What You Need to Know Before Spratly 3 Releases

This Friday (September 9), after a one-season delay, Splatoon 3 is coming. I was as excited as a schoolboy on the eve of a spring outing, pre-ordered and downloaded early, and glanced at the icons every day—for the previous generation of players in this series, the release of “Sprague 3” was a very important event. It is not appropriate to describe “Sprague 2” as an old game, but it is also a game from 5 years ago. Time flies so fast. Most of the friends who played together in those days have entered a new stage of life. In the 3rd generation, we You will meet new friends and reunite with old ones.

“Sprague 2” is not a particularly popular game in China – it certainly performed well, many people like to play it, and the sales volume is also very good. With 13.3 million copies worldwide, it is almost a national game in Japan. But on our side, for a variety of reasons – network, language, player base, handle shooting threshold, Switch distribution, etc., in short, there is no game that is popular among elementary school students like in Japan.

The players of “Sprague 2” are relatively stable, and some of them have studied deeply. They play the ladder battle mode, play the difficult part-time work mode, and fully enjoy the game. Some of them are for occasional play. Shooting guns in the most basic scrambling mode, and fishing in the low-difficulty working mode, you can also have a lot of fun. However, we can’t ignore those friends who want to play but can’t. They may not be used to the somatosensory controller, or simply don’t have a good internet connection and don’t know Japanese. You have to admit, this cute looking “squid game” (not a Korean drama) actually has a pretty high bar.

The new appearance of “Sprague 3”

These thresholds have been resolved to a certain extent in the 3rd generation, for example, the Chinese version is spoken. For us, having Chinese is a very important thing. It can be seen from the “Eve Festival” demo activity of the third generation. With a certain mass base and Chinese support, the popularity of the game is much higher than that of the second generation Eve Festival. . But at the same time, there were a lot of criticisms about the network conditions in the 3rd generation eve festival – there are of course the reasons why the demo version of the network is really not good, but also the network conditions on our side are too complicated and you need an accelerator to play smoothly. , new players may not know these common sense.

It can be seen to the naked eye that many players who have purchased Switch in the past 5 years have poured into “Sprague 3”. While waiting happily, old players also want to do something. This article is mainly to explain some questions for new friends – how do I play? What version to buy? Which weapons to choose? And most importantly, can I be happy.

Japanese version Hong Kong version, electronic entity, how can I buy it?

In the generation of “Sprague 3”, the question of “what version to buy” has become much simpler – the choice of the version of the first and second generation is a big problem, although the Japanese version and the American version can usually play together, but when the “festival” “In the event, it has to be played separately, and the languages ​​supported by each version are also different. The 3rd generation adopts the strategy of the same version in all regions. The games you buy in any region, whether it is the Japanese version, the US version, physical or electronic, can get the same content. For us, even if the whole area has Chinese, the festival area can also be freely chosen, and we will no longer be separated from friends because of the version.

As for which version to buy, physical or electronic, it mainly depends on the difference in usage habits. For long-term and anytime playing like “Sprague”, I am more accustomed to using the electronic version, which saves the time of changing cassettes everywhere. There are only price differences in the electronic version in different regions. The Japanese server is 6500 yen, the US server is 59.99 US dollars, and the Hong Kong server is 429 Hong Kong dollars. If you calculate the exchange rate, the Japanese server is about 320 yuan, which is about 50 yuan cheaper than the other two servers. If you count the “any loss coupons” redeemed by members, it is equivalent to only spending 5,000 yen. If it’s not for collection or to buy second-hand after early adopters, it is the most cost-effective way to buy the electronic version with the “Ren Loss Coupon” in Japan.

“No Loss Coupon” is really good

In addition, if you want to enter the game at the first moment of release, there is also a small difference between the 3 servers. The Japanese server will be unlocked at 11 pm on the 8th, the Hong Kong server will be 1 hour late, and the US server will have to sleep. Friday It can only be played at 12:00 noon (the above are all Beijing time). After unlocking it makes no difference.

Of course, I think it’s always important to state that no matter which version you buy, the required network quality is the same. You need to have a good broadband, the NAT type of the network test is A or B, and the accelerator can be turned on. Generally speaking, NAT B can be reached after acceleration.

Nintendo’s other competitive games, such as Super Smash Bros., Mario Kart 8, or ARMS, can all play against the computer when the internet is disconnected. Well, it requires an internet connection to play, except for the stand-alone “hero mode” which is almost the equivalent of a tutorial.

