Re-form

I'm continuing to love my Bohemia run of Europa Universalis IV. Or, as it has now become, my Saxony run of EU4. If you spend even a little time on community sites for EU4, you'll see a lot of discussions about "tag-switching", which means changing from one nation into another. Some of these are very common in-game evolutions, like creating Spain from Castile or the Commonwealth from Poland; others might involve starting as a smaller country, defeating and completely annexing a larger country, and then turning back into that country (like Fars into Timurids); some are very challenging and advanced goals (like forming Rome).

 

I'd mentioned before that, based on my early strategy-guide reading, I changed Bohemia's primary culture from Czech to Saxon, which is one of the prerequisites for forming Saxony (along with owning a few specific provinces like Wittenberg). After winning the League War and being crowned Emperor I had mostly finished the Bohemia mission tree so I planned to switch quickly to Saxony; but I realized that Bohemia has some specific HRE-related Missions that Saxony doesn't get. (I think that "regional missions" can be continued even after tag-switching, but nation-specific ones definitely cannot).

 

 

Fortunately, I was earning a good 0.7 Imperial Authority per month, thanks to aggressively splitting up large countries into smaller countries and absorbing smaller countries into the HRE. I also had quite a few helpful modifiers, like Protestant Empire and the Bohemian Ideas, plus upgrading the Historical Center of Prague to the highest level. My Aggressive Expansion was finally burning off. Despite regular warfare, I wasn't directly taking provinces for a couple of decades, just forcing minors into the Empire, so I could time my wars to end right around reaching 50 IA and immediately take a Reform without needing to buffer more IA.

 

 

My previously-stated plan to extend the HRE around the Black Sea has paid off. It sounds more interesting than it actually is, there are only maybe 5 nations around here, but it's still fun. I've been releasing more small nations from Muscovy as well, which can be tricky: if they get vassalized then I can't Expand Empire on them, and if they make an alliance and get dragged into a war against me, they'll lose my protection and then Muscovy eats them again. It's slightly annoying to have small nations defeat each other without waiting to be defeated by me first. Also to have them switch religion back to Catholic or Orthodox, though I'm now getting the hang of doing this: I'll usually wait to Force Religion until they're down to just 1-2 provinces, and otherwise try to release nations or maybe feed provinces to a vassal. 

 

 

More recently, after England lost a war against Spain, I was surprised to see Ireland was populated once again with nearly a dozen OPMs. "Cha-CHING!" I said. Getting close enough to Expand Empire on them took just a little while. I already held London, and one more war gave me contiguous territory all the way up to the strait to Ireland. I made Gaeldom and Cornwall imperial princes along the way, then pushed across into Munster. It's been slow going but also pretty fun, taking one country at a time and waiting for truces to expire before continuing.

 

Speaking of truces - I'm getting a more and more nuanced understanding of strategy in this game. Up until now, my main goal in war and peace has been to extract the maximum possible concession: drive up the Warscore as high as possible (given any constraints I have on time and resources), then try to figure out the best goodies to knock out of the pinata (specifically important provinces, trade concessions, breaking up alliances, etc.). If I've really trounced a small country as a non-co-belligerant, I'll just demand everything I can short of annexation.

 

The thing is, though, that the more you demand from a nation, the longer your truce lasts. If you sign a White Peace with no concessions, it's a 5-year truce. If you demand a full 100 Warscore's worth of a shopping list, it will last for 15 years. And it scales in between, like 10 years for 50 Warscore of demands. So, if I've dragged a minor Irish duchy into a war, and I can't Expand Empire on him now but I plan to get to him soon, then do I really want to add another 4 years to our truce so I can get 16 more ducats out of him? No, not really! I'd rather just white-peace him. Or maybe I do want to make a particular change, like forcing them to drop an alliance with France or convert to Protestantism, but I'll gladly leave the rest of the Warscore on the table, just so I can fight the proper war against them without waiting too long.

