Quick Look: Hand of Fate 2

Hell yeah

Keep hearing about this but wasn't sure what it was thanks!

Is there a difference between a sorcerer and a wizard? LETS NOT GET INTO IT.

Witcher ripoff with cards and Portal homage.

@basketsnake: ...Not really, but okay?

Another game with collectible cards that influence game play!? Where does it stop people?

Also this game seems good.

7th Continent with action! I'll watch this to see if the action is more fluid than that previous one.

Beethoven and Chopin are Renaissance artists, huh?

Does Dan's history knowledge come from Assassin's Creed? Seems likely.

If Alex were here his first line would have been "Manos means hands in Spanish"

This is my favorite kind of Quick Look. I had no idea what this was but it looks great.

Been playing this on PS4 since it was released and this is a big improvement over the 1st.

The constant, cringe-worthy, unrelated conversation between Abby and Dan while Vinny silently plays the game made some of this video quite awkward.

I loved the first game. I only got an Xbox One in late 2015, and besides Battlefront, Halo 5 and Forza 6, my Games with Gold collection helped - which included Hand of Fate. I reckon I'll buy this one to support the developer - and because I want to play it too, of course.

Glad to see that they've add the ability to be a woman. No cookie et al, but it bugged me about the first game.

Speaking of that, I think it says a lot about Dan's reflection of his positionality in that he didn't realise women were, essentially, non-humans (or, rather, non-MAN). But he's getting there!

And speaking of positionality - a school trip to the Sistine Chapel?! I'm in Europe and there's no way my parents could have afforded that!

Of course women had jobs, everyone was poor.

Subtitles option is right there. IT'S RIGHT THERE! Giantbomb needs to draw straws and the loser has to have "subtitles!" tattooed on their forehead.

@willyod: Of course there is, Sorcerer sounds cooler!

I mean the moment I hear sorcerer I imagine a bad ass dude in a cloaked robe flinging fireballs with his hands, but when I think of wizard I envision a dorky person with a pointy hat and a silly wand casting rainbows or somethin'

@willyod: Ryu is both.

someone needs to buy dan a history and/or science book for age 10+, he could learn a bunch of stuff from it.............

Yeah, I kind of wish Alex was on this one to keep it on track.

Looks like a cool game, I really liked the first HoF and this has some neat updates and more of a story thread.

Guess it's not a cool guy game huh Dan. Not like that Mario. Anyway I loved the first game, finished it even, was hard though. Definitely getting this with the steam sales (tonight?).

Didn't play the first one but bounced off this one pretty quick. Once I got halfway through the campaign, it became pretty clear how stale the combat is and the lack of depth. The only challenge game from the card RNG where you can get 25+ hp taken away based on luck. I don't mind that but it's kind of lame how easy the combat is by comparison. They try to create new ideas around each chapter but it wasn't enough to keep me involved. Unless you were a big fan of the first, I recommend waiting for this one to go on sale in the future, especially since they have yet to implement additional features like Endless Mode (which the devs said could be many months from now). Not a bad game but there are just so many great games to play right now so why bother?

I heard the first game's boss encounter was pretty unbalanced. Does anyone know if this game has improved in that regard?

@cheetovicks: I didn't hear anything "awkward" about the conversation here, but honestly, all the game's mechanics were explained in detail by minute 12 and the video is 38 minutes long, so I'm not sure what you were expecting from the GB crew's chatter.

This game is better than the first in pretty much every way. I've been enjoying it a great deal.

I would like to formally request a full review of this game by one Dan Ryckert.

Is this the Dark Souls of Mario Party games?

Abby has become really good Quick Look partner. Asking good questions and driving good conversations, whether about the game or just in general.

Hand of Fate 2 looks like it could be what the original Hand of Fate should have been. I'll reserve my judgement if it completely fulfills what I wanted out of the first one, though, until I play through this one.

This seems like a pretty weak quick look. Vinny really should have focused on reading the text for each encounter. The game is really about the journey through each board and when you are basically fast forwarding to each combat encounter you are basically missing most of the interesting parts of the game. It's clear Dan had no idea what was happening through pretty much the entire thing.