There are so many modes, which one should I play?

Once you get the game, you may need some basic understanding of it – the player takes on the role of a shape-shifting squid or octopus (the only difference is the shape), usually in the shape of a human, and can spray ink with a hand-held weapon. When the ink hits the enemy, it is equivalent to a bullet hit. When it hits the ground, it will turn the ground into the color of your faction. You and your teammates can swim quickly in squid form in the ink of your own faction. On the contrary, if it gets on the ink of the other party, it will move like a gout attack, and there is almost no ability to move.

If you are a new player who has not played the previous generation, you will first come into contact with the painting mode, which is also the representative gameplay of this game-two teams use ink of their own color to paint and fight, each team has 4 people, and the time limit is 3 minutes. , and finally see which side has the larger ink area. This mode is relatively easy, just sprinkle ink on the ground, even new players with weak aiming ability and unable to knock down people can win by quickly smearing the ground.

According to the rules of the second generation, after your character reaches level 10, the single-row “real mode” will be activated – don’t worry, upgrading is not a long process, try a few more weapons, see more new maps , Level 10 is almost a blink of an eye.

As for the “Real Mode”, the official name in “Sprague 3” is “Mad Depression Competition”, which is divided into 4 modes: “Real Tower”, “Real Area”, “Real Fish and Tiger Battle” and “Real Mode” Real clams”. Let’s talk separately.

My Favorite “True Tower” mode

“True Tower” is what we often call the push tower mode. There is a small movable tower in the center of the field, and players can stand up – let’s use red and blue to describe the two sides for the time being – when the players of the red team When standing on top, the tower will slowly advance towards the blue player’s base camp, and vice versa, the final comparison is which side pushes deeper. If you often play shooting games, you should have seen similar modes in many places, such as the cart in “Overwatch”, but there is no concept of attacker and defender in “Sprague 3”, Offense and defense can be changed at any time.

The “real area” is the easiest to understand. There are one or two areas surrounded by lines in the middle of the field. When this area is occupied by the red team ink for more than a certain proportion (about 80% of the body sense), it will be “occupied by the red team”. , the entire area instantly turns red, and the red team starts the countdown, occupying 100 seconds to win.

The “real fish and tiger mode” is a bit like capture the flag in the battlefield of “World of Warcraft”, we usually call it “fishing mode”. However, the “fish” grabbed is not only a marker, but also a special weapon that can fire powerful fish cannons at the cost of running slowly. Both teams must strive to put the fish on the end platform of the other’s home, and the closer they are, the higher the score. After the player holding the fish is knocked down, the fish will reset in place, and the two sides will start fighting again. In the 3rd generation, the fish-grabbing mode added checkpoints on the road, which is probably to prevent a sudden turnaround of the group destruction – in the 2nd generation, this is the daily life of the fish-grabbing mode.

The “fish” in the “real fish and tiger mode” is also part of the tactics

“True Clams” first appeared in the second generation. The gameplay is to collect small clams scattered on the battlefield, automatically synthesize a large clam after reaching 10, and then put the larger one into the basket of the opponent’s home. The basket will be damaged by the large clams thrown in for a period of time, during which time the small clams can also be thrown into the basket, 10 points for the big ones, 1 point for the small ones, and finally the winner will be determined by the score – it sounds very complicated, in fact, it The popularity of the game is also relatively low in the 4 real modes. Many people are not good at this mode. I don’t know if there will be any improvement in the 3 generations.

While not good at certain modes, sometimes we don’t have much choice. The ranking mode of the “Sprague” series is quite special. The system will rotate the map and the mode, and change it every two hours. For example, from 12:00 to 2:00 is the real area mode, and from 2:00 to 4:00, it may be the real fish and tiger mode, and other modes cannot be played for a period of time. You can find the schedule for the upcoming period in Nintendo’s official App “Nintendo Switch Online”.

The “real clams” rules are a bit complicated

If you are an experienced player, these should have been experienced in the 2nd generation. After moving to “Sprague 3”, you can choose to inherit the save, get 3 weapon exchange tickets, and can play real mode from the beginning. In addition, you will get a relatively high rank and hidden score. These are for a smoother transition to your tier, and a way to protect new players. Of course, if you haven’t played for a long time, you can also choose not to inherit and fight with the friends who have just joined the 3rd generation.

