The iconic Ninja Turtles leap into their first roguelike
By Paul Hunter
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is celebrating its 40th Anniversary, having humble beginnings as an independent comic series and would later expand into feature films, animated series, toys and, of course, video games. As part of the celebration, Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo and Raphael are taking their hit Apple Arcade roguelike action title Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate and bringing it to platforms, namely the Nintendo Switch, and to PC later this year.
Splintered Fate may have begun life as a mobile game, but it's quite suited to consoles with its deep roguelike gameplay and rich dialogue that closely resembles Hades in its structure and quality. It's easy to imagine members of the dev team having played Hades and dreaming about what it would be like to incorporate that style into a licensed property like Ninja Turtles, and voila, TMNT: Splintered Fate was born.
The story of Splintered Fate isn't all that original, but it's still enjoyable nonetheless. Splinter once again has been kidnapped by Shredder and it's up to our turtle heroes to set out and rescue him. There's a good amount of voiced dialogue in this game, penned by legendary comic book authors Tom Waltz and Kevin Michael Johnson, and it's surprisingly witty and fun to listen to. Along with the four turtles, Splinter and Shredder, there's an all-star cast of familiar villains and supporting characters to meet including Bebop and Rocksteady, Karai, Leatherhead, April O'Neil, Casey Jones, Metalhead, Nobody, Slash and more.
The Turtle's Sewer Lair serves as the hub world and through each run of the game's roguelike gauntlet, you can enjoy new conversations between characters that slowly shed light on the disappearance of Splinter. As it turns out, there's more than just Shredder behind this latest debacle and involves otherworldly beings and mysterious cross-dimensional portals.
Completing the campaign takes only an hour, but it took me several hours across multiple runs to gain the skills and unlock powers that could carry me to the end. The adventure begins in the sewers and will lead you through iconic turtle locations like the docks, streets and rooftops of New York City. Every time you die you'll be sent back to the turtle's Lair and lose all the acquired abilities and items gathered during your run, aside from Dragon and Dreamer coins that can be traded in for permanent upgrades. Inside the Lair, you can also swap your playable turtle, interact with the turtles' friends, and equip Artifacts that grant you different effects.
Dragon coins can be spent at the Dragon Upgrade Station to increase the power of all your turtles, including their max health, movement speed, critical hit % chance, granting additional dashes and reducing your cooldowns. Upgrades are generally large, too, and within a few hours, I already had a 60% increase in my max health, a 20% boost to my walking speed, and a 40% reduction in my skill cooldown time. Dreamer coins, on the other hand, increase your fortunes, whether that's starting a run with bonus scrap (currency used to buy goods at the shop), increasing the rewards you get from defeating mini-bosses or obtaining Lucky Dice to reroll rewards. Both types of coins make a huge impact on your survivability and can make formerly unbeatable bosses a much more doable task.
Turning our attention to the gameplay, to begin you can choose which turtle to play as and their playstyles vary considerably. Michelangelo has a buff to attack area size and can multi-hit enemies for big combos. Leonardo is all about dealing high damage with low ability cooldowns. Raphael focuses on critical damage and has a highly aggressive playstyle. Finally, Donatello has the highest health and his special makes him temporarily immune to all damage. Usually in Ninja Turtle games, I play as Donatello for his bo's long reach, but in Splintered Fate all characters have useful styles and I found myself hopping between them as a result. Not to mention, you get different rewards for beating bosses with each turtle.
Just like in Hades, the camera view is isometric and your goal is to defeat enemies in the room before moving on to the next. Clearing rooms will let you choose a random reward from a selection ranging between two to four, and they range from giving you coins, scrap, permanent skills, temporary skills or increasing the potency of already acquired skills.
There are many elemental powers you can add to your existing abilities, including your Strike, Dash, and unique Ability. For example, you can add an Ooze power to your dash, which acts like a poison and slowly whittles down the enemy's health. Other elemental effects include Water, Flame, Utrom (electricity), Ninja, Astral Light and Astral Dark. What's neat is since you can slot elements into each ability, you could have a build where your strikes deal fire damage, your dashes zap foes with electricity and your special ability adds a protective light barrier. There are even secret Legendary powers you can unlock provides you add the right element to specific skills.
The good news about the combat is that it's all very simple to learn. You've got a basic attack combo, a special attack ability, a unique tool, and your dodge rolls. Interestingly, your special ability and tool both recharge not by waiting a few seconds, but by attacking enemies with normal hits. That means you'll want to stay aggressive as the more you attack, the faster your powerful skill and tool recharge.
