Hand of Fate!
The description of this game sounded so appealing, I decided to pick it up right after it came off Early Access. I might have bought the Early Access if I had come across it. (Not sure how, with having reviewed hundreds of games on the recommend daily list they set up on Steam last year, that this game failed to make one of those lists.)
Anyway. The concept of this game is a multi-genre mesh of board game, deck building card game, and small-scale action combat game. You have seven slots for equipment: weapon and shield, helm and glove, ring and artifact, and armor. You can also have an unlimited number of blessings and curses, food and gold. Opponents come in four suits: bandits, skeletons, ratmen and lizardmen. There are some special opponents of additional suits as well, but these have no bosses.
Combat is done in real time, third person, but with some simplifications that make it pretty easy to manage. Most of the opponent cards come in amounts of 2, 3, 4, or 6. 8 is possible in the late game. This means a pack of that number of opponents of that enemy type, and some encounters involve drawing more than one opponent card. There are also bosses, the Jacks, Queens and Kings of each suit. You must defeat each boss in turn, in Story Mode, to complete your deck. There are also encounter cards that award new cards, if you succeed completely during the encounter. The two types of card awards are independent. That is, you can earn new cards from encounters even if you "die" and lose the game without taking down the boss; while the boss can often be overcome by skipping many encounters rather than trying to "full clear" the board. Especially egregious is the fact that defeated bosses become part of the dealer's deck, meaning that you may encounter several of them on the way to your "current" higher level boss late in story mode. That fact, of sometimes having to beat many bosses to win, ramps the difficulty factor up quite a lot as you progress.
The story mode has four "tiers", each of which changes the nature of the game upon completion. Your starting equipment will improve after each tier, but the opponents get permanent buffs too. You can shape part of the game by expanding your deck and unlocking new cards, then choosing your portion of the game's encounter cards from your deck. Some cards are generally beneficial. Some are highly beneficial if you can beat their combat-based (skill-based) challenges. Others require you to make RP decisions, or to "roll the dice" by picking one of four "luck" cards, which have four success levels: Huge Success, Success, Failure, and Huge Failure. Some events require you to face very steep odds (get lucky, or do the event over and over many many times) to win through, and some events require high amounts of gold or health to be on hand to beat them, but most are more straightforward. New gear cards come available as well, unlocking more powerful options as you progress, with which to try to balance out the more powerful opponents you encounter both in new encounter cards and from tier buffs.
The key to this game is the combat. You must have the dexterity to beat the action combats, and enjoy this gameplay, or this title is not for you. There is also a strong amount of strategizing, including sometimes playing to beat tough encounters at the cost of trying for the main boss, or the opposite, concentrating on reaching the main boss intact at the cost of doing your best to minimize risks from encounters. Each boss in story mode also comes with their own built-in "curses", which greatly vary the flavor of that particular subsection of the game. You can change your deck each time you start a "game", and each attempt to kill one of the twelve main bosses represents one instance of the game, except your deck additions are permanent.
This game enjoys a healthy amount of simplicity, good voice acting from the dealer, combat that I find fun, and enough strategy in the board game part and the wide selection of cards involved in the game actually to impress me. This title is well designed and apparently got plenty of iteration and effective polish from its Early Access run.
There is an endless mode, which unlocks partway through Story Mode, for added replay value. This game also has high "variant scum" potential, since you could angle your deck for whatever theme you like, not necessarily for making the game as easy to complete as possible. Your tolerance for variants may depend on how easy or difficult you find the combat.
The combat is designed for a controller, but they are said to have worked on the keyboard and mouse controls heavily during Early Access and have improved them to the point where they are nearly as good as having a controller. I am playing with KB and mouse and doing fine, although I could see where a controller might make some fights (multiple bosses, with weak health or equipment) doable with the controller where they might be too long on the odds for the KB and mouse. I wouldn't let the controller thing scare you off this game, at all, if the sound of the gameplay appeals to you. Some users have described the combat as resembling that in the recent Batman Arkham series, for those of you who may have played some of those.
I like this game enough to feel compelled to come and recommend it. For those of you who try it because of my post, and like it, you are welcome.
