Review: TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: SPLINTERED FATE is a Fun Roguelike Multiplayer Game
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fans have a new couch co-operative game for fans to enjoy on console. Originally released on Apple Arcade, fans can enjoy Super Evil Megacorp’s TMNT: Splintered Fate on Nintendo Switch now with a PC release planned for later this year. The team did supply me with a digital review copy, but all thoughts below are my own. If this sounds like a fun game, you can purchase it from the eShop or Humble Store (affiliate link) for about $30.
The crime-fighting, pizza loving Turtle brothers are back and better than ever in this co-op roguelike action game that will have players travel through reality-bending portals to rescue their abducted master, Splinter.
Over the past few years I’ve become a huge fan of rogue-like titles and my house is a bit obsessed with TMNT and so this title sounded like a perfect game for us. I think that Splintered Fate has mostly lived up to my expectations and so if you want the quick and dirty, I would recommend this to TMNT fans who like rogue-likes but I do hope that Super Evil Megacorp cleans a few things up. Let’s start with the areas that need improvement and then I’ll sing the game’s praises.
I’m going to start out soft with a weird glitch/bug where sometimes (rarely) all of a sudden my turtle will get stuck looking like he is moving in one direction even if he is moving in the opposite direction. Typically this gets resolved when I move to the next room, but it is something that is annoying at times. Also, there are times at the end of a room where there’s an arrow indicating you to keep scrolling down, but then you cannot scroll down any further. Seems like a fairly simple thing to address.
Additionally, I know that the health bar is above each turtle, but I think I personally would prefer to have it with my other character information in the corner and also have the numbers displayed. Maybe have a toggle in the options for these?
Also, when playing a rogue-like such as Splintered Fate, you want to always be able to see your character. Unfortunately, there are moments where you can’t and it feels like bad design. This can be due to the environment just having assets that completely obscure you and/or enemies or because the camera is focused on a different turtle in multiplayer and you are far enough away. Granted, the team does have arrow/icon indicators to show where you and enemies are, but I would personally prefer it if my character was just always visible.
Another aspect that I imagine would be easy (I am not a game dev and so cannot say definitively whether or not it is) is how you can easily miss the initial story beats. My kid was very excited to play Splintered Fate with me after it downloaded and so I loaded it up for the first time and went to Multiplayer and it immediately took us into the game. This isn’t inherently bad, but characters were talking about events that are supposed to happen the first time you play the game such as the disappearance of Splinter and Leonardo getting beat up by Shredder and The Foot. I later loaded up a new game with the single player mode and got to play through the Tutorial which introduces these very important story beats! I would like to see this addressed so that even if the first thing you do is Multiplayer, you don’t miss out on key story information.
Other areas that I believe need tweaking include the feeling of control and overall performance. Overall, the game doesn’t feel awful, but the controls feel a little sluggish and could probably use a bit of love to perk up. Also, I know the Switch is seven years old and I often do my best to not hate on the specs, but in Splintered Fate, it does appear that there are occasional performance drops, particularly in multiplayer mode. The performance drops are never game breaking and often go barely noticed if at all, but I hope that the team is able to find a way to improve the performance. Whatever you do, I would never recommend the cinematic mode in the options. The 30fps is so bad I had to turn it off after about five seconds. Keep that option off though and you’re probably just fine.
That’s enough of being a wet blanket though. What’s great about this game? Quite a bit. Each of the turtles feels different to play which is always a relief. You will want to experiment with each one to figure out which is best for you. I am usually a Leonardo fan, but in Splintered Fate I think Raphael is my favorite followed by Michelangelo. Each turtle has abilities called Inspirations which impact their playstyle. For example, Raphael’s Inspirations increase critical chance and critical damage while Leonardo’s gives him an extra use of his Special before recharging. What’s really cool is that as you play through there will be times when you can select another turtle’s inspiration to use during your run. It’s a fun mechanic in my opinion.
Another thing that I am grateful for is that the special currency such as Karai’s armor isn’t spent when you purchase upgrades. Instead, you can just accumulate them to unlock new tiers of upgrades. It helps make a grindy genre feel less grindy and more engaging. Speaking of, the grind game doesn’t feel bad early on with how easy it is to get various currencies.
I have not gotten very far into the story so it’s hard to gauge how good it really is. That’s natural for this kind of game where you get a small bit of story for each run. It seems to be pretty good from what I’ve experienced so far. In short, the turtles are trying to rescue Splinter but things get weird when magical portals start showing up and serving as the narrative excuse for the turtles not dying when they lose a fight. It works well.
The art style for Splintered Fate is also really cool. The character designs for pretty much every character looks fantastic. I especially like Shredder and Splinter. The models used feel very comic book which is fantastic. The characters really pop against the backgrounds too which intensifies the effect.
One game mechanic that feels a little unique to Splintered Fate is how Tools and Specials work. In other roguelikes that I’ve played, their equivalents to these two attacks tend to be either on a set number with a timer for recharging or unlimited. However in Splintered Fate, they recharge based on you hitting enemies. Each hit you land restores a percentage of each of these stronger attacks encouraging you to get aggressive.
At the end of the day, Splintered Fate is a fun TMNT game on the Nintendo Switch. In my opinion it needs some touch ups, but it’s still worth picking up. Being able to play with up to three friends on my couch is a huge win and I’ve had lots of fun playing with my family. If you’ve had a chance to play the game already, which is your favorite turtle to play as?