Similarly, even if I don't want anything from a non-co-belligerant, I'll still separate-peace them rather than include them in the final negotiations. The truce terms apply to everyone left in the war at the end; so if Force Religion and Expand Empire cost 30 warscore, then that's an 8-year truce with all of the allies. I'd rather do 5-year truces with the allies. Who cares how long the truce is with the new Prince, I'm not gonna fight them again anyways.

And while I haven't gotten into this myself yet, I'm finally understanding what people mean when they talk about resetting truce timers. I fought a big war against Muscovy and took a ton of stuff, ended up with like a 13-year truce. I want to fight them again but have to wait a while. But, if I attack an ally, and separate-peace them, then maybe I'll be able to attack Muscovy again after 7 years instead (assuming 2 years for a war plus a new 5 year white peace truce).

Let's talk about religion!

 

Austria finally organically converted to Protestantism, so I only had a single, lonely heretic Prince in the Empire, the Reformed city of Frankfurt.

After a very long period of religious strife, England eventually turned Reformed as well. Their provinces are probably about 1/2 Reformed, 1/3 Catholic and 1/6 Protestant, which looks pretty funny on the Religious Map. What's even funner is that Scotland is also Reformed, but Scotland and England are mutual rivals.... and England took Defender of the Faith. Years late, I made Scotland the co-belligerant in a war, and England refused to defend them. I find that hilarious: declare yourself Defender of the Faith, when "the faith" is only one specific other country, who you have no intention of defending!

 

I'm continuing to love being Protestant. I'm Defender of the Faith there too, and have yet to receive a single call to arms to defend the faith; I'm pretty certain that's because I'm so powerful that I'm effectively deterring all potential foes of my brethren. What I hadn't anticipated is all the Protestant-on-Protestant violence (though, given history, I probably should have!). That is one downside to me forcing religion on nations; just doing it on one would be safe, but doing it on two makes them threats to one another.

I've comfortably been the #1 Great Power in the world for quite a while now, even when deliberately lagging on taking an Institution. My allies Spain are consistent #2s, and the Mamluks are high too, I think maybe #3 or #4. That seems to be a pretty common situation in EU4: the player will be the biggest power, and the player's allies will be the next-biggest tier.

The Ottomans have been almost completely destroyed by now. For a while they just held Anatolia, then just the north and west, and now only a few inland provinces. The Mamluks own everything else down to Ethiopia, and have started warring against the Mughals to the east. So far the Mamluks haven't seemed interested in the Balkans, Greece or Italy, so hopefully we have some more friendly years. Spain has a huge colonial empire, particularly in the Caribbean but all throughout the Americas and Australia. They also have much of north Africa, a small chunk of France and the south of Italy. France isn't doing as poorly as the Ottomans, but are heading in same direction, squeezed between me and a determined rival, unable to follow their normal expansion plans.

I suspect that in the long term I'll likely go to war against Spain and/or the Mamluks, but I don't have any specific plans for it right now. I did get to drive a wedge between Spain and Portugal, who had been long-term allies, by calling Spain into a war against The Isles where Portugal joined as Defender of the Catholic Faith. That wasn't too necessary for this war but will make a potential future break a lot easier. I might eventually try to take Spain's colonial nations, which would probably mean fully annexing their Old World provinces. For the Mamluks, I do kind of like the idea of conquering Jerusalem, and maybe eventually getting down to share a border with Ethiopia, who I've been friendly with and often married to for most of the game.

I'm not sure yet if I want to move into Asia or not. As a German nation, I have terrible range: even with the Dutch provinces on the Atlantic coast, I can't even reach the Ivory Coast with claims. (It's all colonized already, of course, so I'd have to take land in a war.) Getting into Asia would be interesting, and there are some Saxon and Prussian missions that involve Asia, but I also have more than enough to keep me entertained in Europe.

The map reveal has been very slow and interesting. I got eyes on the New World relatively early, and Australia was revealed before India was. By the 1600s I still hadn't seen any land east of India, although some of Indonesia was being revealed. It took me to the 1630s to finally see any of the China coast. I would have thought that just following the coast of the continent would be a lot easier than striking into the Pacific, so it's interesting to see how things have been revealed when the AI is leading exploration instead of me.