- Sirian
The description of this game sounded so appealing, I decided to pick it up right after it came off Early Access. I might have bought the Early Access if I had come across it. (Not sure how, with having reviewed hundreds of games on the recommend daily list they set up on Steam last year, that this game failed to make one of those lists.)
Anyway. The concept of this game is a multi-genre mesh of board game, deck building card game, and small-scale action combat game. You have seven slots for equipment: weapon and shield, helm and glove, ring and artifact, and armor. You can also have an unlimited number of blessings and curses, food and gold. Opponents come in four suits: bandits, skeletons, ratmen and lizardmen. There are some special opponents of additional suits as well, but these have no bosses.
Combat is done in real time, third person, but with some simplifications that make it pretty easy to manage. Most of the opponent cards come in amounts of 2, 3, 4, or 6. 8 is possible in the late game. This means a pack of that number of opponents of that enemy type, and some encounters involve drawing more than one opponent card. There are also bosses, the Jacks, Queens and Kings of each suit. You must defeat each boss in turn, in Story Mode, to complete your deck. There are also encounter cards that award new cards, if you succeed completely during the encounter. The two types of card awards are independent. That is, you can earn new cards from encounters even if you "die" and lose the game without taking down the boss; while the boss can often be overcome by skipping many encounters rather than trying to "full clear" the board. Especially egregious is the fact that defeated bosses become part of the dealer's deck, meaning that you may encounter several of them on the way to your "current" higher level boss late in story mode. That fact, of sometimes having to beat many bosses to win, ramps the difficulty factor up quite a lot as you progress.
The story mode has four "tiers", each of which changes the nature of the game upon completion. Your starting equipment will improve after each tier, but the opponents get permanent buffs too. You can shape part of the game by expanding your deck and unlocking new cards, then choosing your portion of the game's encounter cards from your deck. Some cards are generally beneficial. Some are highly beneficial if you can beat their combat-based (skill-based) challenges. Others require you to make RP decisions, or to "roll the dice" by picking one of four "luck" cards, which have four success levels: Huge Success, Success, Failure, and Huge Failure. Some events require you to face very steep odds (get lucky, or do the event over and over many many times) to win through, and some events require high amounts of gold or health to be on hand to beat them, but most are more straightforward. New gear cards come available as well, unlocking more powerful options as you progress, with which to try to balance out the more powerful opponents you encounter both in new encounter cards and from tier buffs.
The key to this game is the combat. You must have the dexterity to beat the action combats, and enjoy this gameplay, or this title is not for you. There is also a strong amount of strategizing, including sometimes playing to beat tough encounters at the cost of trying for the main boss, or the opposite, concentrating on reaching the main boss intact at the cost of doing your best to minimize risks from encounters. Each boss in story mode also comes with their own built-in "curses", which greatly vary the flavor of that particular subsection of the game. You can change your deck each time you start a "game", and each attempt to kill one of the twelve main bosses represents one instance of the game, except your deck additions are permanent.
This game enjoys a healthy amount of simplicity, good voice acting from the dealer, combat that I find fun, and enough strategy in the board game part and the wide selection of cards involved in the game actually to impress me. This title is well designed and apparently got plenty of iteration and effective polish from its Early Access run.
There is an endless mode, which unlocks partway through Story Mode, for added replay value. This game also has high "variant scum" potential, since you could angle your deck for whatever theme you like, not necessarily for making the game as easy to complete as possible. Your tolerance for variants may depend on how easy or difficult you find the combat.
The combat is designed for a controller, but they are said to have worked on the keyboard and mouse controls heavily during Early Access and have improved them to the point where they are nearly as good as having a controller. I am playing with KB and mouse and doing fine, although I could see where a controller might make some fights (multiple bosses, with weak health or equipment) doable with the controller where they might be too long on the odds for the KB and mouse. I wouldn't let the controller thing scare you off this game, at all, if the sound of the gameplay appeals to you. Some users have described the combat as resembling that in the recent Batman Arkham series, for those of you who may have played some of those.
I like this game enough to feel compelled to come and recommend it. For those of you who try it because of my post, and like it, you are welcome.
- Sirian
Fortune favors the bold.
(Think Sullla and Rogue Legacy.) But if I get even a quarter the fun from Hand of Fate that I did from Rogue Legacy, it will be an outstanding purchase. So far it is very promising.