Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate is set within the IDW comics continuity and features characters and concepts from within. I have to admit that while I have read some of the TMNT IDW comics, I have not read a lot of them and so a lot of the universe is still new to me. That said, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate showed it off in an interesting way and made me want to learn more.
The game starts with a mysterious captor abducting Master Splinter, and the turtles must set out on a quest to get him back. Each turtle plays differently, such as by having different basic combos, special attacks, and tools, and it may take you some time to figure which turtke is best for you, though I personally found Donatello and Michelangelo to have moves that worked better with my playstyle. Each run starts with you selecting a skill to use and then fight through room after room proceeding through various stages in an isometric brawler.
What is interesting is that unlike Hades, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate allows multiplayer, both local and online, for up to four players to join the fight together. I tested out both options and found they worked extremely well for the game, though I did have a concern after returning to single player. As with Hades and many other Roguelikes such as Dead cells, you will get more powerful as you continue on and unlock more abilities and options on the skill trees. This is good, but the game does amp up the difficulty to compensate, and in single player, the game can become a bit unbalanced, almost as if the game is encouraging you to focus on multiplayer.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate encourages you to constantly try new things and not just rely on one playstyle, such as by making you unlock more uses of your dash and other things like this. At the same time, you will fight Elite enemies after a while, such as StockGen robots and variations of Foot assassin’s who have more abilities that will force you to adapt. As such, you may find yourself trying different turtles or trying to customize a build with the right artifacts in order to get things right.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate has two main ways of upgrading, with two distinct currencies you get as rewards that you retain after each run that can unlock the new options mentioned above, aside from the non permanent currency called scrap that you only use within a single run. Choosing the right way to upgrade is key, but after some time you will need additional tokens to upgrade even with the right currency. These tokens are gained from beating certain bosses or completing a run under the right circumstances, such as completing a gauntlet challenge or the portal trials, both of which unlock after completing a run for the first time.
The gauntlet challenges provide more difficult versions of the mini-boss and boss fights, but do offer better rewards and are needed for getting certain upgrade tokens and artifacts. The portal trials on the other hand are a series of optional random modifiers that show up every two rooms and increase the rewards you gain, but at the cost of increased difficulty. Some of these modifiers may include more enemies, dealing less damage, recovering less health from pizza or shops costing more, and these need to be taken into consideration before continuing the portal trials on your run.
I do also need to comment that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate handles its story well. As stated, this is set in the IDW Comic continuity, but eases you in without overwhelming you and never makes you feel like you are left out. You will get the desire to learn more about the universe, so consider this a great introduction to this incarnation of the franchise. The story is revealed slowly over multiple runs and when combined with the excellent visuals and music, creates a very satisfying experience.
Obviously, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate is not Hades, despite taking influence from there, and it does a lot to set itself apart. This is a neat isometric Roguelike beat em up that finally offers something different than the typical Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles beat em up we have received a few times. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Shredder’s Revenge, but Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate just offered something that game could not.
Ultimately, I do give Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate a recommendation, even with the problems I had with the game being a bit too quickly to adapt the difficulty to increase the challenge. Fans of both roguelikes and beat em ups will love this game, and fans of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles will find a lot to enjoy, even those unfamiliar with the IDW run. I am eager to see what content is added to the game next, because Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate has a lot of potential for further storytelling.
Disclaimer: A review key was provided