 

 Quick tangent: one meta-problem with playing EU4 is Googling certain things, specifically the word "reform". In this game, "Reform" can refer to a ridiculous number of things: a Governmental Reform (e.g., choosing your Tier 2 Noble Privileges); "Reforming" into another country (like Bohemia into Prussia); your "Reform Progress", which is used for Governmental Reforms but also for other things; "Reforming" as a primitive tribe into a modern society; and passing "Reforms" within the Holy Roman Empire. I'm now writing about the last of those items.

I've been passing Reforms at a pretty good clip, but after the Perpetual Diet I needed to decide whether to continue with the last two standard Reforms, or switch over to the Centralization Reforms. I knew that long-term I wanted to get at least to Revoke the Privilegia in the Centralization Reforms, but I ended up putting that off in a while, partly because I wanted to burn off more Aggressive Expansion so more of the Princes would follow me after Revoking. The last standard reform "Ewiger Landfriede" disables internal wars in the Empire, which turns out to be really great. First of all, it solves the problem I complained about above with small states eating one another. Secondly, though, it keeps HRE princes allied to non-HRE nations from accepting calls to arms against an HRE attacker (that is to say, me!). The years with Ewiger had some of the cleanest and best wars, I think because potential targets will fill out their alliance slots with partners who won't actually show up when I attack them.

I did eventually Revoke, and it was pretty dark awesome. When you click the button, each prince who supported the reform will become your vassal (not filling a diplomacy slot and not looking to other vassals to compare strength), so you want as many as possible to support it. But just letting your IA continue to climb past 50 is hugely impactful, so even nations that didn't particularly like me came along for the ride. In the end only four didn't join. I didn't think that Frankfurt would, but it surprisingly and spontaneously flipped Protestant right before the reform. My big Personal Unions Lithuania and Hungary also left due to having too much development; I was a little nervous that doing this would make me lose the Unions, but it didn't, phew. All of their provinces got removed from the Empire, but existing Imperial territory on the other side of their borders is still valid even if it no longer connects back to the capital.

The other two nations that didn't join up were Austria and Switzerland, both of which still had mountains of Aggressive Expansion from my earlier unjustified wars against them. They were the first victims of my Vassal Swarm. I'd heard of the Vassal Swarm online, and actually seeing it in person is very powerful and very funny. When you look at any individual Prince they look dinky, with maybe 4-5 regiments. In my game I had 80 princes left after revoking, and it's insane to see them literally swarm over my opponents. So far I've only seen them at work in Europe; I'll be curious to see how well they fare on other continents, but from what I've read online they're pretty effective far from home as well.

 

Taking a pause here - part of the power of One-Province Minor vassals is that they can build tall while you're building wide. Small nations get roughly the same number of Monarch Points as big nations, and research the same tech and ideas, but they end up dumping all of their surplus points into their sole province instead of spending it on peace deals, coring, a dozen Generals, etc. So they can generate a huge amount of tax and provincial trade power and a relatively large force limit. When you can tap directly into those, you get much more benefit than if you just took the land for yourself.

Another way to put it - in my first post about this run, I mentioned how I'd successfully beaten off a lot of larger opponents, but lost in a war against a coalition. That coalition was made entirely out of HRE OPMs. And now those same guys who were trying to kill me a century ago are all working for me now!

In my previous Portugal run, I'd primarily used vassals to expand and grow, feeding them enemy provinces and letting them take care of coring, then integrating them before they got so big that their Liberty Desire became unmanageable. In this game, because my HRE vassals don't really grow, I don't need to worry as much about their Liberty Desire and can exploit them more. 

One thing I've been looking forward to for a while is consolidating my trade power. An early goal of mine in this game, dating back to the mid-1400s, was to conquer all the Centers of Trade in Saxony; but even after taking all of them, expanding the CoTs and building Marketplaces, I still had less than 50% of Trade Power in that node. And I couldn't move my main collection node to the English Channel, despite having significant trade there, because I had almost no power in Rheinland or Lubeck and so no way to push my trade value through to England.

