Hand Of Fate 2 Review

Hand of fate 2 is the sequel to 2015’s pretty well received Hand of Fate. Before playing it I took it upon myself to familiarise with the type of game it is, having never played the original and hearing nothing really of the sequel. So… did I love it? Or did I draw a dud? Let’s find out in this Hand Of Fate 2 Review!

Gameplay

Hand of Fate 2 is a mish-mash between an action RPG, a dungeon crawler, and a card-based game. Containing 22 missions, each one is in itself in its own story and challenge. You select a deck of cards and the game plays in the style of Dungeons & Dragons, playing across a table embroiled with tarot like cards. A mysterious figure, known as ‘the dealer’, flips cards along the way to determine your journey, you may end up in a huge battle with a boss, (we’ll get to that part a bit later) or you could find yourself with a myriad of food or gold to help you along your journey. This is the where the dungeon crawling comes into play, each time you move your character across the table onto another card, it consumers resources such as food, run out of food and your health decreases each time you move your player. Die and you go back to the beginning of the mission. I found this to be quite frustrating at times as it is a lot of the time based on luck. That is pretty much the entire premise of the game if you’re lucky you’ll get to your goal with the path of least resistance. Unlucky? Then you’ll meet every enemy ambush along the way and to top up health quickly, means to consume food.

That brings us to the second part of the gameplay, a third person action style combat in the same vein as Mad Max or the brilliant Arkham Series. At first, I found these to be great, quite engaging with an element of strategy by selecting which partner you want in battle with you. After a few hours however it quickly became tedious and repetitive, most scenarios play similar and even the battlefields don’t change that much aside from the background. These scenarios, however, can be crucial, lose too much health early on in the mission and you have a mountain to climb later on, I just didn’t find it very fun. One mission I, in particular, gives you a tiny amount of health and a sort of curse that means you can’t heal normally. I found this to be one of the most frustrating things I’ve played, at least this generation.

Graphics and Sound

I reviewed on the Nintendo Switch and the developer has done a good job on this port; it looks great in handheld mode and I rarely encountered any slowdowns. I can’t speak for other systems but on my behalf, the game looks good, and I have no issues with performance. The sound in battle like the gameplay can become repetitive, from the shout your character lets out when you swing, to the sound the weapons make when they land on an enemy, they’re okay just get repetitive after a few hours.

Verdict

Maybe it just isn’t my sort of game, or maybe I just got really unlucky in some instances, but I found Hand Of Fate 2 to be incredibly repetitive in the combat scenarios, the deck building portion was fine but I’m not a fan of luck based systems which this was leaned on. Some frustrating missions and gameplay features like the resource management ruined the game further for me.