Nicktoons & the Dice of Destiny - Switch Review
"May not have rolled a Nat 1 but its proficiency score wasn’t high enough to pass the Difficulty Check."
Game Mill is back with yet another Nickelodeon tie-in game; this time they’ve given us a Diablo-style ARPG in Nicktoons & The Dice Of Destiny, a very unexpected combination indeed. After one of Timmy Turner’s wishes goes wrong during a tabletop gaming session, Timmy gets sent to a fantasy world of swords and sorcery… and other Nickelodeon characters are there too, I guess; the game doesn’t really explain it. It is now up to Timmy and various other Nicktoons characters to find Timmy’s now magic-infused dice set and return everyone back to their own worlds.
The Good
Nicktoons & the Dice of Destiny does a decent job tying together the vibes and aesthetics of many different Nickelodeon shows and wrapping it up in a neat fantasy bow. Every character you come across on your adventures is some form of fantasy archetype, whether it be for laughs, like Carl Wheezer being a barbarian, or something more fitting, like Plankton being an evil warlock or Azula being…herself, I guess (if we’re talking in D&D terms here, then Azula is already a Way of the Four Elements monk in her own show). It's really easy to explore this admittedly strange mashup of concepts and ideas, see something new and think to yourself, “You know what, that actually makes sense”.
Nicktoons & the Dice of Destiny is a perfect couch co-op game. Starting off with five playable characters, with a full total of nine as you progress through the game and four-player local co-op can lead to some hectic sessions with friends. Each playable character feels unique with six interchangeable skills and can fit different roles with your group. If you’re not enjoying the character you picked, then you can just swap them out for free in town, making this game very easy to pick up and play right from the start.
TL;DR
- The setting is very well realised
- Four-player couch co-op
- Various playstyles
The Bad
Being an ARPG, Nicktoons & the Dice of Destiny does have a lot of equipable gear that you will find in the world as drops when defeating enemies. This is nothing new to the genre but this game is clearly targeted towards a younger audience and I feel like constantly rummaging through your inventory looking for gear with better stats or higher levels could be a bit daunting for younger players.
Speaking of the gear, I personally felt like anything I found out in the world was vastly inferior to gear I could just buy in town and the game hands out money like crazy so you’re never really strapped for cash. This really left me feeling like the main incentive for playing a game in the ARPG genre was more of an afterthought here and made progressing through the game feel like a chore.
What exemplified that feeling were the actual levels themselves. A lot of the levels can be really long with very little difficulty and constant reused sceneries and assets, causing the game to feel like a slog to play through. I played every level on the hardest difficulty only to breeze through it no problem, which could either be because the game is intended for younger players or because Timmy Turner is an absolutely busted character; his basic attack is a chain lightning that rapidly cycles through three separate elements, which is an endgame character skill in any other ARPG. This led to another problem: whenever I’d unlock a new character, I’d want to check them out, but all of my good gear was on Timmy, so I’d have to manually unequip everything before I changed characters only to play a level and realise that the new character wasn’t as good as Timmy.
TL;DR
- Gearing may be a bit too complicated for the intended audience
- Farming for gear felt pointless
- Levels are long and samey
- Difficulty is non-existent
- Timmy Turner is overpowered
Final Score: 5/10
I won’t lie, when Nicktoons & the Dice of Destiny was first announced, I didn’t expect much from it. While there are things here I think were done well, ultimately the game falls flat and is pretty unremarkable. Nicktoons & the Dice of Destiny may not have rolled a Nat 1 but its proficiency score wasn’t high enough to pass the Difficulty Check. That may be the nerdiest thing I’ve ever written…
Thank you for checking out our Nicktoons & the Dice of Destiny Switch review, thank you to Game Mill (via Five Star Games) for providing the review code and thank you to our Patreon Backers for their ongoing support:
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