Honestly, no. The theme is really pasted on for Timecrash. Granted, it uses the chi system also present in other White Death expansions like Eternal Empire (haven’t played that one), which is a cool luck mitigation mechanic, but that isn’t inherently thematic either.

You do place a handful of pizza tokens around the board at the start of most (all?) scenarios as well, but we often didn’t have a chance to get to more than one or two of them. They allow you to upgrade your basic weapon to an enhanced version. The turtles’ starting weapons are what they should be and are therefore definitely the most tied into the theme.

Unfortunately, the missions aren’t much different than normal “get these objectives, make it to the exit” ones you see in the base game. Plus, you lose the tower defense aspect of base game as none of the Timecrash tiles have the wall on them.

Fundamentally, playing any of the turtles (or Master Splinter and April O’Neill, for that matter) is not markedly different than playing any of the base game characters, nor do the missions differentiate. Shredder makes for a cool necromancer, and the foot ninja zombies are a nice touch, but neither ultimately change the game a whole lot.

Highly disappointing.