
Something that articulates both an evolution of everything that worked about the first Hand of Fate and an eloquent response to the aspects that didn’t come together quite so cleanly. Something that’s not just a better game than the original but something that acts as “the final word” for this kind of unique, genre-bending title. It will flare up during combat or the games of chance to build the tension naturally and flows well with the game’s pace.With Hand of Fate 2, Brisbane-based Defiant Development are looking to make the rare sequel that outshines the original. The music fits the overall feeling of Hand of Fate 2 with its fantasy theme while also creating excellent ambience that doesn’t intrude over the story.

The world design covers many biomes from snowy mountains, old ruins, forests and sprawling towns, providing depth to its settings Music / Sound Design One of the enemy types are corrupted humans who look like mutated figures with growths over them, while another is a more monstrous vampiric form called a Shade. The art design of the game embraces its dark fantasy motif, especially at the table where the majority of the game takes place. Most of these tales are told by text which if you want, you can button mash through with little to no change to the results, however you’d just miss out on the expansive world building. These are in addition to the story encounters where you have to make peace with a northern barbarian queen by climbing a blizzard torn mountain or discover who the assassin is that’s going to betray a leader of a criminal group by uncovering information about each suspect. You complete some fun stories like encountering a goblin who runs through a portal or entering an arm wrestling tournament. The story is where this game really shines as you fight your way through its unique challenges. The arenas will change where the chapter is based to match snowy mountains or luscious green forests. These aspects are transferred over in one way or another to the challenge of the level, while still telling a connecting story.Ĭombat is based in an arena with simple hack and slash mechanics and prompts to block and dodge attacks.

The game’s levels are separated into different chapters based on each of the tarokka deck figures e.g. In addition, more content has been added post launch which includes an endless mode, additional challenges, companions, encounters and equipment. Also, please consider supporting us on Patreon so that we can continue to do what we love doing. But using these abilities come at the cost of losing them for a few encounters.Įnjoying our Hand of Fate 2 Switch review so far? Don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for more Nintendo Switch content. These abilities can be adding an extra dice to the dice rolling games or allowing for a second chance at the pendulum game. Your companions are also equipped with out of combat abilities to help swing luck your way in the challenges of chance. One of the newer features is the option to recruit companions into your team, helping you in combat with their unique features. The combat is fairly simple in technique but get cocky or overwhelmed and your run will end very quickly, which can be exasperated by the random encounter cards. During some of the encounter cards you may have to play a game of chance which can be rolling dice to hit a certain number, picking the correct card after being shuffled or stopping a pendulum in the correct spot.

Some of these cards have tokens or shards of tokens which mean they give you a challenge to complete in order to get more cards to use, usually upgrades to your current ones. You start off with a very limited amount of cards to place into your different decks for encounters and equipment but as you complete more encounters and challenges, you receive more cards to use. Hand of Fate 2 has the majority of the game time spent reading encounters in a similar experience to that of Dungeons & Dragons and other tabletop roleplaying games.
