Perhaps that’s all just part of the luck of the cards. That’s not to say that all battles feel this way, but there could certainly be some balancing done to the enemies to at least make them feel manageable. When you consider that in addition to the traps, small battle arenas, and imperfect controls, some fights can feel more like an overwhelming chore than an entertaining distraction from the cards. While a simple fight against bandits is easy enough, getting into a skirmish with six ratmen that repeatedly spew poison and four lizardmen who shoot fire and have shields feels obnoxiously unbalanced. Depending on the combination of enemy cards drawn prior to encounters, and your own gear setup, your game can go south extremely quickly. Square attacks, triangle counters when a green marker appears, and X does a dodge-roll to avoid attacks that can’t be countered. The fighting system is pretty basic and inspired by the Arkham series and other similar titles. The combat system doesn’t quite feel right, and some of my worst losses were not due to the cards, but due to wonky mechanics or glitches that impacted the third-person brawler styled combat. Sadly, Hand of Fate does turn over one less-than-favorable card. Later instances of the game begin adding more elements like curses, blessings, and a slew of additional enemies, encounters, and card unlocks that further make each time sitting down with Hand of Fate vastly unique from the last. This unpredictable nature can completely change the course of this table-bound adventure and both send a great play session to a sudden and terrible death, or grant a renewed vigor to a session that was looking particularly unfavorable. When I came across this same encounter card in a later session, he instead lunged and attacked me because I had an artifact equipped that he wanted. In one scenario I met a beaten man who asked me to go after a group of thieves for him. Even coming upon the same cards yielded random and unpredictable outcomes. The story written in the encounter cards traverses many of them and I found the interconnected story of the cards to be just as intriguing as the story that I was crafting for myself. It may seem like a step backwards, but sometimes not having something fully offered allows you to create exactly what you want it to be for yourself. Imagination is KeyĪll of this is presented to me in text, and yet I get to make my own ravine, my own idea of what tumbling to the bottom looks like, and my own bruised triumph at getting a cool new weapon, all in my imagination. I move back to the top of the ravine and make my way to the next encounter. I slip and tumble down the ravine and have to draw one pain card, but I am also still allowed to draw a weapon card and end up getting a pretty sweet flaming hammer. Do I attempt to shuffle down the ravine to get it, or move on? Well, I don’t have a weapon yet, so as I pick yes, four cards are presented to me. For example, one card presents me with a ravine, and the glint of a weapon at the bottom of it. These D&D style mechanics are incredible and the text adventure that the player takes part in allows imaginations to flow free. You will need to work your way through the game board again with a newly shuffled deck and hope that this hand gives you a better fate than the last. The catch? Fall to zero health before you reach that boss card and your adventure starts over. The goal is to get to the boss card battle and defeat it in order to collect that card, which has the reward of additional card unlocks that you can use in your decks for future sessions. As you move to each new space, that card is turned over and a random encounter takes place. The other is an encounter deck, full of a variety of encounters that may be presented to you on the game board. One is an inventory deck full of things like weapons, armor, and a variety of other items to help you out in your quest. What does your fate have in store for you? Like any good game of Dungeons & Dragons, every new adventure in Hand of Fate feels familiar, yet can radically differ from any of your previous times playing. Shuffling the deck, he lays out a randomly drawn path of cards face down. He is your dungeon master, and it is time to play his game. All you can see are his eyes, full of intent and purposes. A masked man sits waiting for you, cards hovering in the air.
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