Looking more closely at the roguelike elements, in each run the powerups, enemies, and minibosses will all change. What does stay the same is the room layouts and the major bosses you'll fight at the end of each biome. What was neat is that bosses may also switch up their attacks between runs, like the ninja Karai who had regular throwing stars the first time I fought her, but in the second encounter her stars were embued with fire. Each boss will also give you an exclusive reward, which encourages you to play through the entire campaign multiple times to stack these rewards for great character ability unlocks back in your Lair.
While I've been having a blast playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate, I do wish there were a bit more randomization elements, like multiple routes to victory or a great variety of enemies to contend with. The good news though is once you defeat Shredder, in all future runs you may find challenge portals where you could face off against remixed bosses that have new attacks or other enemies to also contend with. These end-game challenges also offer new rewards, which can be used to upgrade your turtles even further back at the Lair.
Splintered Fate includes local 4-player co-op, which is awesome and certainly the best way to play even though battles can get a little chaotic. You can also play online, but only with family or friends you know since you need to pass them your lobby code. It's a bit disappointing that there isn't online matchmaking because it's not every day that can you get three friends to join your session.
Among the new features on the Nintendo Switch version, perhaps the most obvious is the improved visuals that look straight out of the comic series. The four biomes all look great and the art direction for the main bosses are visual treat. The game ships with two graphics modes, one that prioritizes resolution but drops the framerate to 30, and another that prioritizes a smooth 60 fps but has slightly less crisp visuals. In my view, this is an action game that requires split-second timing so the 60 fps performance mode is the way to go.
Finally, from an audio perspective, your attacks have nice sound effects as do the enemies' attacks, although I did find the soundtrack was very muted. During combat, you can barely hear the soundtrack, and there were a few times when I only realized that music was playing because I heard a faint tune after I cleared the room of all enemies.
Final Score: 8/10 - Great
Developer: Super Evil Mega Corp
Publisher: Super Evil Mega Corp
Genre: Action, Roguelike, Hack and Slash
Modes: Single-player, Multiplayer
ESRB Rating: E10+ (Everyone 10+)
A key was provided by the publisher.
By Paul Hunter
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is celebrating its 40th Anniversary, having humble beginnings as an independent comic series and would later expand into feature films, animated series, toys and, of course, video games. As part of the celebration, Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo and Raphael are taking their hit Apple Arcade roguelike action title Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate and bringing it to platforms, namely the Nintendo Switch, and to PC later this year.
Splintered Fate may have begun life as a mobile game, but it's quite suited to consoles with its deep roguelike gameplay and rich dialogue that closely resembles Hades in its structure and quality. It's easy to imagine members of the dev team having played Hades and dreaming about what it would be like to incorporate that style into a licensed property like Ninja Turtles, and voila, TMNT: Splintered Fate was born.
The story of Splintered Fate isn't all that original, but it's still enjoyable nonetheless. Splinter once again has been kidnapped by Shredder and it's up to our turtle heroes to set out and rescue him. There's a good amount of voiced dialogue in this game, penned by legendary comic book authors Tom Waltz and Kevin Michael Johnson, and it's surprisingly witty and fun to listen to. Along with the four turtles, Splinter and Shredder, there's an all-star cast of familiar villains and supporting characters to meet including Bebop and Rocksteady, Karai, Leatherhead, April O'Neil, Casey Jones, Metalhead, Nobody, Slash and more.
The Turtle's Sewer Lair serves as the hub world and through each run of the game's roguelike gauntlet, you can enjoy new conversations between characters that slowly shed light on the disappearance of Splinter. As it turns out, there's more than just Shredder behind this latest debacle and involves otherworldly beings and mysterious cross-dimensional portals.
Completing the campaign takes only an hour, but it took me several hours across multiple runs to gain the skills and unlock powers that could carry me to the end. The adventure begins in the sewers and will lead you through iconic turtle locations like the docks, streets and rooftops of New York City. Every time you die you'll be sent back to the turtle's Lair and lose all the acquired abilities and items gathered during your run, aside from Dragon and Dreamer coins that can be traded in for permanent upgrades. Inside the Lair, you can also swap your playable turtle, interact with the turtles' friends, and equip Artifacts that grant you different effects.
Dragon coins can be spent at the Dragon Upgrade Station to increase the power of all your turtles, including their max health, movement speed, critical hit % chance, granting additional dashes and reducing your cooldowns. Upgrades are generally large, too, and within a few hours, I already had a 60% increase in my max health, a 20% boost to my walking speed, and a 40% reduction in my skill cooldown time. Dreamer coins, on the other hand, increase your fortunes, whether that's starting a run with bonus scrap (currency used to buy goods at the shop), increasing the rewards you get from defeating mini-bosses or obtaining Lucky Dice to reroll rewards. Both types of coins make a huge impact on your survivability and can make formerly unbeatable bosses a much more doable task.
