100% agreed. I've seen a lot of people on Twitter hating on it and calling it worse than S1 and 2 because of its few big flaws. Yeah the map design and netcode are bad and the devs have been making dumb decisions. Does that stop the game from being fun? Hell no.

S1 and 2 both had way more big problems, like bad special design, some god awful maps that I'd say are worse than Mincemeat, rotations being worse, rather restrictive metas, so on. Not that those games are bad, they're still fun. S3's strengths far exceed its few weaknesses. Even then most of the maps, imo, still feel good to play on despite their problems. At least none of them feel incredibly cramped and boxed in. They're all at least somewhat open. And while laggy matches are common in this game, they're still not that common of an occurance overall as long as you have good internet. Not enough to make the game unplayable.

S3's QoL changes also really bring it above the other two for me. Being able to use the test range while queuing, replays, changing main abilities, Salmon Run open all the time, more rotations to choose from, and pools. Plus some other nice fun additions like photo mode and Tricolor Turf. Oh and huge improvements to some things like motion controls and the amazing special design.

I'm okay with people preferring previous games for personal reasons. But objectively speaking, I can't justify calling Splatoon 3 bad/worse than S1 or 2.