 

Oh! A quick follow-up to my last post. I mentioned there that I was curious if I'd be able to force-spawn Global Trade in one of my provinces. Each Institution is pretty different; some of them are very random and can appear in any one of hundreds of eligible provinces, others have far more constrained possibilities. Global Trade is probably the most deterministic of all: if it spawns at all in a given year, it has to spawn in one particular country, which has the highest trade power in the wealthiest trade node in the world. I already had a strong shot at the English Channel with the Burgundian Inheritance, and fighting a war for London gave me an even stronger position. Setting a large fleet of Light Ships to Protect Trade could push me over the top... but then I lost a ton of trade power due to collecting in multiple nodes. I turned all my Merchants to just steer... but then I saw that I wasn't eligible unless I was also collecting in the Channel. I was finally able to get the top power, then double-checked the Ledger, and was dismayed to see that Seville and, uh, I think maybe Rhineland were wealthier than the English Channel. Nertz! I ended up setting all my merchants to Steer towards the Channel, which tanked my overall trade income, but bumped up the incoming value just enough to make it the wealthiest in the world (by maybe 5 ducats or so). I then went back to my collecting-in-multiple-nodes thing until November 1599, then swapped back once more to make sure it was still on target, got the Institution, and finally got my merchants back to multi-collecting again.

After Revoking, I first used the "Seize Province" subject interaction to take another Center of Trade in Lubeck. This works pretty well: you get some Liberty Desire from that vassal, but my Diplomatic Reputation is so high that I didn't have anything to worry about. But most CoTs are in capitals, which can't be seized. I was thinking about diplomatically annexing those princes, which is a mixed bag, since I'd need to wait 10 years, spend a lot of Diplomatic points, and then lose that Prince from the Empire.

But then I noticed the "Transfer Trade" button (which is on the Subject Interaction panel and not a Diplomacy option). This transfers 100% of their trade power to you (not 50% like in a peace deal). I tried that on the 4 or so princes with CoTs in Lubeck, and the next month, my trade power share shot up from like 15% to 40%. Yay! You do get a static Liberty Desire malus from this, but it's really light, and I still ended up with overall 0% Liberty Desire from these subjects.

Fiddling with Trade usually involves a fair amount of measurement and experimentation. I paused, noted that I had earned 130 trade income in one month, then clicked through all the rest of my 80 (!!) vassals to Transfer Trade Power, then unpaused and waited for another month tick. My trade income went up to I think 155 or so - enough to notice, but not as big as I'd assumed. I dug into the Trade Node UI. The results looked odd: a few countries like the ones in Lubeck were showing 0% trade power due to "transfers power to Saxony", but others still had their normal power, even though I'd taken their trade power as well. That's weird. I kept playing, checked a few months later, and found that my trade income was now around 300 a month. Wowza! Clicking back to the trade nodes, I saw that everything was now much more like I expected: I now held around 75% trade power in Rheinland, Wien, and other shared nodes. I'd assumed that everything would update on the next month tick, but maybe it takes more time; or maybe there are some cascading changes that take multiple months to resolve, like checking for downstream trade power pulls or something.

Last trade update for this post: I finally went ahead and transferred my trade capital to London while keeping my political capital in Prague. Once again, it was an improvement, but not as big an improvement as I thought: just 330 or so. I finally updated all my merchants to Transfer unlike the multiple Collections they'd been doing earlier. I also reorganized some geographical assignments: now that I'm just steering, I don't really care about merchants in nodes that only have a single outlet. Conversely, I do want to steer in nodes that can feed into Venice or Genoa, even if they're smaller amounts. That bumped it up to 360 a month or so. But this was all while I was suffering Overextension from a war, which hurts Trade Power. Once that was all done, I was easily north of 400 a month. Tripling my trade income in a couple of years: not too bad! (But also the result of a lot of ground work.)

