Hand of Fate 2 patch makes significant improvements to combat

When he reviewed Hand of Fate 2 for us back in November, Eric Watson had plenty of praise for the solo card game that's also an action-RPG. He did, however, call out one aspect of it as a flaw: "Combat is unfortunately the least improved aspect of the sequel," he wrote, "despite still being a major focus of many challenges and cards."

That's set to change with the latest update, which developers Defiant are calling "Combat reforged". Among its changes are improvements to responsiveness, "addressing a number of issues from sticky animation transitions to unreliable dodge vulnerability." They've also changed the way artifacts work—where before they all had a limited number of charges before they were used up for good, now some artifacts have uses-per-encounter that recharge between fights. 

The bash move has also been altered. Where before it was very situational, only useful against armored or shielded foes, now it can be used as a general knockback/stun. One more new feature is Apprentice Mode, as seen in the original game, which lets players more interested in playing a deck-builder than a brawler breeze through combat, as it "automates combat maneuvers like ripostes and finishers while increasing player damage output. It also stops weapon charges from resetting during combat, ensuring Apprentice players are able to access their powers more frequently in a melee."

There's even more to the update than that, so check out the full patch notes.

Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.

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