Splatoon Raiders, Nintendo's new PvE raid mode for the Splatoon franchise, frustrates players by forcing them to restart entire missions after a single failure. The mode drops teams into extended cooperative battles against waves of enemies, but losing at any point means returning to the start without checkpoints or mid-mission saves.
This design choice punishes experimentation and learning. Raiders demands coordination, weapon variety, and strategy across multiple phases. When a team wipes on the final boss after 15 minutes of solid play, restarting from wave one feels excessive. Other looter shooters and raid-based games learned this lesson years ago. Destiny 2 and Deep Rock Galactic offer checkpoint systems that let teams retry failed sections without replaying content they mastered.
Nintendo built Raiders as an endgame chase for Splatoon 3 veterans, targeting players seeking meaty PvE challenges. The mode offers exclusive cosmetics and gear tied to completion tiers. That carrot works only if the grind feels fair. Right now, the lack of a retry option transforms Raiders into a gatekeeping frustration rather than a rewarding progression system.
The difficulty itself presents no problem. Hard content belongs in live-service shooters. What fails here is basic quality-of-life implementation. A simple "retry from last checkpoint" button after a wipe would preserve the challenge while respecting player time. Teams could still fail and learn from mistakes without watching opening cinematics repeat.
Splatoon Raiders launched with solid bones. The encounter design looks inventive, and the cooperative framework fits the series' team-focused DNA. But Nintendo shipped an incomplete experience. The mode needs patching, and fast. Failing to add a retry system signals that developers underestimate how brutal repetitive busywork feels to the hardcore players most likely to engage with raids.
This isn't about making Raiders