Available on: PC, PlayStation 5, Switch, Xbox Series X/S
Played on: PlayStation 5
I’ve officially reached the age where I no longer recognize most of the Nickelodeon cartoons and characters. But my kids definitely do! Nicktoons & The Dice of Destiny brings together over half a dozen Nickelodeon characters for a surprisingly deep, co-op action-RPG that borrows as much from Diablo as it does SpongeBob.
Read on for our co-op review of Nicktoons & The Dice of Destiny!
The Gang’s All Here
The story kicks off when Timmy from The Fairly Oddparents is playing a Dungeons & Dragons-like fantasy RPG. When the game ends, he wishes the game were real. His wish goes dangerously awry, as he, Cosmo, and Wanda are transported into a fantastical realm alongside other Nickelodeon characters such as Katara from Avatar: The Last Airbender, and SpongeBob and Sandy from SpongeBob SquarePants.
Taking a cue from Marvel’s What If and other multiverse-twisting shenanigans, each of the heroes are transformed into a different D&D-like fantasy class, each with their own abilities and playstyle. Timmy becomes a wizard with elemental magic powered by his faries. SpongeBob is an armored knight, and Katara a sorceress wielding ice powers. Five heroes are available from the start, with the remaining four unlocking throughout the campaign.
Our heroes are fully aware of the situation they’re in, and must gather all the magical die used to play the game before they can revert the wish. That means exploring a linear series of levels across different worlds, leveling up, equipping new loot, and defeating bosses.
The writing and voice acting is an absolute delight. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised by how often my kids wanted to check in on each character at the little hub town in between levels.
Most of the characters sound spot-on (according to my kids) and feature the original voice actors. The banter between characters is cute and funny without being annoying, and the story features a parade of fun cameos and villains from our heroes’ cartoons, such as Sokka as a potions vendor, Plankton as a boss battle, and the other Ninja Turtles as helpful quest-giving NPCs.
I wish the hub town known as the Tangle were a bit more interactive, however. The Skylanders series always had fun hub areas with arenas to battle in and collectibles to check, but the Tangle is a mostly barren area of shop NPCs and a few wooden dummies to practice abilities.
Critical Hit
Each character has six abilities that are gradually unlocked as they level up, including an ultimate ability on a longer cooldown, but only four slots to equip them in. Players are free to choose which abilities they want to use. Since each ability works on a scaling percentage, keeping up with the randomized gear drops is important.
My favorite characters ended up being Sandy, Suzie, and Leonardo. Sandy Cheeks (from SpongeBob) is straight-up the classic Diablo Barbarian, with a leap attack, lasso, and whirlwind move that she can hold down until she runs out of energy. Plus, she has a fun ultimate where she gets big and monstrous.
Suzie (from Rugrats) is a long-range spellcaster with some really helpful abilities, like sending cute dogs to knock back enemies, slow them down by scattering toy bricks, and protecting herself with, er, flying narwhals.
And Leonardo is a ninja turtle — what’s not to like?
Players can upgrade their gear and buy basic weapons, which becomes important when switching to new characters. Players can only swap between characters between missions at the hub town, a feature I was mildly disappointed in, then increasingly annoyed by, as weapon drops are always tied to the current characters. Thankfully, experience is shared, and armor and trinkets can be worn by anyone.
The characters are a fun and varied mix, from Jimmy Neutron’s focus on turrets to Danny Phantom’s more complex synergy of invisibility and critical hits.
Though it’s rated E10+, younger gamers can easily succeed with most of the characters thanks to some fairly powerful basic attacks they can mash over and over (or alternatively, use the right stick). Timmy’s auto-targeting basic attack is especially newbie friendly.
Each level can be played in three different difficulties, which sets the enemies at different levels. The game is fairly easy, and we always played on the highest difficulty. The exception are the epic boss battles, which can be legitimately lengthy and humbling!
The game’s biggest weakness is level design, and enemy variety. While I love how the 2D characters look in the isometric worlds, the levels appear incredibly plain and flat. There’s not a lot of detail, yet it’s annoyingly easy to get stuck on random objects in the environment — which is doubly frustrating for kids. I also wasn’t a fan of battling mostly the same enemies in each world. And while there are a few traps, the only puzzles consisted of simple levers and doors.
Plus, there’s a super weird design choice where the boss levels are completely empty and devoid of enemies, with a boss room at the end. Why not include enemies, or just spawn us directly in the boss room? The first time I ran through an empty boss level, I thought it was a bug!
The Rating
Nicktoons & The Dice of Destiny is rated E10+ with Fantasy Violence. Nicktoons is a hack and slash RPG that’s all about mowing through monstrous enemies with melee weapons, elemental spells, laser swords, and more.
Provided they’re okay with cartoon violence, the Under 10 crowd can easily play along thanks to simple controls and variable difficulty. My 5 year-old had no problems. See our full Game Picker entry for more details.
The Takeaway
Despite the middling level design, my kids and I had a lot fun with Nicktoons & The Dice of Destiny. The Nickelodeon IPs are very well utilized, and I can tell a lot of care and research went into making sure each character looked, sounded, and acted like they should. The hack and slash gameplay is smooth and enjoyable, and the 2D art style and animations shows off the characters in the best possible ways.
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