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[jshackles]

In Splintered Fate, brace yourself for fast-paced, rogue-like action where no two runs are the same. With randomized power-ups, room layouts, and boss modifiers, the excitement never ends. Take control of all four Turtles, each wielding unique powers, and team up with friends for bodacious co-op gameplay. Explore iconic NYC locations, upgrade your Turtle powers, and prepare to face off against formidable enemies.

This game copies the Hades formula wonderfully - heavy on story, lots of voiced dialog, isometric view, fast-paced combat, loot that lets you upgrade your abilities after each run finishes. The characters and designs are based on the long-running, recently concluded IDW comic book series.

Trailer


Screenshots

Purchase

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate for Nintendo Switch - Nintendo Official Site

Buy Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate and shop other great Nintendo products online at the official My Nintendo Store.

www.nintendo.com

 

[Jinzo Prime]

So Hades with Ninja Turtles?

Could be good or a quick cash grab, gotta wait for reviews

 

[Bloobs]

Is Sweet baby invol

 

[jshackles]

I picked this up on the Switch. I know it started its life as an Apple Arcade... thing, so $30 seemed a bit steep. I'm a huge TMNT fan, especially the IDW comics that this is based on. I'm also a huge fan of Hades, which this is obviously trying to mimic, so I thought I'd take a shot at it.

There is a lot of stuff it does incredibly well. Voice acting is good, and plentiful. Upgrades feel great, and combining multiple upgrades in a single run can feel broken sometimes, in a good way. Each of the four playable turtles feels fresh and unique (picking your turtle is similar to picking your weapon in Hades). Each turtle also has their own starting special move and passive ability, which can be changed during the run if you choose. For example Michelangelo has a high chance to multi-hit, Rapheal has a higher passive crit chance, and Donatello charges his special faster - that sort of thing. You get power ups during a run, and get to use them when you return to the lair to make you permanently stronger on future runs.

The runs themselves are also almost identical in structure to Hades - enter a zone, beat up the bad guys, get an upgrade that lasts for the rest of that run. Occasionally there are shops where you can buy either temporary upgrades or coins for permanent upgrades using scrap (think "gold") that goes away at the end of each run. After a few zones, you encounter a mini-boss or stage boss - and the stage bosses usually have a lot of dialog / story, at least for the first few runs. Beating bosses gives you other items you can use to power up - and the items the boss gives you changes depending on which turtle you beat them with, so it incentivizes switching things up.

Unlike Hades, you don't get to see what upgrades you're going to get before entering a zone, and you don't get to pick between multiple options (although there is a reroll ability you can unlock). A little sad since that made Hades feel like you weren't always taking the same route every time, where this game is pretty cookie cutter levels throughout. So far, after playing for about 4 hours, that's my biggest gripe and the biggest deviation from the formula.

Worth $30? I personally think so, but again I'm a huge fan of both TMNT and Hades. The game has that addictive "one more run" feeling to it. I'm not sure on total game length, but I feel like it would take someone quite a while to unlock everything. I've made it about halfway through a single run in the four hours I've played, but it's not exactly a linear game. Time will tell if I get bored with running through the opening levels over and over again.

 

[bumpkin]

I played a little bit of this on Apple Arcade when I had a free trial, but it did nothing to blow me away. Certainly not enough to make me accept a $30 price tag on console. I’d bite at $15 or less. I don’t tend to stick with rogue-lite games for very long.

 

[Nydius]

Could be good or a quick cash grab, gotta wait for reviews

Reviews were coming all last week. I doubt there’ll be many more than these, seems like the kind of game only a handful of outlets and system-specific sites will review. [Late edit: Goddamn why does my phone post these images SO DAMN LARGE?]

 

[jshackles]

Is Sweet baby invol

I don't think so. This isn't anything like that Seth Rogan movie.

For reference, this is April:

 

[jshackles]

Been playing this game, a lot. The more I play it, the more I'm digging it.

Getting really close to the end. I've won 8 runs so far and have most things unlocked. Put in about 35 hours.

The combination of different turtles having different passive abilities + random unlocks throughout a run have made for some extremely satisfying builds. The fact that you can invest resources into a particular turtle or particular type of random power gives this game a huge amount of customization that I'm really enjoying.

The only downside is that to reach Hades-tier status, this game needs about 3-4 times as much voiced dialog. For example, now that I've beat the first boss over 30 times, the banter at the beginning of the fight is the same each time. Well, I guess it changes depending on which turtle you pick, but it's the same for each turtle every time. I suppose it's a small gripe considering that it took me probably 20 hours to get to the point where the dialog on the first boss started repeating over and over again - and another 5 hours for boss two's dialog to get exhausted, and yet another 5 hours to get boss #3 to have no new dialog. But a lot of the turtle's sayings and general combat banter are also pretty repetitive at this point, which is disappointing.

Obviously my opinion on this has changed, and I feel like it's very much worth the $30 asking price.

 

[jshackles]

Okay once again revising my review / recommendation after "beating" the game.

The game just sort of... ends? I played through a few more runs after rescuing Splinter and now the dialog at the end of the final boss was also just the same over and over again. Weird - so I looked online to see if I was doing something wrong or needed to do something else to advance the story. Turns out, even though there are a ton of open plot threads, yup the game is over. No credits rolling, no "thanks for playing" screen.

At least in Hades, they crafted a narrative around why you might want to keep playing (to help your dad secure Hell). In this game, after you beat it and then get to the end of a run it's just "welp, let's try again. maybe next time we can do it faster". The devs even commented on Reddit after being questioned about it, and it seemed sketchy. "Stay tuned for more updates in the future" basically all but confirming this is early access in everything but name only. Which is weird, since the game's been out for more than a year on Apple Arcade.

Still not a terrible game - but I thought I had quite a bit more story to go through when in fact I was already at the end of the game when I wrote the above a few hours ago.

Maybe it'll get an update in the future? Or maybe that's why it hasn't launched on PC yet? Hard to say. Still, this type of game is kind of meant to be played over and over again, so if that's your jam I say go for it. Just keep in mind that the story will 100% leave you hanging.