Guessed by @Ultrashroomz
Splatoon 2 was stuck in a weird spot for me this year, what with getting a sequel and all, I thought about dropping it a bit lower, or getting it off the list entirely, but ultimately it made it's way here. The thing is, there's a lot I disliked about it, and maybe back then I tolerated these gripes, but now with Splatoon 3 exposing those issues and fixing many of them, it's that much harder to think more positively about it. Most of the times I had with the multiplayer were purely frustrating, I wasn't a fan of the map design and how it favoured shorter range weapons, the specials were generally boring and annoying to deal with (ironic in that they tried making weaker versions of the specials from the first game, but somehow they ended up even more of a pain to deal with). Honestly it just wasn't much fun at all, and I wasn't into Salmon Run either, so, what's there to like?
Well, turns out there was plenty. The base single-player campaign was fine, maybe a bit worse than the original's, but once Octo Expansion dropped, everything changed. It may not be a masterpiece or anything, but that is easily the best single-player content we've had in the Splatoon series and, much like how Splatoon 3 exposed the issues in this game's multiplayer, Octo Expansion exposes the shit out of the sequel's campaign. The whole setting and vibe was amazing, how the story slowly built itself around this obviously suspicious scenario, the music was amazing, and the ending was exciting as hell. And it was hard when it wanted to be, which I appreciated. Even outside of the single-player campaign itself, it revitalized Splatoon 2's universe with all the octolings running around and such, and the final splatfest was incredibly memorable.
