbelly solid? *dies*

This didnt age well, I hate splatoon 3 maps 😭

if nintendo was willing to admit that they can mess up and make big changes in an update the games would be much better imo. they could change what mpu does on certain weapons, revamp rotations and map mode combinations, etc.

Well.... History repeats itself I guess

Now that Splatoon 3 is out splatoon 2 doesn't have the worst maps anymore... Except Hagglefish you're okay in my book.

praying the new map designers see this video, u make rlly solid points here and it'd suck if they repeat their mistakes

At this point we aint learning from Nintendo, Nintendo is learning from us(and with US I mean You)

ngl i’m gonna miss the bell sound effect when you clicked the subscribe button at the beginning of the video

How do we tell em...

“Don’t port wahoo” Welp At least we got Mahi Mahi, hammerhead, and what almost looks certainly like flounder heights

This is very good. You articulate what I think but don't realize why I like or don't like it. For example, I never liked Flounder bc it is a horrible Hydra map but never thought about that being why.

This didn’t age well 😭

This design philosophy made its way to Splatoon 3 especially with the Mahi Mahi Resort redesign being the most egregious

Finally, someone voicing my thought and it's someone who's actually good at the game. he Gimmick thing is by far the most important thing to be- I haven't played Splatoon 1 since I got 2, and the maps from 1 are still far more memorable for me and I was really young then. I really wan Mahi-Mahi, Hammerhead Bridge, and (I'm pretty sure this is an unpopular opinion) Saltspray Rig back since I loved them back in the day. I'm also mega hyped for Museum making a comeback. The forced-mids thing isn't something I (an extremely casual and not good player) noticed but you bringing it up really made me realise that.

I hope the Splat 3 stages will have more gimmicks from the story mode like the trampolines. I think they were in one splatfeststage but i don't remember it clearly.

splatoon 3 seems to be rectifying this problem by simply redirecting everyone's ire towards the new mahi-mahi resort

This video sure aged well

Never did I thought that splatoon 1 or splatoon 2 had bad maps. Only that I missed some splatoon 1 maps.

2 feels like they were trying to be more focused and give you a better line of sight without understanding fully what made maps work in the first place. 3 has some strangeness but feels way more focused

6:28 and along with that, the tc map layout has the extended side which helps for pushing, good for things like midrange to fire from and defend tower

There are so many maps where they could add some ink rails, and/or ride rails that would make them so much better, like in manta, a ride rail that goes from the left side near spawn on that low platform where the clam basket is to the enemy side on their right where snipers perch, the ride rail would travel along the outside of the stage and I feel like this would be really nice for the map. For inkblot, they should make the right side wall in the low area inkable so you can swim upwards toward the enemy spawn and flank. Moray could add more ink rails that let you take alternative routes to get up on the enemy side, and so much more. These would give more counter play to chargers camping in almost unreachable areas and make the game more fun.

Dude I love your content! I’d love to see a ranking of the stages from Splatoon 1 and 2 and what makes them so good in even more detail perhaps in a tier list style video? (You don’t have to but it would be really cool :) ).

I thought rainmaker on piranha pit was amazing lol. I love the openness it just feels great

This video is very well made! I’ve always felt splatoon 2 maps didn’t feel as fun as splatoon 1, and now I know. Thanks for the informative video! :)

spoiler alert: THOSE FOOLS PORTED WAHOO WORLD

I've always wondered why I disliked Splat Zones so much more in Splatoon 2 than 1. For a very long time I thought Splat Zones is a mode where camping decides who wins and I blamed the mode itself. Yet the maps are mostly at fault by not giving the player enough approach options that make camping kust tremendously easier

The map I want to return the most in Splatoon 3 is The Reef (such a good stage minus the trees) and the least one I want back is Moray Towers. (It's just... yuck.) Splatoon 2 has sooo many flaws to even be considered a good (competitive) game imo, but the stages take the cake. It's like being forced to play on stages like Brinstar Depths, The Great Cave Offensive, Golden Plains etc. in Smash Ultimate.

