Hand of Fate 2 mixes the very best of Gwent and D&D

Heart of the cards

Hand of Fate 2 is many things. It’s a deck-building game. It’s a brawler with Arkham-like combat. It’s Dungeons and Dragons. It’s all of these things simultaneously, taking the best parts of each, creating something that manages to be unique while still proudly displaying its influences.

Let me wear my heart on my sleeve for a second; I liked Hand of Fate 2 a lot. Not only do I want to go back and play the first game to see what I missed, I’m going to be counting down the days until Hand of Fate 2 finally drops. Although its many systems may lack explicit depth, the way they interplay makes for a riveting experience.

Let’s break the game down, influence by influence. At the outset, you pick a story with a set objective for your character and some flavor text. You’re then given equipment cards, encounter cards, and a companion card to choose from. The encounter cards dictate what happens to your character along their path. The equipment is, well, equipment — you have weapons for attacking, magical items, a shield for blocking, armor for protection, ect. And finally, your companion has a perk that you can use in dire situations. Your character moves from encounter card to encounter card, some working in your favor, some less so.

During my session, I had been marked for death by the Reaper, a legendary assassin who never misses a target. My goal was to keep my maximum health at 111, so I could survive the Reaper’s infamous arrow. Along the way, I was accosted by rogues, bartered with inkeepers, and took chances wherever I could find them.

One particular encounter lead me to a maiden stranded on the side of the road. I had to roll some dice and beat a set number — not dissimilar to the Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition skill checks. My dice roll did not go the way I was hoping, which threw me into some very familiar combat. My earlier Batman comparison isn’t just me being a reductive games journalist, by the way — that was a direct comparison made by one of the developers. Sing along if you know the words: the left face button attacks, the top face button counters, and the bottom face button dodge-rolls.

It’s not as fluid as the Arkham games, nor does it even match up to the many other Arkham imitators out there, but it’s not unpleasant by any means. I was still engaged during combat, because I knew my performance would affect my long-term viability. These fights weren’t so much self-contained combat puzzles as they were another sizable obstacle on the road to success.

My only concern is that Hand of Fate 2 won’t have enough content to satiate my newfound lust for this exact type of game. I didn’t ask about an hour count, because I value the quality of an experience over its raw length, but I only saw a handful of available stories in the menu. It’s also worth noting that the game crashed hard midway through my demo. Regardless of how little the phrase “pre-alpha” actually means in this day and age, the team at Defiant Development made it clear the game was absolutely not finished.

The randomness inherent to card games is directly reflected in your journey, arguably serving as the strongest argument for real-life tarot readings I’ve ever seen. It’s all the excitement of pulling the right card at the right moment, reflected in the context of a D&D-esque “theater of the mind” adventure. Hand of Fate 2 fosters a deeper connection between player & card than most dedicated card games, and provides more opportunities for role-playing than most dedicated role-playing games. The fantasy genre is officially on notice.