You find yourself traveling in a shadowy carriage with a wry, mysterious man known as The Dealer. Your memory has faded. This companion is teaching you a game, which will reveal your history as you play. Understanding and being successful at this game is imperative upon your arrival. The reasons for this will become more apparent as your journey progresses. So, grab your dice and shuffle your deck – it’s time to play Hand of Fate 2!

As with the first game, Hand of Fate 2 manages to combine completely different styles of games to create its own unique experience. Mix a healthy bit of RPG, Action-Brawler, and a deck-building card game, then sprinkle in some Dungeons & Dragons and games of chance to create the strange brew that is the Hand of Fate games. This sequel sticks with this winning recipe, but also manages to improve on the first game in every way.



Developer/Publisher: Defiant Development

20+ Hours Played // Review Copy Provided // $29.99

The core gameplay revolves around navigating a game board made of Tarot-esque playing cards. Landing on a new card can cause any number of things to happen. You may have a combat encounter, dialogue choices, a game of chance, or nothing but a brief respite. All the while, The Dealer is there to run this game for you, acting as a Dungeon Master.



The Dealer will make little quips throughout the game… especially if you fail

The game is broken up into individual adventures called Challenges. They all take place in the same world and they further an overarching plot, but they act as individual vignettes of storytelling. If The Dealer is your DM, these would be the modules he is running for you. Each of these Challenges feels different enough to keep the game fresh. The Challenges have their own win conditions, goals, and hazards. For example, one Challenge has you gathering clues to root out an assassination plot where another begins with you bloodied at only 10 health, with limited ways to heal, and impending confrontations that will certainly cause damage.

The “side missions” are engaging as well. These come in the form of cards that you can build into your deck. So, you can choose to include side mission(s) within any of the challenges. Each of these cards comes with a reward attached to it. Some are lengthy and involve multiple cards to see the full story and receive the prize at the end. Each Companion in the game has their own complete side story, which I found to be some of the most engrossing content in the game.

Companions are new to Hand of Fate 2 and they add a lot to the game. Each has their own lengthy and engaging side mission. They each have a specific ability for both in and out of combat. At first, the out of combat abilities can seem a bit overpowered. For example, one companion allows you to add an additional die to a dice roll encounter. However, this is balanced out because if you choose to use this, the companion will be out of commission for 3 turns. This adds to the risk/reward balance that becomes a main theme of the gameplay.



Should I put the Alchemist encounter in? I could use the gold on this Challenge, but the curse could be bad…

Since you are navigating a board made of cards, building your deck is a large part of the strategy for this game. Each challenge gives you some basic information of what you can expect, so you have an idea of which cards should be more useful. The more you play, the more cards you’ll acquire, which will allow you to continually build a better deck. When you unlock a card, you won’t know what it does. However, once you encounter it on the board, you will know exactly what you could lose or gain from it during subsequent plays. This way, you can stack a deck in your favor once you understand the cards.

Building your deck becomes about balance. At first, I felt compelled to put as many side mission cards in as I could, knowing there would be a prize for completing them. However, this inevitably made my Challenges more difficult because I was fighting more or losing health and resources to chance. Alternatively, if you only use cards that will benefit your current Challenge, you’ll unlock fewer new cards which could help in the future. Much of the game is finding a nice balance between risk and reward when building your deck but also with the choices you make on the board. No matter how well you stack your deck or how well you can fight, luck is an ever-present factor.



Just like Malaclypse to bring a guitar to an axe fight

The combat feels good as well, if a bit basic. If you are familiar with the Batman Arkham games, you’ll feel right at home here – this is basically Arkham-lite combat. Essentially, you have an attack, a dodge, a block, and a guard-break for your main controls. You can also call on your companion for their special ability and use an item if you have one equipped. The enemies have indicators that project which move is incoming, so you know whether to block or dodge. Defiant included the option to change the color of these indicators, which is something I personally love when developers do.

There are different enemy types, weapons, and abilities, so the combat doesn’t get stale. Some of the enemies are weaker to specific weapons or items, adding to the strategy of how to build your deck and what to bring into a battle with you. The combat encounters are fairly brief, taking only a few minutes at most.



Which Challenge next? Definitely not Strength again (you’ll understand when you get there).

Hand of Fate 2 runs well on the Switch for the most part. Both handheld and docked mode worked. There was no discernible difference between the two. I never encountered slow-down or frame issues. Also, the Switch version comes with all previous DLC included, which is a nice bonus.

There is a significant bug that I encountered multiple times. The “choose companion” screen can freeze up if you enter it any time other than from a fresh start of the program. Whether you beat or fail a Challenge, when you go back to your deck creation and pick a companion, the game can freeze. At this point, I was unable to pick a companion or back out and was instead forced to close and restart the game from the Switch home page.

Sometimes this glitch was merely annoying, other times it had potential to ruin a whole Challenge run. A few times after I had beat a Challenge and was returned to the main map, I jumped into a new Challenge. Then, the game would freeze up on the companion screen and I would restart. However, when I got back into the game, it hadn’t saved my victory. I was put back in the game right before the final confrontation of my previous Challenge. There were times I beat a Challenge by the skin of my teeth and having to do it again could mean a failure where I had previously succeeded. If I lost, I would have to play the entire Challenge over again. We have contacted Defiant about this issue. I hope they release a patch for this, as it is a glaring flaw on an otherwise great game.



Deck Building 101: Pay attention to info at the top

Despite this issue, Hand of Fate 2 is a great game. The gameplay of the card game and the combat both feel great. The storytelling is engaging and well-written. All of the different elements come together to create an interesting and unique ARPG experience, which improves on the first game in every way.

UPDATE: A patched was released on July 26, which fixed these technical issues. The choosing companion page no longer freezes.

Thank you for reading! For another recent Nindie RPG, take a look at our review of Ys VIII. Feel free to join our Discord or subreddit to discuss these games with us. Also, consider donating to our Patreon to keep content like this coming!