Mix a board/card game with fast skilled based action combat with randomized loot and you get this. The amount of cards they have added for free is awesome. I find myself logging in after a month or two and it seems there are always more cards to unlock. At the time of writing I have 26 hours in game and still only have about 75% of the cards. The more cards you get the more challenging the game becomes, but the better loot you will find as well.
You'll find yourself trying to beat the one card in the dealers deck to get more gear, blessings and gain cards for your later runs. But as the dealer says, you'll unlock many cards, some you wish you hadn't. You can set your own challenge as you go or just go all in. Build up to beat that one card so you can get more cards for the next run or try and beat the story line or try the endless mode.
The games of chance can even be tipped in your favor. The cards are shuffled, sometimes more quickly based on the event or curses or more slowly based on blessings. You can attempt to watch the card be shuffled and attempt to choose the correct one. It's an extremely effective system surprisingly.
The combat has dodging, parrying and blocking and they are absolutely necessary to get good at in order to move forward in the game. The combat has been balanced immensely since release and is now a really solid challenge. THIS IS NOT JUST A CARD GAME. There is action based combat which requires real skill, reaction speed and practice to proceed.
Absolutely worth the money if you like rogue-like, fast paced and brutal yet balanced game with mechanics that allows you to achieve more every run. The game balances the new cards with new difficult encounters and curses that can do all sorts of mildly irritating things. But it is a 'rogue-like', you will have frustrating runs. However when you succeed in getting that difficult encounter and you gain new things, it makes it all the more satisfying.
One of the best parts of playing this game is the atmosphere and the dealer's excellent voice acting. The setting in which you play the card game is perfect for playing in the dark in a relaxed setting. While it can be a frustrating game at moments, when you come out of the action combat you are in a nice calm atmosphere simply playing cards. This has some unusual mood affect which seems to strangely calm your inevitable frustration. The game mixes two genres together that really aren't meant to be together, but Hand of Fate pulls it off flawlessly. There is only one con I can think of about the game, the shops sometimes take a strangely long time to load. Other than that I can't think of much more that could be added to the game to make it better, other than new card encounters, monsters and gear of which there
This was certainly one of my favorite single player games of 2015 and I hope they keep adding more content either for free, DLC, expansion or a new game all around. Highly recommend you play with a controller and only with a controller. Steam controller works great as well and is a great game to play with Steam Streaming. The game fits very well on a big screen in the living room.