The main premise of the game involves the dealer laying out a set of cards before you creating a path for your journey in a grid-like fashion.
As well as this, the game also comes with two other forms of DLC in the Dealer’s Apprentice and Shattered Memories, bringing more cards and options to the gameplay values that are on offer here. This map also includes another game mode, Endless Mode, which pits you in testing how far you can adventure before dying previously released as DLC, but now included with the main game upon this release. Although these elements remain the same in their story-telling mechanics, the path laid out from the dealing of cards produces a different journey each time. Within a small cabinet, lies a scaled model of the land in which you traverse offering a variety of twenty-two different episodes, or events. Using a rogue-like mechanic, the paths that are set before you are random with each deal, producing a game that perfectly replicates the choose-your-own-adventure mechanic perfectly. As time waits for no man, you’re immediately thrown into the story as the dealer lays a trail of cards before you although this first setting for your adventure also explains some of the game’s mechanics, both in path selection and the elements in combat. With no memory, or sense of direction in where you are heading, you begin your story as the fool, an adventurer who journeys into the unknown, as the dealer reveals a variety of cards that determine your fate, as well as your future. The main setting of the game sees you sitting opposite the dungeon master, or dealer as he’s known, within the confines of his travelling caravan. With the release of Defiant Development’s Hand of Fate 2 on the Nintendo Switch, we now have a game that revisits that time of old successfully capturing the atmosphere from that era and the feel with its unique style of play. However, every once in a while it’s nice to go back and re-visit the roots of where role-playing originated from, namely the table-topped adventures of random encounters, dice rolls and a dungeon master to unfurl an untold story. Not that there is anything wrong with that, as some of the most impressive games throughout gaming history, or available to buy today, are borne from within this concept. Patient RPG fans with a tolerance for lady luck might want to check out Hand of Fate 2 on the Nintendo Switch.These days, the majority of role-playing games focus on expansive landscapes and majestic stories to produce titles that are often awe-inspiring in their scale. Still, when a one-hour long session of gameplay is interrupted by three bad dice rolls, it’s difficult to care about the quality of the prose. There’s a certain sense of confidence in the game this time around, and its various ingredients seem less half-baked than they did in the original, with an ornate and satisfying story with surprises, betrayals, and even elaborate character development for the player’s allies. Dispensing with structured chapters, Endless mode once again fulfills certain aspects and promises of Hand of Fate’s potential, and it’s a thoughtful concept which feels even more lethal and involved with the sequel’s new tricks.
Hand of fate 2 switch or pc series#
While going through Hand of Fate 2’s 22 main chapters, all of which are based on the high arcana of the tarot, is the first playable route, the game eventually unlocks its Endless mode, an unfurling series of randomized campaigns that expand on the chaos of the main quest.
Hand of fate 2 switch or pc full#
This means that the 3D character designs in combat remain slightly bland and goofy - almost like a Fable knockoff - although the card art is lovely, and The Dealer remains effective and full of characterful animations, consistently emotive in spite of the mask which covers the lower part of his face. The overall graphic design of Hand of Fate 2 seems like a slightly refined serving of the original, and while it looks decent on the Switch, the attention to detail is uneven.
Additionally, visual hiccups and stutters always accompany the start of a combat section, rendering the ostentatiously animated loading screens curiously clunky. For one, there are occasional game-locking freezes, including a replicatable bug that froze the game entirely during chapter selection several times during testing (this might be considered a game-breaking bug, but note that it never seemed to happen in the middle of a chapter or resulted in any lost save data). There are a few strange bugs in the Switch version which do need to be mentioned, however.