I didn’t exactly run the stats but it seems that in the last 5-10 years card-based video games have been really poppin. Some are straight up card games like Gwent, and others have you using cards to battle like in Slay the Spire. Some games just slip the cardiness in while you aren’t looking. Either way, I got hooked. I was playing Reigns, Deep Sky Derelicts, and the game I’m gonna be talking about today, Hand of Fate. The rift in my relationship with the cards started with this game right here. Card-based systems seem so cool until you realize you are at the mercy of the draw.
*SPOILERS WILL BE PRESENT*
Hand of Fate has an interesting premise. You’re playing a card game against some otherworldly guy, but the suits are a bit different, and that’s just for the enemies. This game has 2 main elements: The “overworld” where map traversal is done by moving from card-to-card, and a more hands-on experience that puts your character in a 3D world where you can explore and fight.
The overworld might be the most interesting and irritating part of the game to me. The dealer lays out a set of cards and you move along them by choosing an adjacent one. When landing on a card an event will happen and sometimes this will require you to make a decision. From helping wounded soldiers to taking part in less-than-legal acts, there is an extremely wide variety of things that can happen.
Fighting in the 3D world is very simple. Unless you have low health or trash weapons you probably aren’t losing. The bosses are the only real challenge, something you’ll learn early on. You have can strike, do a special, dodge(think Spiderman 2) and block. You will go through most battles untouched, and the longer ones will have you begging for them to end.
The way you enter a fight is by the dealer drawing cards like the “10 of Plague” which means you’re fighting 10 ratmen. Sometimes he has more cards, sometimes you can get lucky and cause one to disappear, potentially avoiding a fight altogether.
You start this game off by choosing a boss, then reaching the third floor. You ascend/descend floors by finding the stair card in each level. On the final floor you must find the boss card and then you fight. After beating the boss you get more cards to add to the overworld, weapon, items, bleh, blah, and who cares deck. After doing this twelve times you fight the dealer. Fighting the dealer consists of him summoning old folk you’ve beaten before to fight you. I died on him maybe twice before knocking the skill level down to easy cause I was sick of this game and had to finish. Between all constant dying, bad draws, and terrible shuffling, this game had put a sour taste in my mouth when it came to cards.
Sometime later after I had sworn off card-based games I received Hand of Fate 2 in a Humble Bundle. I thought that I should play it at least once, to see what had changed. After about 5 minutes I turned it off. The pain of the first game and the terror of the tarot was too much for my feeble mind to bear.
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