Hand Of Fate 2: Sarky Wizardguy's Revenge
Poke 'is face
The Dealer, surely one of the best game villains of recent years, is back. I don't even know the guy's name, to be honest. Does he even have one? Doesn't matter. For he is my NEMESIS. The great wizardry of solo CCG vs RPG Hand of Fate [official site] was that you were faced throughout by a more-or-less evenly-matched opponent. The guy didn't do much in terms of outright acts of evil, or even much in the way of overtly wicked scenery-chewing: it's just that he was trying really hard to beat me, with an effective line in downplayed psychological warfare as he did. And now he's back. He wants revenge. I.e. he wants to play cards again. And this time it seems an empire is at stake.
There isn't an enormous amount to be gleaned from the latest footage from upcoming sequel Hand Of Fate 2, but the suggestion is that it'll build upon what was the weakest part of the first game, the third person slashy-bashy action sequences that were triggered by certain cards. The scope and story appears to have widened beyond random bandit encounters and into something involving armies and empires, and our nameless, flint-eyed nemesis is somehow involved.
I'm game, basically. I'm less interested in the action stuff and more in how they've evolved the whole conversation-based emnity system. Dare I hope it's more reactive than before, less canned and repetitious? It already did a good job of masking its loops, and hopefully it's gone even further in that direction.
The press release doesn't say anything about that side of things, but notes that The Dealer will be training you, a new heroine, to defeat the first game's unnamed protagonist, who has now become the apparently despotic head of the empire we see in the trailer. There are also going to be companion characters in the action sequences, with their own storylines. Can't quite envisage how that's gonna work, but interested to see how more 'voices' in what was formerly mano-a-mano verbiage will play out.
Hand of Fate 2 is due 'Q1' next year, which hopefully means the right side of Easter.