At present, there are two matching rules for the savage competition, “challenge” and “open competition”. The former is limited to solo queue, and you need to pay a certain amount of points as the entry fee to enter the game. If you lose 3 games, you will be eliminated, and the top will be 5 wins. The Arena of Stone Legend is ready.

The rules of the open competition can be grouped with teammates. There is no entry fee, and you can go directly to the ladder, but the score has little impact, and you still need to play “challenges” when you are promoted.

Although rank is important, playing with friends is the true meaning of “Sprague”.

Weapon dazzling, melee or ranged?

The “Sprague” series of weapons are roughly divided into several categories, water guns, double guns, rotary guns (Gatling), blasting guns, sniper guns, rollers (brushes), brushes, buckets, umbrellas, and new additions to the 3rd generation bow and wiper blade. There are 53 different weapons in total, and we played 26 of them in the Eve Festival demo that opened earlier.

The choice of a weapon is crucial, it’s kind of like your business card, your identity, and when a platoon needs a long-range weapon, it’s easy to think of a friend with a sniper or a spinner. Of course, there are also many players who are proficient in multiple weapons, but this requires long-term practice.

We usually recommend certain weapons for newcomers – the new leaf shooter, the sprat shooter (small green), or the sprat roller (medium brush), they are really good, soft to the touch, press and fire, It’s also fast to move, but it’s not interesting if the streets are full of the same weapon. Taking advantage of the Chinese version’s release, it is better to try various weapons, in case you have an unpopular weapon against the radio waves.

The Spratly shooter is one of the most popular weapons

Before getting the game, if you want to have some basic understanding of these weapons – the principle of the water gun is the simplest, press ZR to fire, release the ceasefire. The water gun category can be long or short, short weapons are usually more flexible, such as the Sprague, narrow-area shooter (needle gun) or N-ZAP 85, and long weapons have a range advantage, such as the apex gun and the jet cleaner (blue tube). The double gun is almost equivalent to the water gun, but has a rolling action during shooting, which is more flexible but more difficult to control. The shooting is a little scattered under normal conditions, and it is concentrated to a point after rolling.

Additional gun weapons include rotary guns and sniper rifles. The range of these two weapons is usually higher than other weapons, and the “4K liter” and “4K aiming gun” in the sniper rifle have the longest range in the game. Their common feature is that they need to accumulate power, so they also have a certain degree of demand for operation. There will be flashes on the muzzle of the sniper rifle and the sniper line will also be displayed. On the one hand, it can help you aim, and at the same time, it also exposes your position, which is a relatively familiar weapon.

The blasting gun is special. It is a burst-type weapon. Of course, if you hold it down, it will burst continuously at a slower speed. The effect is to spray a cloud of ink that will explode. If you hit it directly, it will cause relatively high damage, and if it is affected by the explosion, it will also cause low damage.

Another major category is the roller, which is not a gun at all. It is a melee weapon. It mainly relies on the roller in the hand to shoot the opponent to death. However, long-distance vertical splits and horizontal splits using vertical heights are also conventional means of attack. The brush is more flexible than the roller. It is one of the most flexible weapon types in the series. It usually walks at high speed and sticks to the enemy’s side to attack with a high frequency of ZR, but the disadvantage is that the player is prone to tenosynovitis.

In principle, the bucket is similar to the bucket in reality. Press ZR to splash ink. The range is long or short, and it can be regarded as a weapon classification suitable for new players.

The Umbrella is a shotgun in terms of shooting, with a low rate of fire and a short range, but the damage is not bad. Press and hold ZR to open the umbrella and block the enemy ink. If you press it for too long, the umbrella will fly out in a straight line.

Bow and wiper – the “newcomer” in the 3rd generation of weapons, I only tried it a few times in the eve festival. The bow is a bit like the combination of a barrel and a sniper rifle. It has a strong ability to circumnavigate obstacles. It has the ability to kill with one hit after accumulating power. It can also gradually consume the enemy to death by blocking and moving. Generally speaking, it is a weapon that requires proficiency. I Plan to practice it, but for new players, there may be an embarrassing situation where one game does nothing.

Bow has a lot of potential

The wiper blade is like a combination of a brush and a roller… Maybe it’s not appropriate to say that, let’s think of it as a brand new weapon. Its English name is “Splatana”, which is a compound word, “Splat” (spray) and “Katana” (too knife).

