Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown Review

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown tells the story of our four favorite heroes in a shell as they need to face a rejuvenated Foot Soldier lead by a new powerful mysterious force following the death of Shredder and the turtles’ mentor, Splinter. Each Turtle is grieving in their own way and each working individually.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown stands out from the typical beat’em up TMNT game as it is a tactical role-playing game, or TRPG for short. So instead of being able to freely roam around the areas and beat up Foot Soldiers freely, you’ll be restrained to move around a limited square grid and pay attention at your number of actions to avoid putting yourself in a bind.

The gameplay allows players to movements around a square grid. You’ll need to reach enemies in order to beat’em up with a selection of diverse types of attacks. Each movement and attacks will consume an action, represented by a ninja star under your health bar. One detail to be mindful of is the level square grid. The map moves around and expands, so you need to move up the area to not fall to your death.

And levels will have traps. For example, in the streets, you also need to stay clear of the oncoming traffic as it does a bit of damage. Each Turtle has their own perks. While Leo is more about power and dodging, Don prefers using traps and debuffs, Mike is about movement and Raphael is all about brute force and being aggressive.

As you beat up enemies, you’ll fill up a support meter which will allow you to call for one of the Turtles to provide support with their unique skill. As you accrue points over time, you’ll be able to purchase new perks and abilities. But it can take so long before you’re able to, you’ve gotten used to the starting skillset, you won’t change. At times, you’ll also be able to pick up pizza to replenish your health.

The game looks great as it has a Saturday morning style cartoon visual; truly faithful to the Nickelodeon take on the long running franchise. There’s also a decent variety of enemies within the Foot Soldier clan. It’s like watching a slow ass episode of the show. On the audio side of things, nothing really noteworthy.

The first problem with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown is that our fast paced heroes doesn’t feel right working within a restrained grid. It feels off and unnatural having fast paced ninjas move at a slow pace. The game can also feel unfair and brutal at times as enemies can surround you really quick and kill you in a single turn. The game also has a steep learning curve. And completing a mission feels more luck based than actual skill.

As a long time fan of TMNT, our heroes in a half shell doesn’t work as a TRPG. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown takes the effciency and typical fast paced action of the turtles and brings it down to a crawl. The learning curve is quite steep and completing a mission feels more like you got lucky than actual gaming skills. Unless you must own everything TMNT related, this is an easy pass.