I kind of glossed over this above, but I did finally convert from Bohemia into Saxony after passing the Perpetual Diet reform, which finishes some Missions that give really nice permanent bonuses (like bonus Monarch Diplomatic skill, IA growth modifiers, etc.). I chose to keep the Bohemian Ideas since I liked them more, especially the Imperial Authority bonus as I hadn't yet Revoked the Privilegia. As Saxony, I could finish a bunch of Missions right off the bat from previous conquests and annexations. I was worried about one that has to do with spreading your Dynasty; but my Personal Unions already counted for that, and I realized there's a Subject Interaction to force your dynasty onto a vassal's throne, so it ended up being way easier and faster than I expected. The ones I have left now require me getting a lot of trade power in Canton, which, yeesh. As I previously complained about, I have no range outside of Europe, so I'll need to decide whether it's worth fighting a bunch of wars over land across Africa and India to be able to reach Canton, or if I'll just call this tree done.

 

 

When starting this game, my vague plan was to finish by reforming into Prussia. I would have done it by now, except I've discovered a crucial piece of into: the Prussian Monarchy imposes a crushing -50% penalty to Governing Capacity. I've been basically at my cap for about a century now, and while going a little over isn't a big deal, blowing past it would cause huge problems with Administrative Efficiency (and hence war score, coring costs) and Aggressive Expansion. Fortunately I have a ton of money, so I'm going to see how much headspace I can free up by building Courthouses in all of my provinces that don't already have one, any missing State Houses, etc. I'm also getting close to the "L'etat c'est moi" government reform; I was hoping to use that on War Score or Coring Cost, but may grab that juicy 250 Governing Capacity instead. I've also recently read some posts about using Centralize State, so I'll need to spend a bit of time in the Macro Builder to see if that's worthwhile for me.

Let's talk quickly about conquests before I wrap this up!

Again, most of my recent wars have been bullying people into the Holy Roman Empire. I did take a lot of land from Muscovy and have been building out some Trade Companies there, which in turn have given me some very useful Merchants. I fought a war against Sweden and took Stockholm and only Stockholm so I could finish my domination of the Baltic Sea trade node. Denmark is probably my most tempting target to the north as they hold about 25% of the Lubeck trade node; but we've been very friendly, so I kind of hate to turn on them.

 

 

As mentioned before, I fought a lightning war against England where I basically zipped up the middle of their country so I could start expanding the HRE into Ireland. I'll probably fight England and Scotland some more, but at the moment they're fighting each other - the only two Reformed nations on the planet hate each other so badly! Scotland is down to only 4 provinces, but they're all 30+ dev, so I'm not sure yet how to handle them; I may annex most of them off to Irish vassals and then force the remnants into the Empire.

 

I've fought a few wars against France and Venice, they're still holding on but are looking very rough. I was really hoping to take Venice proper during an early war, but a noble uprising wiped out the artillery-only siege stack I had on the island, and then their 90+ navy kept me from attacking again. The second war was more effective, I was prepared to move a big army over quickly and deal with the attrition. I mostly wanted Venice for the Glass and the Trading In Glass bonus, but they also have a really good Monument as well as a mediocre one. Venice still has some land in Italy and the eastern Mediterranean, they're a small thorn in my side as they are strong enough to kill OPMs before I can bring them into the Empire.

 

France has been a lot of fun to kick around. My first few wars against them were challenging, but in this most recent one they just melted before the Vassal Swarm. What I really want from them are their Ivory Coast holdings, but I can't take any of those lands without taking a fort, and my attempt to take a fort failed. I'll need to build more transports so I can land a bigger army. I took Paris for the monument and Orleans for the CoT, then realized that I don't need to actually take CoTs myself to get the benefit, so assigned all the other CoTs along the Atlantic coast to various HRE OPMs: they'll be able to Accept those cultures, won't get too big to cause liberty issues, and will still give me 100% of their Trade Power: win-win-win! France is on the ropes now, they still have a good amount of territory but no trade power, I think it's just going to be a race between me and Spain to see who takes the most from them.