Also this is not out for Xbox One yet. I'm waiting for that version but it was delayed during testing. I'm guessing is it failed cert and now they are waiting for it to be recertified. I know the first game froze up on me several times after completing a quest which caused me to stop playing so hopefully that won't be an issue this time.

@shadow961: The problem with the end game in HOF1 was that was it basically a boss rush with a ton of ads. After the grind you had to QTE perry the dealer a few times to finish him. I'm only halfway through HOF2, but from what I've read about the end game it seems to have been improved. It's still a combat encounter, but less of a chore.

That's a pretty weird thing to say.

Vinny annoyed with Dan's annoying comments. Abby song and dance in the background.

I know corrections in comments are a pain in the backside, but I'd like @danryckert to know that the person (Salvador Dalí) who painted the melting clocks (The Persistence of Memory) was alive at the same time as him and me and many of us: he died in 1989. I think that's pretty cool. Much too recent to be a Renaissance artist, though he was heavily influenced by them.

... in which Dan discovers sexism

I really liked Hand of Fate 1, HoF2 improves on pretty much every aspect of it. It's really great.

Yeah she's a pretty good sport about participating with the QL. It's also funny how Vinny needs to use his dad tactics to string Dan along.

Dan: "Abby I've been camping this morning. Animal crossing came out"

Vinny: *trying to keep things on track by getting Dan involved* "Uhh, where do you wanna go Dan? Down? Or to the right?"

Like I can see Vinny doing this at home to keep Max involved when his attention starts to wander.

Edit: "Thanks, Abby" oooh, hanging Dan out to dry in that outtro

Warning, this is one of those where baby-dan lose interest and starts talking about Nintendo games instead of the game being QL'ed, because Gawd Forbid there'd be a moment of silence or something.

Me When The VIdeo Started: Oh, maybe this will help Dan understand tabletop games better

Dan: So that's the guy who writes the script?

Me: Nope!

Just gonna put this out there but maybe just leave Dan out of QLs he clearly doesn't want to be involved with in future if he's gonna behave like this. And bless Abby for trying to get him to interact in some way.

I'd actually be way more interested in this series if they took the action game element out

It was meant as a humorous phrase in a sarcastic self-deprecating tone, as in : of course women and man are equal and i think they are pretty great. I do understand that it could not come across that way. Even more so now that there are enough crazy people on the internet that type insane stuff and be completely serious about it, and #metoo has just recently left twitter trending topics.

I now have Alex shouting "PHRASING" in my head.

Dan is the worst

Dan I love how you ask very carefully "Do you buy packs?"

@bicycle_repairman: The Internet's capacity for nuance-clobbering strikes again! I hope you'll forgive my inability to distinguish sarcasm from sincerity given the, uh, breadth of sincerely held opinions out there.

I don't really want feigned interest. I understand that not every game is interesting to every person, that's ok. When they're three, it would be perfectly OK for one to fade out for a while and just let the game play out until maybe there's a valid question or something to comment on. Bonus points if the question/comment isn't only made to market your persona.

I think there's a craft to doing these, and starting to talk about unrelated things, especially other games, just because you've lost interest isn't part of it. IMO. YMMV.

This game is awesome, thanks for covering it Vinny!

Also - Why is Dan on this QL and not Alex? This seems like something that Alex would appreciate, meanwhile it all seems to go over Dan's head. Not a good choice.

Yeah, the first game was flawed but very inventive and unique. I was originally put off by the price tag of the sequel, but watching this QL might have put me over the edge towards buying it now. I like that all the levels here seem to have their own unique, self-contained stories/quests.

The combat seems like the only thing that isn't that much better, but honestly, that's the least interesting part of it to me - to be honest, it might be better without it (maybe instead simulate the combat to something closer to an actual tabletop game).

I thought this was gonna be something like diablo from previous comments I had seen. Speaking of titan quest I wonder if they are gonna quick look ragnarok.