Though deck-building games are seeing some popularity growth thanks to Hearthstone, for some players the pleasure of a well-made deck just isn't enough. Hand of Fate Game Turns Cards Into Actual Weapons

Though it stumbles a bit through genre trappings and occasionally clunky combat, overall Hand of Fate is an excellent genre-bending game with a high degree of challenge and replayability and lots to explore beyond the game's initial premise. Labeling the Hand of Fate game with any one of these genres would be to do it a disservice, as it spices up the low points of each genre with aspects from the others, making it a game that is unique to itself. Thankfully, that's not true of Defiant Development's Hand of Fate game, a nearly seamless blend of roguelike ideals, deck-building elements, hack-and-slash RPG gameplay, and the randomness and storytelling aspects of tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons. The 'Hand of Fate' game from Defiant Development blends roguelike, deck-building, hack-and-slash, and tabletop elements for an extraordinarily unique journey.īlending genres doesn't always work out in a game's favor. Dae Jim played the first Hand of Fate for 9 hours and Hand of Fate 2 for 11 hours.Hand of Fate supports the weak points of several game genres with the strengths of others. Played on: Xbox One X | LifeisXbox received a digital review code, provided by Stride PR. It is a brilliant deck-building action game that truly is one-of-a-kind on Xbox. Developer Defiant brought us a more complex and polished Hand of Fate that improves each and every aspect. Every game has these issues but Hand of Fate 2 has it quite a lot. Enemies going through environments, falling through rocks or wooden crates, it doesn’t really destroy the gameplay but it hurts the immersion and overall visual look. One thing that annoyed me a lot was the constant visual clipping errors.It’s something you slightly control while building your deck but you will have to live with the fact that not everything is in your control. Sometimes dying is out of your control because the cards are just out to get you. More than halfway through a mission or even more? Die and you will have to redo everything. Bad luck? Remains bad luck… it can be really frustrating to have bad luck in Hand of Fate.Hand of Fate 2 has more enemy variation and weapons so it surely spices up the replay value. Fighting enemies continues to be a dodge and attack approach while building your combo meter to do a more powerful attack. I am glad with the improvements, especially the companions are a welcome new feature. A big flaw from the first Hand of Fate was the basic combat system, it has been improved, the dealer has promised that, so it’s true! Sadly enough it remains a little too basic though.Developer Defiant clearly put more time and love in creating a much more believable and consistent Variation is key and the game uses many different environment to keep things fresh. Visually the game looks very atmospheric, you immediately know ‘this is Hand of Fate” something that many games miss: personality.The mini-card-stories that randomly pop up in the path are surprisingly interesting and provide some great text-based adventures. (Not mandatory) You can choose how far you want to go with the story from Hand of Fate 2, if you just want to play the game without having to read or hear dialogue than that’s totally possible too. You have around 20 missions that keep giving you story elements, it is also really fun getting to know your companions. Story has a lot more meaning in Hand of Fate 2 with a more connected campaign.

All the small and big choices you make will have consequences in short and long play sessions, giving lots of replay value too. The mechanic of risk and reward is pretty unique, even for the deck-building genre. The fact that you don’t know what card will be coming next provides some luck-based but addictive gameplay. Narrative and mechanics have been greatly improved and now feature even more differences.

The basic gameplay remains the same and is the strong point from developer Defiant’s game.

Our dealer pulled out the review card so let’s take a look at my impression about this card building action game. The dealer from Hand of Fate 2 starts with a bold statement “Each element of the game has been improved.” This talkative character isn’t lying. I was a fan from the first game in 2015, it had a few flaws but it was different and addictive.

Hand of fate game