Compared to playing with simple and easy-to-use weapons, I expect new players to explore more weapon options after gradually getting used to the rhythm of “Sprague 3”.

Celebrations, and in Sprague I’ll be a part-time worker too?

Part-time work is a cooperative PvE mode independent of the ranking hall. The background story is that the little squid and little octopuses help the mysterious bear boss to fight off the salmon, and then get their own pitiful rewards… In short, it is a story of part-time workers. In addition to the short single-player story “Hero Mode”, part-time work is a paradise for PvE enthusiasts. There’s no intrigue over guns and mines, just 4 little squid fighting the odd-looking salmon, which is nice.

I have some friends who specialize in the part-time job mode. In the 2nd generation, it was opened from time to time, but the 3rd generation became permanent. I always felt that the game was unfair to friends who like to work part-time, and they couldn’t play it anytime and anywhere.

At the same time, the working mode has also added new enemies, new difficulties and new costumes. This is a pretty good place for players who like cooperative PvE.

Workers, work souls…

As for the “hero mode”, at least the second generation is not very good, I am not sure how the quality of the third generation single machine is, but it should not be the main game of the game – if you have a bad network or no network at all, you can only play this mode, and it’s clearly not worth the money for a full-price game.

Ritual – We have experienced it once before, and after that, rituals will be held regularly. The first and second generation created some classic festival moments, such as red bean paste versus red bean paste, sweet and sour pork with or without pineapple, shiitake mushroom shape versus bamboo shoot shape for Meiji chocolate cookies, toilet paper clockwise or counterclockwise, chicken first Eggs still come first… In addition, European and American servers will also have some festive content that takes their own place, fork versus spoon, vampire versus werewolf, ugly Christmas sweater or ugly socks. It is not known whether the content of the festival in the third generation will be different depending on the region, but it should be interesting to change from a two-way battle to a three-way melee.

In addition to the changes in the camp content, a new mode called “Tri-color Treasure Battle” has also been added to the festival. The party with the temporarily higher vote rate acts as the defender, born in the middle of the map, and 4 people fight. The other two have 2 people each, attacking from both sides of the map.

In the eve of the festival, the performance of the three-color treasure hunt was not very good. The defender needed good cooperation to win. If it was a single row, it would be difficult to have a good game experience. Nintendo also promises to make changes to this mode in the future.

From here, Sprague

As for the operation, some players may not be familiar with the somatosensory controller operation of “Sprague”. Intuitively, we would think that the joystick should be the main force of the steering, and the sensitivity of the somatosensory should be reduced as much as possible, and it should be used only when accurately aiming the gun. But in fact, after so many years of exploration, players have gradually established the operation mode of somatosensory-based and joystick-assisted operation. After the sensitivity is pulled to 5/5, only a 180-degree turn needs some help from the joystick.

It’s not easy to do it in one step, but I still hope that new friends will gradually learn to abandon the joystick and slowly practice the somatosensory operation that they are familiar with… Of course, not everyone should use a set of operation logic, such as playing in handheld mode. It is difficult for people to use high-sensitivity somatosensory, and sniper rifle users generally do not fully use the sensitivity. I have some friends who are good at stick control in handheld mode and have high scores. Therefore, it is most important to find the way of operation that you like.

Smile is the most important

When playing Sprague, I often play it instinctively. Friends who have played competitive games know that if you only rely on instinct, you are usually not very good – but “Sprague” has a magical power, you will involuntarily hold down ZL to dive into the ink, push the joystick Go to a place where the battle is fierce, smear the road on the road, shoot a few shots on the opponent’s ink, drop a mine, fight with the attacker for a while, and save a big move – be killed, and then try again after 3 seconds .

Your ability to get back on the field quickly, even when you’re not working on the front lines, helping to smear the ground, and spraying ink into your home and under your teammates’ feet can all make it easier for your team to win.

Before, a passage in “Mr. Iwata” was brought up for discussion. The core is “to make online games that parents can feel at ease and allow their children to play, and create a world without bullying.” Some friends say Sprague doesn’t fit Mr Iwata’s philosophy – but when you get out of real mode, I mean out of your competitive mind, what a fun game it’s not good at shooting Players can also help teammates by smearing the ground, and the part-time job mode can also be passed smoothly by listening to the command. This is what we like about “Sprague”.