Why is this game so good?!
Previous Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game have made the genre fit the franchise, which was
probably the right way to go about it, but Magic Pockets instead opted to make the franchise fit the genre.... and they developed one of the
best TMNT games in recent memory. This is a hack-and-slash RPG, in the same vein as Diablo, and as
unfitting as it sounds for the Ninja Turtles, it's a great game on its own right.
The game takes place after the movie, yes, that movie, the one by Michael Bay. The plot is paper-thin, but you
really aren't playing this game for the story. The game is made up of 15 different stages, 10 ''side quest' stages and about 20 challenges, all in all, it should take anywhere from 3-5 hours to wrap it up. Which is a bit disappointing, as the game will certainly leave you
wanting more. That said, you can always replay previous stages or side-quests to level up your turtles.
Being a hack-and-slash RPG, you'll spend most of your time walking across narrow dungeons(Streets and Sewers actually), mowing down dozens of enemies in hope of better loot. At your
command lie all four turtles, and you can swap them at will by tapping the directional pad or tapping their faces on the bottom screen. While they have separate life-bars, the XP gauge and level are shared among the four, and losing any turtle means dying.... but checkpoints are
plentiful, and there are no consequences to dying, so it's not that hard. Another thing to keep in mind is that each level translates into 2 Skill Points, so you have to pick which turtle gets skills. There's about 10
different skills per Turtle, both passive and active skills. Passive skills grant bonuses just by learning them, while active skills are assigned to the A, B or X button(The Y button is used for normal attacks). One really neat touch is that every turtle has their own style. Take Michelangelo, his passive and active skills are all built around his 'Shuriken' skill, active skills will deal increased damage to enemies hit by shurikens, for example, or passive skills will grant bonus damage and shorter CDs to Shurikens. Meanwhile, Donnie is built around Crowd control, with many tools to deal damage in large areas and over time. Leo is mostly the DPS and Raph is the tank. One minor gripe with the system, is that the HUD is on the bottom screen, so in order to keep up with the cool down on your skills you are gonna have to look to the bottom screen, probably
diverting you from whatever is happening on the top screen.
As fun as the overall game is, and as well as they built the different skills and the four turtles, there's a noticeable flaw with the loot system. Mainly, how
limited it is. Props to making the different weapons reflect on the character models, though! But I
digress, the problem is how loot works and how little there is of it, namely, Weapons can only be crafted or found, randomly, on chests.
Enemies do not drop weapons, and they can't be bought. What enemies do drop is materials, items(Like pizza(potions) or buff-giving items) and gold, which is used to buy items on the shop. Weapons don't come in different rarities, although some deal different elemental damage. Still, it could've been so much more than the same boring 10 or so different weapons per character, you'll have seen
every possible weapon each Turtle can equip by the end of the game. The crafting system is also very simple: You gather materials, and you craft weapons from a list. Another thing I would've liked, that
should be
mandatory on this kind of game is randomly generated dungeons.
Presentation is very simple, character models are rather small, albeit
decently detailed, which is noticeable when you pause the game and you can look at the character models. It's pretty colorful, although it could've used more tilesets, there's only: Subway, City, Warehouse/Docks and Sewers. Music is surprisingly good, not particularly catchy or memorable, but it's not a bad listen.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a great little game for the 3DS. They managed to work the license around the genre, and I particularly enjoyed how different the four turtles were. That said, the game is
lacking, namely, a better loot system and more stages, or at
least randomly generated dungeons to make up for that. Still, at the end of the day I had a blast with it, probably one of the better TMNT games released lately.
7.5 out of 10
No comments:
Post a Comment