Recent reviews by Ludor Experiens

You laugh, you cry, you hope, you despair, you feel smart, you feel dumb.

Outer Wilds is full of emotions. Follow different strings of hints or go wherever your heart desires. The solar system is open and without quest markers but full of mysteries to solve. There is no wrong path as long as you are curious about the past and future events.

Because at the end of the day, it is all about the journey, not the goal.

Love the little cactus on its way to the desert planting other cacti. :3
(Don't think about the story too hard)

You know the expanding galaxy brain meme?
At multiple points you feel exactly like that with this game.

Cute puzzle game that starts simple and gets mind-boggling real fast, where the game teaches you about mechanics by letting you explore them.

You start pretty simple: Chase a bunny into a dead end to capture it. Then things get more complicated: You need to create the dead ends yourself with provided tools. Later puzzles don't even have any dead ends anymore and you need to figure out how to corner the bunny anyway.

If I had to point out something I dislike, it is the use of (already) dated memes in the dialogues. But since this is a puzzle game with focus on puzzles and not story, I don't think this is a deal-breaker.

Super fun little puzzle game. If you take your time and play around a bit, there are some real cute results to be found outside of your main goals.

The only nitpick I found is that I completed it in around 3 1/2 hours and just wished that there is more.

Tl;dr: IMO Hand of Fate 2 is an improved version of the first one with more mechanics and harder combat.

I'll focus on differences between Hand of Fate and Hand of Fate 2. If you just want to know what the game is about, other reviews have described the game far better than I will ever be able to.

What I really like about this game, compared to the first one, is, that you encounter all selected cards in your deck during a challenge. I've been replaying the first HoF and have yet to encounter one specific card with a token after 15 attempts. That makes unlocking encounter card tokens in HoF2 considerably easier.

What gave me a headache was some requirements to unlock some equipment card tokens (e.g. gain 250 gold by using the helm effect). I grinded those on a specific challenge and now that I play the endless challenge, I fulfill those requirements without trying. So, basically my determination to unlock everything as soon as possible actually slowed me down and robbed me of some fun. Don't think I can fault the game for that though.

The new gambits seem unfair at first, but if you keep playing, you will unlock items that make them far more managable. When geared you basically cannot lose the wheel gambit (a wheel of cards spins and on command it rapidly slows down to halt at one card), have high chances on any card gambit (see HoF1) and high chances on pendulum gambit (skill-based, a pendulum swings over success/failure zones and you can instantly stop it on command). Only the dice gambit is still heavily luck based (roll 3 dice, score X or higher).

The combat is really fluent with a heavy emphasis on autotarget. You can attack over a great distance and your character will run at the enemy and swing. Blocking and dodging still overrides any other action, so if you are quick enough, you can easily avoid basically any enemy attack even if you are currently mid-attack. However, the combat is a lot faster compared to HoF1 which makes the game overall, a tad harder.

I first was a bit skeptical about the companion mechanic, but I came to enjoy it quite a lot. They not only help you in combat but can give additional flavor text on some encounters and I have yet to play every encounter with every companion just to see what small tid-bits of lore are hidden.

Compared to the first game, a quite extensive story is hidden here which even changes depending on how you approach each challenge. I really enjoyed how the way I completed a challenge earlier made it possible for a character to survive an encounter in a later challenge.

All in all, even though some parts can be grindy if you approach them incorrectly, the game as a whole is quite enjoyable and definitely a step up from the first one.

This game provides fun for an hour or two.

Very fun parkour game with some combat elements.
This game is really short though, so I recommand only picking it up when it's on sale.

Some of the complaints vs. my experiences:
- "Combat is wonky"
-> True, but this is not a fighting game, if you run past the enemies and try to escape, it adds some pressure, making it possibly more challenging.

- "Parkour under pressure is not fun"
-> Dunno, I had a lot of fun trying to figure out a route while being chased. Had something of a movie.

- "Enemies either cannot hit you when you are standing right in front of them or snipe you over 500 miles"
-> True, but to be more specific: When the game wants to push you or hold you out of a specific area (e.g. if you try leaving the map) enemies become deadly accurate. That way you stay on track and don't try to fight your way out. And that not every enemy is deadly accurate is actually a good thing, don't you think ;)

- "bah too much gun figthing"
-> Well, it is a game taking place in a distopian future and you are on the other side of the law. As I said, 90% of the time you shouldn't and in most of the other cases you don't need to engage in fights.