Turning our attention to the gameplay, to begin you can choose which turtle to play as and their playstyles vary considerably. Michelangelo has a buff to attack area size and can multi-hit enemies for big combos. Leonardo is all about dealing high damage with low ability cooldowns. Raphael focuses on critical damage and has a highly aggressive playstyle. Finally, Donatello has the highest health and his special makes him temporarily immune to all damage. Usually in Ninja Turtle games, I play as Donatello for his bo's long reach, but in Splintered Fate all characters have useful styles and I found myself hopping between them as a result. Not to mention, you get different rewards for beating bosses with each turtle.
Just like in Hades, the camera view is isometric and your goal is to defeat enemies in the room before moving on to the next. Clearing rooms will let you choose a random reward from a selection ranging between two to four, and they range from giving you coins, scrap, permanent skills, temporary skills or increasing the potency of already acquired skills.
There are many elemental powers you can add to your existing abilities, including your Strike, Dash, and unique Ability. For example, you can add an Ooze power to your dash, which acts like a poison and slowly whittles down the enemy's health. Other elemental effects include Water, Flame, Utrom (electricity), Ninja, Astral Light and Astral Dark. What's neat is since you can slot elements into each ability, you could have a build where your strikes deal fire damage, your dashes zap foes with electricity and your special ability adds a protective light barrier. There are even secret Legendary powers you can unlock provides you add the right element to specific skills.
The good news about the combat is that it's all very simple to learn. You've got a basic attack combo, a special attack ability, a unique tool, and your dodge rolls. Interestingly, your special ability and tool both recharge not by waiting a few seconds, but by attacking enemies with normal hits. That means you'll want to stay aggressive as the more you attack, the faster your powerful skill and tool recharge.
Looking more closely at the roguelike elements, in each run the powerups, enemies, and minibosses will all change. What does stay the same is the room layouts and the major bosses you'll fight at the end of each biome. What was neat is that bosses may also switch up their attacks between runs, like the ninja Karai who had regular throwing stars the first time I fought her, but in the second encounter her stars were embued with fire. Each boss will also give you an exclusive reward, which encourages you to play through the entire campaign multiple times to stack these rewards for great character ability unlocks back in your Lair.
While I've been having a blast playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate, I do wish there were a bit more randomization elements, like multiple routes to victory or a great variety of enemies to contend with. The good news though is once you defeat Shredder, in all future runs you may find challenge portals where you could face off against remixed bosses that have new attacks or other enemies to also contend with. These end-game challenges also offer new rewards, which can be used to upgrade your turtles even further back at the Lair.
Splintered Fate includes local 4-player co-op, which is awesome and certainly the best way to play even though battles can get a little chaotic. You can also play online, but only with family or friends you know since you need to pass them your lobby code. It's a bit disappointing that there isn't online matchmaking because it's not every day that can you get three friends to join your session.
Among the new features on the Nintendo Switch version, perhaps the most obvious is the improved visuals that look straight out of the comic series. The four biomes all look great and the art direction for the main bosses are visual treat. The game ships with two graphics modes, one that prioritizes resolution but drops the framerate to 30, and another that prioritizes a smooth 60 fps but has slightly less crisp visuals. In my view, this is an action game that requires split-second timing so the 60 fps performance mode is the way to go.
Finally, from an audio perspective, your attacks have nice sound effects as do the enemies' attacks, although I did find the soundtrack was very muted. During combat, you can barely hear the soundtrack, and there were a few times when I only realized that music was playing because I heard a faint tune after I cleared the room of all enemies.
The Verdict
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate may not be the most original roguelike out there, but I had a blast playing it and would easily say it's one of the best TMNT games yet. From the funny dialogue to the fantastic visuals to the crisp gameplay to the well-designed progression systems, everything this game has to offer is top-notch. If you're a big fan of Ninja Turtles or are looking for your next roguelike, this is a game worth considering.Final Score: 8/10 - Great
TMNT: Splintered Fate details
Platform: Nintendo Switch, Apple ArcadeDeveloper: Super Evil Mega Corp
Publisher: Super Evil Mega Corp
Genre: Action, Roguelike, Hack and Slash
Modes: Single-player, Multiplayer
ESRB Rating: E10+ (Everyone 10+)
A key was provided by the publisher.