 

Oh, and I'm doing the Court and Country disaster again. It seems less important in this patch than in previous ones, since there are more sources of Max Absolutism; but there isn't a major downside to doing it, I haven't had to slow down my wars during this disaster like I did for the Lowlands Revolt. I have been making use of the 4-week delay between when an event pops and when you need to click a button, which is usually enough time to move an army into a province that's about to revolt.

I think that's it for this report! I'm still having a blast. At this phase of a blobbing game, you're spending more more time in the Macro Builder and less peering at individual cities: it's much easier to blast through building 35 Trade Depots in specific provinces than to carefully peer at each individual city to see who needs one.

Lion come forth! Come from the North! Come from the North!

My brother (no, my other brother) recently asked how one would go about "easing into" playing Europa Universalis IV. That's a good question, in my mind roughly equivalent to asking how one would ease into trigonometry or ease into ballet. I thought a full response could make for a nice short (for me) blog post!

First, to set expectations: EU4 does have a relatively steep learning curve, so if it feels daunting, that isn't on you, just part of the overall experience. But I think it's nicely broken down into multiple systems, each with their own "hook". As you play, you get to learn those systems better, and can gradually grok how the whole works together.

Also on expectations, I like to think of Europa Universalis as being a "history simulator" more than a "strategy game". The experience is a bit closer to playing something like Sim City. You typically set goals for yourself as a player, which might be something like making a clean and vibrant home, but could also involve a rampaging Godzilla. People who have played other historical strategy games like Civilization before might assume that the goal is to conquer the world, but it really isn't: it's more of a sandbox to tinker around in.

There is an in-game tutorial which you can and should play through to get familiar with the interface and some of the major game modes. When you're ready to start in earnest, try not to get too attached to your first couple of games. They'll be opportunities for exploration and experimentation. Pick a country that looks interesting, play for a while until you're feeling stuck or bored, then start over with that country or pick another one and apply what you learned in the last run.

There are multiple "bookmarks" for starting years (like 1776 for the United States), but I recommend beginning in the default year of 1444. Among other reasons, the game is simpler earlier on: for example, you only have Infantry and Cavalry in 1444, as it will be a few decades until Artillery makes an appearance.

For picking a country, keep in mind the "simulator" frame, so if a particular region or theme is interesting to you then that might be a good one to pick. I will say that in general larger countries are better to pick than smaller ones, as they are more resilient to setbacks. The "easiest" overall country may be Portugal: they are friendly with Spain and England and isolated from the rest of Europe, so they can focus on internal development, with maybe some occasional adventures in North Africa. Other good choices could include the Ottomans, France, Poland, Castile, or another large country.

As you play, bad things will almost certainly happen: you may lose a battle, or a war, or some provinces. This is okay! One of the coolest things about EU4 is how well it models the sort of power dynamics we've observed in history: when one country occupies another, that other country will generally be restive, and often will regain its independence. So it is in EU4. If you lose territory, the conquerer will need to deal with rebels and intransigence, while you will get large bonuses to re-conquer it later. Conversely, if you conquer a lot of territory from a competitor, you'll likely need to invest time, military resources and money into pacifying your new subjects. EU4 gameplay feels like a squishy ball that tries to regain its shape, while Civilization and other games are more like snowballs where success breeds success and failure breeds failure.

Having zen to deal with setbacks is helpful. So is the willingness to ignore things. There are a lot of systems in Europa Universalis, and they all serve a purpose, but none of those purposes are essential. You don't need to learn everything all at once. In your first game you might just focus on using your military and growing your economy. There are other systems, like diplomacy, that you can dip your toes into, or invest a lot of time into mastering. One system I especially appreciate are the "Estates", which simulate the Nobility / Clergy / Burghers estates that dominated post-feudal Europe. There are a lot of fun things you can do with estates - summon Diets, grant privileges, seize land, and so on - but you can also just 100% ignore them and nothing bad will happen.

