![]() ![]() You may be asked to draw a card through a shuffled selection of four, to try and time a spinning wheel to stop on a specific outcome, to stop a swinging pendulum at a specific time, or to roll a set of three dice. Some of these situations will require the player to get involved with the real-time combat (more on that later), but many of them instead lead into one of the game’s various mini-games. In addition to that, the board game section comes with its unique set of challenges: Each of the encounters that a player comes across will put them into a different scenario, from dangerous situations such as being ambushed to more mundane settings like trying to help an eccentric alchemist brew a potion. In order to survive each of the Challenges, the player has to carefully manage a set of money and food resources, the latter of which depletes as the player’s token moves forward. The board game is set over a series of ‘Challenges,’ which act as a set of 22 missions to be completed over the main game. The first of the two features a token representing the player moving over a set of flipped down cards, which flip up to reveal various encounters as the player lands on them. It’s split into two sections, the ‘board game’ and a real time combat system. ![]() The Game is, obviously, where the gameplay takes place, and it should be very familiar to those who have played the first Hand of Fate. Unfortunately, it seems that people are in the habit of losing their memories upon meeting the Dealer as evidenced by the fact your character has lost all of their skills and must relive their memories in order to be strong enough to fight Kalas, and thus once more we dive into ‘The Game.’ Turns out that Kalas is at least partially responsible for this mess, and thus there’s no time to waste you’ve got to hurry to kick Kalas’s rear end into the next age before this land is completely destroyed. Not only is this a much more solid setting than the first game, but it also explains why the Dealer seems to be in such a rush (the entire game takes place in the back of his moving caravan). However, it seems that Kalas isn’t one to make things easy and has hidden himself in an Empire that is being beset on all sides by problems: The government and military are corrupt systems of glory hounds and profit-seeking nobles bandits move almost freely throughout the countryside brutal raiders come screaming in from the north, and the cities are being eaten from within by a horrifying plague. That’s why you’re here: He was weakened by his near death experience and is going to need your help to take down ‘Kalas’ (pronounced ‘callous,’ perhaps appropriately). Turns out the Dealer had managed to crawl his way out of death and is unsurprisingly a bit…miffed at the guy who tried to kill him. The fact that you’ve even met him is pretty surprising since it was strongly suggested that he had actually perished at the first game’s climax. In the sequel, the narrative is much more grounded and much more direct: You play as a nameless adventurer who has entered into some kind of contract with the mysterious ‘Dealer,’ a man whose exact purpose and place in this world are wrapped in mystery. While there was a hint of a narrative in the first game, it was very downplayed, and it was pretty enigmatic as to what exactly the scenario was the only solid fact seemed to be the idea that the cards used in the game were representative of events that had already occurred. ![]() One of the largest changes that you notice right out of the gate is that the game’s narrative is much more front and centre. The changes that I found, however, were most surprising. That being said, I went into Hand of Fate 2 somewhat skeptical, worried that Defiant might have dropped the ball for the sequel to one of their most well regarded titles. While those points are fair, I was a much bigger fan of the original game, with its interesting meta-game based on the cards you add to the deck of encounters and the witty banter of the enigmatic ‘Dealer’ doing a lot more to save the game for me. Back in 2015, Kane Newell reviewed the game and gave it a ‘55%’ (this was before we changed to our current /10 score system), citing its lacklustre combat and somewhat repetitive nature as its main faults. Much like its predecessor, Hand of Fate 2 is what I can only describe as a board game if you stopped every few minutes to punch the hell out of whoever you’re playing against. Hand of Fate 2 is the sequel to Hand of Fate by Defiant Development, a development group based in Australia. ![]()
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