Alright, I have to get this out of the way: I don’t like roguelites. I think I’ve known this for a while now. I’ve tried Hades, I’ve tried Dead Cells and I’ve sat through more than enough “just one more run” cycles to know that the loop just doesn’t loop for me the way it does for everyone else. The Steam Spring Sale came and went recently and I looked at Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate, another roguelite, and I bought it anyway. They suckered me in with punchy colours and TMNT branding. I’m not proud of it, but it was my own fault. I thought there was a lot to like and the early going was kinda fun. But of course, the never ending grind reared its head. I did complete a full run eventually, but that was purely due to my own stubbornness. I wasn’t going back for another run, I’d had enough.
The thing I dislike most about roguelites definitely isn’t the difficulty and I’m not opposed to sinking time into games. I had an absolute blast with Baldur’s Gate 3 and I’ve been playing season after season of NHL ‘96 basically since it released across more devices than I’d care to admit. The difference is those games give you something tangible as you play. A conversation that opens up, a goal scored or a decision that really hits. Progress you can sit back and actually point to. Roguelites work differently. Spintered Fate, like most of the genre, basically gatekeeps your enjoyment behind a rough grind for meta-currency. These are resources in different forms that you collect and carry between runs to slowly unlock upgrades, passive bonuses and new abilities for your chosen character. The general idea is that even a failed run helps you move the needle. I guess in theory, that sounds fine. But in practice, it means the game is essentially forcing you to stink at it for several hours before you’re good enough to have fun. For a busy Dad squeezing in an hour here and an hour there, that’s a pretty hard sell.
The moment of clarity, when I fully cemented my feelings about roguelites, didn’t come from a cheapo death or just another bad run. It came from finishing a full run. I knocked off Shredder and his goons, but it was still pretty tight. Yeah, I felt pretty good about myself… for about thirty seconds. Assuming that I cleared the final boss and was about to rescue Splinter, I was essentially told I’d only finished the tutorial. Splintered Fate has multiple runs built into its structure and working your way through the entire game means you’ll have to complete something in the region of seven or eight full runs. Each run becomes just that little bit harder, each run gently nudges your build in a slightly different direction. I get why that appeals to some people, I do. But for me, sitting there having just invested a meaningful chunk of my limited time into what turned out to be just a single round of many, it feels less like a reward and more like someone has clicked a red button and a trap door has swung open under my feet.
The frustration builds as you go. The whole roguelite genre hinges on building a cohesive set of abilities that work together well and Splintered Fate is no exception. The problem is that nobody really tells you that upfront. You can cruise through with an assortment of abilities that felt fine at the time, only to hit a wall two-thirds of the way through and only then realise what you thought was a cohesive build was actually just a random assortment of crap you picked up along the way. There’s mechanics that’ll absolutely end your run if you don’t know they’re coming, but the only way to know they’re coming is to… uh, have your run already ended by them. It’s essentially a knowledge tax and you pay it with time. That’s not even including the meta-currency itself. Between runs, you’re spending the resources you’ve uh… earned, on upgrades and abilities. It’s essentially gambling, and I don’t think that’s too strong of a word for it, on what might gel with your play-style. Some combinations are great, others are absolute garbage and you won’t know which is which until you’re about forty-five minutes into a run that’s about to fall apart… again. You’ll improve, incrementally, painfully and just when it feels like you’ve got everything so right you’ll fall short once again. The house always wins. To sound even more cliche: you’ll keep hoping the next pull of the lever is FINALLY the one that pays out.
Look, I only finished a single full run of Splintered Fate. Eventually. After dying more times than I’m willing to admit and spending my hard earned meta-currency on upgrades that may or may not have done anything useful. I’m not sure if that really counts as a win so much hostage situation where I finally saw the light at the end of the tunnel. If you’re someone who loves a roguelite, genuinely: I get it. The loop definitely works, builds can be satisfying, the “just one more run” thing is real and I’m not here to try to take that away from you. But, I’ve made my peace with the fact that I’m just not into it. I don’t have the hours to feed the machine until it starts to give something back. I’m at a stage of life where my gaming time is finite and it’s simply a waste to spend it being bad at something on purpose. The Steam Deck managed to pull me back into gaming in a way I truly didn’t expect and I’m genuinely grateful for that. But the next time a roguelite goes on sale and the branding looks punchy and familiar, I’m closing the store page and winning another Stanley Cup in NHL ‘96. Some lessons you only need to learn seven or eight times.
Leave a Reply