TMNT Splintered Fate Review: Gameplay Impressions, Videos and Top Features

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate from developer Super Evil Megacorp won't experience a second quiet release.

The first rendition, an Apple Arcade mobile effort from early 2023, didn't seem to make a big splash in the video game space.

But this souped-up (pizza'd-up?) port for the Nintendo Switch totally will.

A roguelike adventure experience for up to four players at a time, Splintered Fate draws inspiration from genre heavyweights such as Hades while leaning into the best rendition of the turtles to quietly craft what might be one of the year's sleeper hits.

Graphics and Gameplay

Splintered Fate doesn't often feel like a mobile game from a presentation standpoint, at least not in the bad way some gamers might come to anticipate.

Characters are bold against comic book-style backgrounds, shadows and lighting are eye-catching and the turtle-based environments are varied and colorful. The action isn't quite comic-book-come-to-life great, but it's darn close and quite impressive considering its humble mobile beginnings.

Along the way, the screens constantly do a great job of displaying information for players, be it health bars, when recharging abilities will be ready, and area-of-effect radiuses to dodge during combat.

Sound design is a big plus, too, with the combat getting great feedback in the audio department and the voice acting surprisingly a major strength of the entire package.

Splintered Fate plays like a Roguelike in the sense that powerups, enemies and even minibosses are randomized on a per-run basis.

Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello and Michelangelo, each have their own playstyles based around unique attacks, skills, and masteries. It's fun to experiment and players will likely end up finding their preferred way to play, yes. But there are also some very interesting strategies that will go into team composition during co-op sessions.

Each feels distinct in the best possible way. Leonardo is a speed-based character with low cooldowns, for example, which makes dodging out of boss attacks easier. Michelangelo focuses more on area-of-effect attacks, while Raphael strings together critical hit combos and Donatello, fittingly, prioritizes gadgets with a bigger health pool to compensate.

Upgrades at the end of rooms are a combination of current-run upgrades and permanent unlocks. Run-specific upgrades such as Turtle Powers and the Scrap currency fuel unlocks and abilities, while Dragon and Dreamer coins permit unlocks that span any run.

Each run includes a miniboss and a shop room, too. The timing of these can get a little repetitive, but perhaps there will be a mixup to this with a later update.

This all brings us to difficulty. Splintered Fate can be brutal. While there's plenty of pick-up-and-play potential of course, bosses, depending on what versions players run into, can end runs in a hurry. And actually reaching the end of a run and succeeding unlocks even more challenging modifiers and options.

Which is to say the difficulty conversation is a great thing. It really feels like an achievement to actually conquer the game, and the replayability is huge for those who want to keep tackling even bigger challenges.

Repetitiveness is always going to be a part of the conversation in a game like this, but the strong difficulty that can escalate gives players something worthwhile to chase.

Story and More

At its most basic, Splintered Fate hits the expected big one for the series—the Turtles must thwart the evil plans of their nemesis, Shredder.

The tale, penned by comic authors Tom Waltz and Kevin Michael Johnson, is creative in how it makes the narrative fit the gameplay loop to perfection. Players must lead the turtles through portals, creating the "runs" that make up the game's backbone.

And that's not the only surprisingly impressive part, either. The characters themselves are clearly more based on the absolutely stellar IDW comics than older versions, so there's more depth to each. It's a stunning surprise for a game that initially started on a mobile arcade and flew under the proverbial radar.

While the game is a blast solo, there's obvious upside to multiplayer. It includes co-up with up to four players on a single Switch, with the host's progression acting as the bar. In that way, it really channels the spirit of the classic 80s and 90s couch sessions with friends of the beat 'em up TMNT games that paved the way.

But the game also embraces the modern side of the industry well, too. Online multiplayer requires sharing a "run code", which makes sense given the game's format.

Splintered Fate arrives with a nice suite of options, too, though performance does stutter at times, notably in menus and loading times can stretch long.

Conclusion

There's an interesting dynamic going on with Splintered Fate.

It's blatantly a Hades clone.

It's also probably the best TMNT game ever.

And the thing is, if a game is going to emulate something from a genre, it might as well be the top dog. It's unrealistic to expect the game to hit the heights of Hades (one can see the Hades-in-a-half-shell puns coming from a mile away), but Splintered Fate is this amazing fusion of the past sidescrollers that paved the way for the Turtles, while also strongly surging into a new genre.

In a way, perhaps Splintered Fate can act as a fantastic onboarding ramp for players new to roguelikes. That's not a bad place to be—and the game is so much fun that it has the legs to last while fans likely hope it's only the begging for the Turtles in this genre.