Hand of Fate

Hand of Fate works as well as you'd expect a hybrid of card games, roguelikes and action RPGs would; while roguelikes are often a challenge on their own, combining them with card games can sometimes mean a double whammy with respect to adverse random outcomes. This is especially apparent on the final level of the game which I've given up on ever trying to complete. However, the game does have its moments and with its splendid graphics, professional voice acting and a top-class soundtrack, there's a lot to recommend, provided you're ready for a challenge.

... clunky and wildly inaccurate combat mechanics. For the record, I own this game not through GOG, but as an XBOX Live Free download, so my gameplay is limited to that platform. As many others have noted, the innovative out-of-combat play style and game design is simply beautiful and remarkably well-crafted. A very wide range of variables can happen throughout any particular run to your fate... until combat happens. Again, as others have opined - the makers of the game apparently used up every last brain cell developing the other game mechanics and allowed the combat mapping and execution to be pushed through by the 6-year old, slightly retarded little brother of the unpaid intern. Range and perspective in combat are highly imprecise, combat effect animations either lock you out of doing anything else until they are complete (but they're required to use in some of the bigger cluster(freak) fights) or simply fail to go off, leaving you standing there pushing the buttons and getting naught but enemy weapons rammed into your various bodily orifices. This game could be a 4 or 5 if it had some manner of auto-combat which weighed your weapon/armor/shield choices versus the incoming enemy and allowed for an X% chance of victory.

Hi guys ! This game is magnificent because to me, it succeeded to mix a card game with a solid storyline. There are choices and consequences of our action so I love it. Especially when we are set a journey with cards with earned from the previous one so we can be strategic like the fate master haha. Fate, journey with good and bad fortunes for adventurers, go for it. Nysna Take care

Some interesting ideas in this, some poorly implemented ones too (seriously, QTE on the final boss?), sometimes the game seems quite unfair and too luck-based, some parts of the texts (mostly nicely written) aren't translated, combat is subpar bordering on annoying, the devs' behavior towards some of their clients is questionnable, but all in all, a decent little game. The Dealer's voicing is nice although he gets on your nerves sometimes, but I guess that's a feature. Some nice fourth wall breaking too.

First of all i'd like to actually call this game a roguelike rather than roguelite since endless mode is... pretty much that. You have your hero an unexplored "dungeon" made out of cards some gear and a limited number of food with your goal baing finding the next flight of stairs repeating untill you die. Death however is not a scenario where you lose everything since during your travels in either story or endless mode you might encounter cards with a token tied to them. By performing a certain action you can aquire said token which in turn transforms into more cards for your deck after you die or kill the boss in story mode. Basically almost every expedition ends up giving you extra cards to encounter in later games... and not all of them are good cards. All in all the card part of the game is a giant boon for eventual future development or DLC since adding new cards should be a relatively simple (and hopefully cheap) affair. The combat itself is... ok considering it was made with a gamepads lack of precision in mind so the character often jumps around in order to hit (especially noticable when attacking after a roll) but its generally responsive enough (you can cancel attack animations by rolling) and the times i fell into a trap when rolling were more due to me misjudging the distance my character rolls or not spotting the trap in the first place. My only real gripe is the camera on some (large) arenas not allowing you to see some enemies. This is fortunately somewhat remedied by on screen indicators that show you attacking enemies giving you enough time to roll or counter. All in all i think the game is one of the better recent releases and something to at least check out if you'd like to see how a merge of CCG, Roguelike and Arkham combat plays out.