Fate Hunters

I had my first five or so runs now, so this is more of a first impression. Bit that impression is pretty good so far. It's a single player deck building game. Think a little 'Hearthstone' meets 'Slay the Spire' with a hint of 'Darkest Dungeon' mixed in. The Balancing doesn't feel ideal, yet. Or it's just a little more unforgiving then expected, which isn't a bad thing. What I don't liked at first were the unlock mechanics. It plays like a dungeon crawler where you, if you escape with your loot, get some gold. Getting enough gold for card or character unlocks seemed like a godforsaken grindfest at first. But after five or so deaths I got the hang of it and played through to the end, with enough loot to unlock one of the expensive characters and a card or two. That's promising. It still feels like I merely scathed the surface, though. The characters seem to be quite different, too. For 10 bucks, the game seems like a mighty fine purchase.

On the face of it, Fate Hunters has some pretty interesting new takes on the whole card play roguelike genre. Loot clogging your inventory doesn't strictly make sense, but it does add a certain risk/reward framework to your adventure. A lack of block past a single hit shield keeps fights from dragging. Customizing your starting loadout promises some more interesting runs than Slay the Spire's opening 'blessing'. Unfortunately, it boils down to a rather bland experience. The loot does get in the way, but fights can still drag depending on the cards you've found - an inquisitor who lacks decent punch but makes up for it with healing magic, for example. The customizable loadout doesn't really live up to its promise since half your cards are skills that can't be edited. And the cards are, by and large, extremely similar. You can punch for one damage, use a knife for two with a 25% chance of double damage, this relic sword that's worth five gold if you get it out deals one to two, that mace is three... there's really very little variation. Some of your skills can be somewhat diverse, which saves this from being an immediate return. Items can also add some variation to the theme of 'kill the things'. My personal favorite among items is the dagger bandolier for the way it mixes immediate and useful reward with a long-term down side. Use it and you immediately get three daggers, six to 12 damage if you're lucky in a single turn. But now you've got three fairly standard cards taking up draws because the daggers don't just vanish. It's probably worth buying this on sale, but at least in my eyes you won't be coming back to it again and again. Low HP enemies you're essentially supposed to kill before they act just don't give it a lot of lasting power, and even the less dull ones later in the game are more aggravating than interesting - who wants to get cursed for killing an enemy you have no choice about killing?

A Slay the Spire clone, or a roguelike card dungeon crawler for those who dont know. While I do like the art and style of this game a lot more than StS, the gameplay seems to be underworked and not properly balanced.. Cards not shuffling when deck is reused, extra enemies appearing without explanation, limited ability to control the customization of yoru deck. It seems more a sign of weak level design than thoughtout gameplay mechanics. I did have fun with it and Im sure some of you might as well. But there might come a point where you realise you are losing not because you arent thinking things through, but because the developers didnt think some game mechanic choices through.

I have this game on Steam. In fact, I've had it since it was in early access. It is going to compared to Slay the Spire (arent they all) and I enjoy this more than STS I enjoy its graphics more and I find it slightly easier than Slay the Spire. My only complaint is that I'm getting tired of the developers putting their game first on Steam only, then when sales level off they offer it on GOG (most likely due to DRM issues). I would much prefer to have a GOG copy and I'm getting tired of having to buy I game twice because of this practice.