A Diablo-Esque ARPG Without The Depth
Want to gauge how old you are? Play a Nickelodeon tie-in and see how many characters you recognise. As much as I would love Ren & Stimpy, Doug, and Melissa Joan Hart to be a part of Nicktoons & The Dice of Destiny, I was fairly confident that wasn’t going to happen. Not even as a Dad-based DLC. Gosh, this paragraph will be aging me like rings on a tree.
Not that Nicktoons & The Dice of Destiny is looking to satisfy 40-something games journalists. We’d hazard a guess and say that this is best suited to 8-15 year-olds who know who Danny Phantom and Jenny Wakeman are. With them locked in, you can add some co-op players. That’s where 40-something games journalists can step up to the plate, supporting their kids while getting the occasional kick out of seeing Rugrats, Spongebob and TMNT characters.
We’ll head the multiplayer question off now: while Nicktoons & The Dice of Destiny is absolutely playable in single-player, this is designed for multiple players. Local co-op is possible for up to four, and the enjoyment scales with that number. Frantic choppy-choppy action becomes even more frantic and fun with four.
Hack-and-splash
So, what flavour of tie-in is Nicktoons & The Dice of Destiny? Unusually for Nicktoons or any other franchise, it’s an action-RPG. You don’t see many of those. Kart racers, party games and Smash Bros brawlers, yes, but not the ARPG genre that’s brought us Diablo and Torchlight. So, we were immediately intrigued. Can Spongebob deliver in the world of Diablo?
It’s probably best to temper the expectations we’ve immediately set. This is less Diablo and more Bastion (albeit with the complexity of a Skylanders game). There’s a floating hub area that is very reminiscent of the Supergiant game. Here, you’ll house the characters you find in the game world, with most asking you to complete their quests, and select others offering conveniences. Donatello from TMNT will upgrade your weapons, for example, while Sokka from Avatar improves your capacity for healing.
This Bastion hub also houses a portal to a game map. From that game map, you can choose from several biomes (all related to the games of its characters, from the Fairy Land of The Fairly OddParents to the Sewers of TMNT). Within those biomes are four levels each: three of the hack-n-slash variety and one with a boss encounter.
Aargh, Real Monsters!
Drop into one of the conventional levels and your first impression will probably be ‘ooh, there’s more to this than I thought there’d be’. Cynical old farts like us expect tie-ins to be tossed out with little thought, but Nicktoons & The Dice of Destiny at least cares deeply about its combat. There are nine characters to play, six straight off the bat, and they’re all unique (tied, as they are, to D&D-style classes like Enchantress and Rogue). Each has six abilities to unlock when there’s only space for four, so there’s a choice to be made. And all are triggered by simple mashing of the face buttons. They synergise in interesting ways, at least in terms of how some evade, others heal, others are at range, etc, etc.
We found ourselves gravitating towards Leonardo after a quick test. He’s got a spinning attack that’s to die for, and – hey – he’s Leonardo, so he’d got some effortless cool going on. We could nip into combat quickly, evade if there was trouble, and lob energy waves from distance.
Enemies are dumb as an animated bag of bricks, but there’s an awful lot of them. You can expect one or two new ones to be added per level, which is impressive for a tie-in. They’re all grabbed from various corners of the Nicktoons universe, and there’s bound to be a few that you have an affinity for.
Like Spongebob, It Loses Substance Over Time
We found our appreciation-graph for Nicktoons & The Dice of Destiny looked a lot like a ski slope. We started off impressed. There’s a lot to like in its opening moments: the pick’n’mix approach to the Nicktoons Universe works well, and the D&D references were just arch enough to keep us smiling. Combat was intuitive and surprisingly deep, while the levels moved at a brisk pace. We were culling fairies and ballistas at an unholy rate, leveling up as we did so. It just felt slick and hard to fault.
Ah, the innocence of the noob. While Nicktoons & The Dice of Destiny starts well, it soon starts to reveal that it’s shallower than The Crimson Chin (one for you Fairly OddParents fans).
Take loot and leveling up, two of the most important progression systems in an ARPG. As you level up, you can loot increasingly strong weapons and armours. These are essential if you want to keep up with the levels and the enemies within it, because they scale too.
What we found is that the players level up faster than the arenas. Perhaps that’s because we played the side-quests, but soon we were level 25 when the arenas were level 20,. Except the potency of the dropped loot is determined by the level of the arena not the level of the player. The result is that dropped loot is never, ever useful. The only loot that’s worthwhile is in the shops within The Tangle, the player-hub, which actually DOES keep up with the player’s current level. And is easier to get hold of. The result is that you start ignoring chests and the challenge obelisks, removing a huge chunk of gameplay.
Levelling up also nets you, well, nothing much at all. Once the six abilities have been unlocked for your character early on, there’s nothing to gain other than a trip to the shop to buy the next weapon and chestplate. There’s no skill tree or additional stat improvements. Weapons and armour can be upgraded, but the cost is exorbitant and you’re likely to improve your gear with the next level anyway. The game just kind of falls away.
How I Lost My Co-Op Team
The arenas themselves reveal an overly familiar template. Some levers and portals attempt to mix things up, but mostly you’re wandering the same paths, with the same enemies doing the same things, for a solid twenty hours. The fatigue aches the bones, and our family lost interest. I was left to make the final, winding journey to ‘The Dungeon Master’ myself. It was really only the bosses that perked me up, ratcheting up the difficulty (which had long since become irrelevant) and making me consider which abilities to use and when. The story, too, played the same notes over and over: good and evil, with Spongebob making the odd wisecrack.
There’s certainly a lot to commend in Nicktoons & The Dice of Destiny. It doesn’t take the easy route of slapping a Nicktoons label on a copycat game. This is an ARPG that attempts to make a complicated genre accessible for teens, while also supporting up to four players locally.
If Only It Was A Few Spongebob Less
But in that process of making things accessible, of trying to appease all Nicktoons fans, something has been lost. Nicktoons & The Dice of Destiny rummages in its inventory but can’t find depth, variety or a strong story to keep players playing. While RPG systems are included, they’re empty shells – a kind of Diablo checkbox without the content to support it.
We’re going to wheel out a reviewer’s cliche: it’s worth waiting for a sale before buying Nicktoons & The Dice of Destiny. It has a lustre that will only last for a few days, even in co-op. For a full-price game, that’s a lot to ask of a Nicktoons fan, but for a few (sponge)bob less? Yeah, we can see that happening.
Important Links
Unite Your Favourite Nickelodeon Heroes in Nicktoons & The Dice of Destiny – https://www.thexboxhub.com/unite-your-favourite-nickelodeon-heroes-in-nicktoons-the-dice-of-destiny/
Nicktoons & the Dice of Destiny is a New Fantasy Action RPG – https://www.thexboxhub.com/nicktoons-the-dice-of-destiny-is-a-new-fantasy-action-rpg/
Download from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/nicktoons-the-dice-of-destiny/9PB1N3ZX83T2/0010
There’s a Deluxe Edition too – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/nicktoons-the-dice-of-destiny-deluxe-edition/9N24GBXKDFXN/0010
