Hand of Fate 2 | Xbox One | Review

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Filled with the genre-blending goodness that propelled the original to cult classic status, Hand of Fate 2 is equal parts dungeon crawling RPG, collectable card game, board game, and interactive Choose Your Own Adventure novel. You sit opposite the enigmatic Dealer, who, fittingly, lays bare your fate with his hand of tarot cards.

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by Sam Sant

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@SlamShotSam

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Developer: Defiant
Development
Publisher: Defiant
​Development
​Platforms: Xbox One,
PS4, PC
​Players: 1

As mystery cards from a deck of your design are dealt face-down onto the tabletop, you move a player token between them, revealing and tackling the unique tasks they each pose in the process. You do so with the aim of reaching and besting a culminating boss encounter, 22 of which place the exclamation points on the self-contained stories that comprise Hand of Fate 2’s larger narrative.

Intentionally light on that front, the game opts simply to pose a variety of scenarios and leave you to carve your own path through them, which, coupled with some evocative penmanship (despite the final script needing another proofread), makes each campaign engaging and memorable in its own right.

Rewinding just a tad, there’s plenty to consider before you set foot on an adventure. Though you can automatically generate your deck, consisting of companion, encounter, equipment and supply cards (all fairly self-explanatory), taking the time to craft a considered deck befitting the challenge at hand pays dividends. After the five introductory challenges things very quickly get quite difficult, so you'll want to devote a good chunk of time to pre-production, lest you live to regret it an hour later when you die and get sent right back there.
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You don’t get to choose every card on the board however, injecting an element of unpredictability and preventing players giving themselves the same cushy set-up ad nauseum. That tactic isn’t too valuable anyway, as implementing new cards into your deck and meeting them in the wild is the only way to discover their attributes, good or bad, and gain access to their ‘sequels’. The inherent risk is most definitely worth taking in order to gain access to - and glean vital information from - cards that are necessary to building the perfect deck for any given situation.

Cards in hand, you’ll soon encounter the game’s suite of luck-based mini-games that serve as traditional skill checks. The odds can be tipped in your favour, provided you’ve brought the right loadout, but if you’re averse to random chance playing any part in your success or failure, consider this a warning.

The game poses a variety of scenarios and leaves you to carve your own path through them, which, coupled with some evocative penmanship, makes each campaign engaging and memorable in its own right.

With freedom of approach often comes the ability to avoid them, though in dodging potential disaster you also decline potential boons. Valuable rewards include food, fame, gold and equipment, all of which can individually be integral to your continued survival.

Any weapons and armour you might gather are put to use in the game’s basic combat sections, which jarringly pull you out of your cosy sit-down with the Dealer into stripped-back, Batman Arkham-style brawls. A range of enemy types are each susceptible to different weapon classes, adding some variety that helps to invigorate things, but HUD elements that telegraph when it’s time to dodge or counter mostly make battles a breeze. Being heavily outnumbered is the one scenario you can’t approach as par for the course, as being flanked and surrounded proves intense when you consider that health is persistent and taking damage can carry very real, far-reaching consequences.

Naturally, that makes eating an axe to the mush as a result of a distracting performance dip all the more annoying. Even on Xbox One X with the settings switched from default to favour performance over resolution, Hand of Fate 2 doesn’t always run smoothly, which is somewhat baffling considering the game’s small environments and nothing-to-write-home-about visuals.

Though Hand of Fate 2 doesn’t do a huge amount in the way of innovating over its predecessor, Defiant Development have refined its winning formula, which is hard to take issue with. The game combines numerous complex systems into a cohesive and accessible whole that could well serve as a gateway into real-world tabletop gaming for many. Its tough choices prompt pause for thought and weave memorable stories that are compelling enough to keep you ploughing through, while also being self-contained and convenient to dip in and out of on a whim.

Pros

• Cohesively melds a range of genres
• Create your own stories, made memorable by the game withholding a level of control
• Scenarios feel significantly different from one another
• In-depth deck building
• Lots of game here for your money

Cons

• Derivative, tepid combat generally isn’t worth pulling you out of the engaging tabletop experience
• Quite possible to lose a lot of progress to dumb luck
• Distracting performance issues, even on Xbox One X

8/10