Okay, so I finished
Hand of Fate's story mode today. Took me numerous tries and semi-frustrating losses, but I eventually got lucky, doubling my max health after reaching 200 of it, giving me a decent pool of it to work with when facing the final boss. But those are details. I'd rather talk about the game more generally.
I really quite like it. It's been a while since the last game I liked. Hand of Fate is a weird mix that, on paper, I didn't expect to work well. I'd say the core of the game is that of a roguelike's. You crawl dungeons in a turn-based manner, there's permadeath, hit points, food, various equipment, (mostly) randomly generated maps, etc...
But then there's also this card game, where the map and the enemies, and the loot, equipment, curses... All of the card types have their own deck. I would have really liked to see this side of the game be expanded on more. Currently there's a rather primitive deck assembler, but only for the map and equipment portions, not the other decks. Oh, and you can unlock new cards by defeating cards that you already have. This is the method of progression that exists between any two games, and I still haven't quite reached the end of it.
I think these two portions of the game work together really well, both in theory and practice. It creates something unique that I haven't quite seen in any other game, and what definitely helps it stand out is the attention to the style of it. All of the aesthetics fit well, and create a sense of immersion. Especially the dealer. I want to gush a bit about the dealer. They could have made the entire game without him and gameplay-wise, nothing would have changed. The dealer doesn't actually have a role in the game as such (aside from being the final boss), but without him, this game wouldn't be even close to as good as it is now. Not only does he have a nearly inexhaustible vault of flavor speech to add to pretty much every card and situation (which are often pretty witty, and oh I could listen to his voice all day long...), but it really makes you feel like you're just a player in the game. That you're not just playing by the rules because you want to enjoy a nice game, but because you have to. I don't know, it's hard to explain, but I'm sure you'd understand when you would actually start to play. The dealer is half the game without adding anything from a gameplay perspective, and it's among the most unexpected things I could've found in a non-story game. He's just that good.
Now, the parts I described are both turn-based, and mostly luck-based. (There's this nifty thing where the "chance" cards are shown to you, then shuffled just slow enough that you can try to track their movement and pick the one you wanted. Your eyes can't always keep up though. They could've just shuffled them fully randomly, but this is another one of those small aesthetic details that, together with others of its kind, help set the game apart from the crowd.) Some would argue that sometimes the luck can be too harsh, and you can lose the game without doing anything wrong at all. While I agree that yes, you can, I also think that it's in the spirit of the game, as the name says: "Hand of Fate".
But the other half of the game, that I don't have five paragraphs to write about, is the skill-based combat portion. Unlike regular roguelikes which tend to leave the combat also turn-and-die-roll-based, Hand of Fate decided to go with action combat. People are saying it's a clone of some Arkham game? I haven't played that, but it reminded me of dumbed-down Shadow of Mordor combat. I can't really say the combat felt bad. It definitely wasn't as good as the other half of the game, but that's not my concern with it. Rather, it felt too different and not much in the spirit of the rest of the game. I can't help but wonder if it would have been better with the combat being in the style of the rest of the game - turn-and-luck-based? Perhaps even a card game against the enemies. I think that would have been fitting. Alas, I guess I'll never know. So yeah, if anything at all, my gripe about the game would be the combat half of it.
But in conclusion, it's a great game that really kept me hooked for the first several hours, and stayed interesting throughout the entire story mode. The attention to detail is amazing and there's plenty of content and depth to it to not get boring for quite a while. It's not like any other game out there that I'd know of, so if you're looking for something original, but also of good quality, I'd definitely recommend trying this.
PS. I'm currently 3 hours into my first endless mode game. It progressively gets harder as the levels go on, and you can't make your own deck. Instead all the available cards are in the deck, and they can repeat throughout the game. Unlike the well-balanced story mode, endless seems a little too easy. I'm currently stuffed with equipment (rings stack basically forever, or at least as much as there are different kinds of them), loaded with gold, maxed on hit points, pretty much maxed on gear, also have a bunch of blessings... The game just throws increasing quantities of enemies at me with increasing quantities of hp and damage, while I've kind of stopped scaling. Sure, they'll eventually overwhelm me with sheer numbers, but even now it's crossed the line into tedium as I spend far too long fighting.
Apparently Hand of Fate 2 is in development, and not too far off from release anymore. They've kept the sweet dealer, and I hear the combat's gotten better. Am definitely looking forward to it.