What should you focus on, then? One of my favorite parts of Europa Universalis are the "Missions", which give specific goals for specific countries to work towards. Most of these are based on historical developments, so in pursuing the missions you'll be at least running parallel to historical movements. Portugal might get missions related to exploration and trade, while Brandenberg will have missions related to military professionalism, and the Ottomans will have missions nudging them towards conquering Byzantium. I really like having concrete goals to work towards, which helps things feel less overwhelming and give a few specific areas to focus on and learn more about.

I think those are the main things! A few random tips before I go:

• Money is precious, especially early on. Treat it as a limited resource and only spend on things you (1) can afford and (2) know will be useful.
• Specifically, you'll rarely want to spend money on Buildings in the early game (with a couple of exceptions like building a Marketplace in a Center of Trade). This is a big change for Civ veterans who want every city to always be building something.
• Fighting a war and losing or ending in a White Peace isn't terrible. You'll likely have gained Army Tradition and maybe Prestige, as well as trust from any allies.
• Likewise, when winning a war, you may decide you don't want to take any provinces from the loser. It could be better to take money and war reparations. This results in all upside for you without any of the overhead of absorbing new territory.
  
• You'll probably want to Ally a powerful neighbor to discourage enemies from attacking you.

 When you're ready to dive deeper. Europa Universalis like the other Paradox games has a fantastic official wiki. It can look overwhelming at first, but once you have the rough overall framework in mind it's terrific for explaining details, showing connections, and offering guidance on strategy and tactics.

Splintered Fate

I've been having a blast playing "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate". I had been totally unaware of this game until my brother brought it up a month or so ago; we picked it up (I think during a Steam sale) and have been continuing our tradition of Co-Op Turtle Power.

 

 

This game doesn't seem to be at all connected with the earlier "Shredder's Revenge", which felt like a revival of the property. Shredder's Revenge was a very loving homage to the early-90s Turtles In Time side-scrolling beat-em-up arcade game, with an elevated take on the original gameplay and an aesthetic very closely tied to the 80s/90s cartoon. Splintered Fate is still the Turtles, of course, but feels closer to the later animated series in visual style and humor. As I've gotten deeper into the game I've come to realize that the gameplay is basically a ripoff of Hades - which is a good thing, as Hades is one of my favorite games of the last few years!

Unlike Hades, though, Splintered Fate is designed for multiplayer. You can play single-player, but narratively all four turtles are moving through the story at the same time, and mechanically it's more satisfying if you have multiple bodies on the field at the same time. I don't have a sense yet for whether the game scales up based on the number of players.

 

Like other rogue-lites, SF combines a per-run temporary build economy with a persistent game-wide economy. During a run you will pick up "Dragon Coins" and "Dreamer Coins", which are useless during a run but can be cashed in at your base later for permanent upgrades, much like Gems or Darkness in Hades. The actual upgrades are almost identical to the ones in Hades, although to be fair I think just about any game would have them: extra lives, quicker movement, more damage, higher rarity powers, and so on.

There are also "artifacts", which are like the Keepsakes of Hades: you pick one at the start of your run but can swap it out during the run. You can use them to force-draw certain upgrades (like a "Manhole Cover" that guarantees getting a Water power and boosts the chance of getting better Water powers), or for other upgrades that last during your run (like an increased Dodge chance). Unlike Keepsakes, you unlock Artifacts by defeating specific bosses for the first time or achieving certain other milestones.

As you play through the story, you also unlock some possible developments that will impact the game. The biggest one I've noticed so far is a "care package", which results in hacked Stockman Mousers who will fight on your side instead of against you. Once unlocked, you can use Coins to further upgrade the odds of it happening.

The actual run is, again, a lot like Hades. Instead of Tartarus, Asphodel, Elysium and Styx, you have the zones of Sewers, Docks, Streets and Rooftops (even mirroring the rising elevation). Environmental impacts come into play similarly: you didn't need to worry about lava until you reached Asphodel, and in Splintered Fate, you don't need to worry about rain or lightning until you reach the Docks. You start a zone by getting a Turtle Power, which is basically a Boon. Each chamber you clear gives you a choice of rewards, which could be Scrap (Obols), Pizza (Max Health), Dragon/Dreamer Coins (Gems/Darkness), limited time boosts (Well of Charon), or enhanced Tools (Daedalus Hammer). So that's a bit different from Hades, where you chose the next chamber based on the advertised reward: here there's a single exit from each room but each room has multiple reward choices.