Bruh wHY does Nintendo want to torture us with this new map design even the upcoming Flounder Heights looks terrible they made it so short 😓

I refuse to play any ranked matches on Camp Triggerfish. I've lost way too many matches there that eventually I just had enough.

you could replace the “Splatoon 2” in title with “Splatoon 3” and it would still be accurate

I had a thought what if there were tunnels so you can go under ground to mid

Splatoon 1’s map was soooo fun. It had a lot of verticality, or at least I remember it being so.

Routes? Just spam superjumps and expose your hiding teammates getting you and them killed, or switch mains so you get squid beacon, even if you can’t play that weapon! Easy fix each time :) In all seriousness, I agree. I loved maps like mahi mahi and heights, and I was dissappointed when they weren’t in Splatoon 2 :/

Tbh I’m really hoping Wahoo gets ported just because I love the theme, the boardwalk amusement park look was really cool. Maybe they can rework it tho?

This explains so well I don't like Splat Zone too much in general, the other modes utilize the whole map layout better and feels more things going on.

19:03 "Don't port Wahoo World" didn't really work put, I guess

I thought I was the only one who thought it was too easy to lock people out on Port Mackerel zones.

12:16 "where else are you gonna find an experience like those maps?" in hell

I miss the gimmicks of Splatoon WiiU, Splatoon 2 maps are small and empty.

I always found it weird how people explain Splatoon 1 as this game where it's so easy to die and unfair, the specials may be broken but there's so many ways to move that it really rewards playing smartly and you very rarely feel fenced in or like there's no escape options. My favourite map is Flounder Heights because there's so much verticality and you can zip around the map really fast to get from one point to another. About the only thing I dislike with Flounder Heights is spawn and even that has a lot of breathing room, as well as high ground to shoot at intruders below and a few good exit options. Mahi Mahi Resort is also a liked one of mine because the changing water level is a cool mechanic and those little islands are a good but risky option to come into mid, which makes it feel more exciting when you manage to catch the opposing team by surprise. Overall I just think Splatoon 1 gave people more breathing room and movement options which made things like inking walls to climb on them more of an impactful mechanic. The variety also made each map feel more distinct and interesting to play on. As an aside, I dislike the amount of non-inkable surfaces in Splatoon 2 because it just feels like it takes away a lot of options and it favours certain weapon types heavily. It also goes against the whole point of Splatoon for me tbh if they're going to just force you to walk around like a normal shooter to get certain places. Uninkable surfaces are good in moderation but I feel like Splatoon 2 overused them. I'm glad that so far, Splatoon 3 seems like it'll bring the energetic movement of 1 back a bit more. I'm really hoping the maps live up to that as well.

8:24 this aged like milk

I want salt spray rig back real bad in 3. Had a lot of fun on that in one.

I agree with everything you aid, but there are some maps like reef that work fine on all modes, so I'm fine if they bring it back, but yeah stuff like that sucks. Another problem with it is that it changes the way you need to play. For example, on sz, tc, and CB, blackbelly is seen as a small map that is quite easy to access the objective from spawn. On rm, however, not saying that it's bad, but it now becomes huge map that favors sting ray and stalling. Same for mako. On most of the modes, Your spawn is very close to mid with a lot of ways to get there. You got the main way, but also the inkrail and flank routes on the left and right. On rainmaker, however, you spawn at the top of a cliff with only one main way to leave and is instead heavily centered around the areas near spawn and not the map as a whole. I just wish stuff like this would be way better in 3, and not just that, but make maps specifically for certain modes.

This helps me realize just why I dislike splat2 other than crappy servers and everything feeling samey

ProChara : Uploads about splatoon 3 Nintendo : Write that down write that down

just wait till chara sees s3

I really think they ruined mahi mahi resort in splat 3