Splintered
Another poison swamp? Thanks, Miyazaki.
Splintered is a game that, honestly, won’t make a whole lot of sense to you if you aren’t already familiar with a particular sub-set of a small niche of hardcore gaming. Specifically, the Dragon Quest 1 [released as Dragon Warrior in the US] randomizer – a mod that shuffles the primordial NES JRPG into an occasionally oppressive roguelike format.
Splintered actually starts out as a standard, somewhat simple, non-randomized JRPG. You have a single hero character, you explore the tile-based overworld to find dungeons, caves, tunnels, and towns, unlock new spells and increasing stats as you level up, and save up for new equipment while gradually becoming strong enough to challenge new foes and expand your horizons. It’s even formatted very closely to the formula of DQ1 in particular – there are multiple landmasses, a large patch of poisonous swamp, a key item hidden on the overworld that you need coordinates to find, a ruined town with a miniboss fight, and on and on. Really, the only memorable hallmark of DQ1 that isn’t represented is a princess you can rescue and carry around for the rest of the game. More’s the pity.
Even at this stage, it makes some welcome additions. Each enemy type, and each of its recolors, grant you a little bonus XP the first time you take one down, and check it off of your bestiary. If you hunt a complete ‘set’ of enemies, you also unlock a new Talent, an equippable, freely swappable perk, with a starting limit of two enabled at a time. More substantial is the change to equipment – every weapon, armor, and accessory is not just a straightforward numeric bonus, but a totally unique piece that can significantly alter your playstyle. Each starts with a single, major perk permanently enabled when you have it equipped, and then gains more as the item itself gains XP alongside your character while used. One shield, for example, eventually gains the ability to reflect some damage back to enemies that strike you in melee, which happens to trivialize the metal slime stand-ins by bypassing their astronomical defense.
But once you finish the first chapter, the world gets shuffled for the next, and the real game begins. The second chapter merely randomizes the overworld and item placements, but the towns, dungeons, and item locations to check remain the same. It’s very close to the DQ1 randomizer at this point, with you exploring an overworld where an endgame enemy can jump out at any step, marking off chests until you find the items required to reach the final boss, and then ensuring you have the health and strength to get the job done. A lot of the same tricks come into play too – if you find an easily accessible chest with a lot of money in it, you can just leave and come back to respawn it, gradually grinding up huge piles of cash. If you memorize the layout of a pitch-black dungeon, you can technically navigate it without needing torches or light spells.
The third chapter [both parts of it] then ramp things up even more by adding totally new sets of equipment, aligning with different build archetypes and introducing new mechanics, before the final chapters randomize even the perks attached to your gear, making some pieces insanely overpowered, others pretty much useless, and many more of dubious or situational worth. In every chapter, your only goal is to find the three key items and overworld location required to reveal the entrance to the final dungeon, and then get to the end of it and kill the Dragon Queen Dreska.
As you complete chapters, you also have the chance to challenge an increasing number of Trials, special randomizer runs with unique mechanics. All of these are pretty interesting, like the Trial of Clairvoyance, which actually tells you each turn what the enemy’s next move will be, how much damage you’ll do with attacks, and whether your spells will land. That specific trial is counterweighted with a pretty significant increase in damage incurred, meaning it genuinely requires a bit more strategy [or extra grinding] in spite of your foreknowledge. Each Trial you complete unlocks its effects as toggleable in the generic Randomizer settings for a custom run of your own design – you can have Chapter 3b era equipment, spells unlocked by finding new towns, and bosses that have multiple dangerous traits augmenting their powers. Or, you could opt for a mix of equipment from all ages, but only obtainable by slaying the enemy type holding them. You can even generate and use a seed manually, of course, allowing for multiple people to attempt the same world.
It’s the little things that make Splintered a pleasure rather than a slog to go through so many times to unlock everything. Torches can be thrown in combat to deal flat damage, which is often enough early on to score some kills on out-of-depth enemies and slingshot your way up the power curve. Finding a particular NPC gives you an alternate view for the overworld map, showing you the enemy spawns in each region [once you’ve seen them] and letting you avoid danger zones, or target farm an enemy for a desired talent. Many of the minibosses have unique mechanics, like one that gets weaker the more you defeat random encounters in its lair, while another grows more powerful the more key items you find before challenging him. Even the handful of truly obnoxious generations I got, with ambushing enemies also having dragon breath, or half the towns reachable only through a single-wide poison path thirty paces long, were still snappy enough that I never felt like just giving up or rerolling a new seed.
Now, if this all sounds a little intimidating, don’t worry too much. The game has a number of small quality of life features to relieve you of too much confusion and headache. There is a help option that will tell you outright how many item checks you have left to complete, and which locations you have not yet fully cleared, so once you memorize each item check location, it’s pretty easy to go clean up the ones remaining even if you miss them initially. There is a bestiary on the main menu which tells you the base stats of each enemy type, and the game shows in the battle screen if you’ve already hunted an enemy type on the current run. Even with the most brutal spawns, the game secretly reserves the first area around your starting location to only have the lowest level enemies, meaning you’re unlikely to get stuck there for long if you’re diligent. And finally, most runs only really take about an hour or so, so even if you do get completely stuck or hate the equipment you have or just set it down and forget what you’ve already done, it’s not a huge deal to simply reroll a seed and try again from the start. Who knows, maybe you’ll get an Invisible Blade as your starting gift this time.
Splintered is the one thing better than a heartfelt homage to a niche hobby – it’s a marked improvement in virtually every conceivable way, with plenty of thought and creativity going into ramping up the complexity without also adding a ton of bloat, and shaking things up just enough with the various settings to give you a reason to take another spin. Even if you’ve never thought for a moment about trying a randomizer, much less a highly specific one, I think it holds up as an excellent introduction to and exercise for learning the ropes of such a challenge, and is worth picking up if you have the early JRPG itch.
Splintered can be purchased on Steam.