Like Hades, there seems to be a fixed number of chambers in each zone, but the actual map selection and enemies are randomized each time. The first chamber is a freebie that gives you a particular type of upgrade (a Turtle Power / Boon for Sewers, an Inspiration for Docks, etc.). Most chambers are standard encounters with a mix of regular and elite enemies. You'll face a couple of minibosses, which are especially tough and have their own attack patterns and mechanics. There's a shop, with "The Chairman" sitting in for Charon; like Hades, you can spend Scrap along the way on in-run or persistent currency, but if you make it all the way to the last shop and have saved a lot, you can buy some big-ticket items. Each zone ends with the same boss, although they seem to randomly sometimes have a tougher variation.

 

One thing I really like about Splintered Fate is that your Special and Tool are charged up by attacking enemies, and not just on cooldowns. This makes "trash" mobs actually a kind of valuable resource: if you have a few weak unarmored Foot Soldiers or Mousers at the beginning or end of a fight, I'll just wail on them with my standard attack to fully charge my special abilities, then when facing tougher foes, I'll unload on them.

I've pretty exclusively been playing as Donatello for this campaign, other than a short outing as Leonardo when playing the tutorial. As my brother happily reminds me, playing Donatello feels like cheating: he gets free health regen between each level, and his Special also makes him immune to all damage for a short time, so he's way more survivable out of the box than any of the other turtles. What I like best about him, though, may be his Special, which is a spinning bo attack that does AOE inside a decently wide radius. There are a lot of fights where you'll be fighting around a dozen weak Foot Soldiers, who can take a while to take out individually but go down quick if you can cluster them together and spin to win.

I'm finding that my many many hours playing Hades has prepared me pretty well for this game; as my brother noted, Elden Ring probably helps as well. You learn to read enemies' attack patterns, attack when there's an opening, avoid being greedy, be ready to dodge and get out of the area when things look dangerous. In particular, I've taken the mantra of "dash dash dash" from Hades: enemies can't hit you while you're dashing. I've prioritized getting the Dash upgrades, which has helped a lot. During a run I usually try to pick abilities that add more utility to the Dash: there are some that do damage where you start the dash (similar to Ares' Blade Rift), some that do damage where you end the dash (similar to Aphrodite's Passion Dash), and one that throws a shuriken out in front of you (like Demeter's Mistral Dash).

Also somewhat like Hades, you kind of need to decide whether to focus on a particular aspect and pick Powers and Upgrades related to that, or go more broad and get a wider variety of weaker abilities. I've gone both ways, and think it's probably better to focus on one or two main damage sources, but of course it does come down to RNG and what you get offered. It does feel really nice when synergies start kicking in, though. One of my best runs so far had multiple things that could proc Light Shell, which briefly deflects all projectiles, and then multiple abilities that enhanced Light Shell by damaging the enemies.

As of this writing, we've played, hrm, maybe close to a dozen runs. The game feels very well balanced and tuned, with us consistently getting a bit further each time we play. We've made it to what I think is the last boss (and even has a similarly bogus refill-health-bar-once-near-death move), and who knows, we may be able to beat it next time!

 

The game isn't perfect, of course. While the chambers are varied and have great atmosphere (some remind me of Shadowrun Returns levels), there are a few maps where the isometric walls extend into the battlefield, making it impossible to see your turtle and the enemy when you're behind them. The controls are generally good but don't feel quite as fluid at Hades, especially the Dash execution. While we've gotten better, we had a lot of frustration in our first few runs when we would keep mashing buttons at the end of an encounter, accidentally picking the first reward offered without being able to read them. We've had a couple of odd glitches, including one time when the game soft-froze when my turtle died during a boss fight.

None of those have interfered with our enjoyment, though. It's been fun to scratch that action-rogue-lite itch again, and doing so with the Turtles is surprisingly satisfying.