Fate

"A Great Dungeon Crawler Which Stands Up With the Best of Them"

I'm sure fans of Diablo and Diablo II have played their fare share of Diablo knockoffs. Some knockoffs are just a waste of time, but there are a few out there that are worth your time and money. Fate is one of these games. Fate doesn't really have anything that separates it from the rest of the Diablo clones, it just pulls everything together in a nice, easy to use, and fun package that will suck you in for hours and hours.

The game can be downloaded from Wildtangent's website, or you can find a retail copy if you are lucky. Either way, the game will not cost you over $20, which is a sweet price for the amount of content that you are getting in Fate.

The game breaks down in a pretty simple fashion. You arrive in the town of Grove, where a horde of evil creatures is plaguing the town from the depths of a dungeon, which is adjacent to the town. You take up arms and you are off to dungeon crawl and quest your little heart away. You can talk to people in the town (it's the only town in the game) and get other quests as well. The quests are simple and not very involved. All quests are to either kill a certain Elite monster, find a certain item from the dungeon, or both. When you finish the quest, you go back for your reward, and another quest opens up for you. You can only have 3 active quests at once, which seems kind of limiting at first, but it's not bad once you consider how easy it is to get back to town to get a new quest.

In fact, you will be going back and forth between the dungeon and town quite often. It's a pretty fast paced dungeon crawl, so you will build up loot really fast. You do have a good deal of size in your bag, but it will still be overflowing before you know it.

When you first start playing Fate, you will get the choice of being a male or female character, with preset base stats. Then you can choose which kind of pet to have with you. You can choose either a dog or a cat. Your pet will be with you the entire game and will end up being very important to you throughout the game for multiple reasons.

The first good thing about you pet is that it has an inventory space just as big as yours, so it doubles your inventory space right off the bat. Secondly, your pet can transform into many of the monsters that you run into. How does it transform? Simple, during your dungeon crawling, you will come across different kinds of fish, which can be put into your bag as items. When your pet is fed certain kinds of fish, it will change into different monsters accordingly. This will boost its stats and make it temporarily stronger, and much more capable of helping you out in battles.

Fish can also be found at “fishing holes” which you can access if you have a fishing rod. This is a simple little mini-game where you click your mouse to bring up the line, and pull up your catch. You can find some high level items in fishing holes too, but it's not as common as pulling up fish.

Your pet will go up levels just like you will, but you cannot set their stat increases. So you see, your pet is an essential part of the journey and although it can't die, it's worth your while to take care of it and have it by your side.

Your character will start out as a base class, and when you level up, you can allocate skill points to increase your stats (strength, magic, dexterity, and stamina), and then you get two additional skill points for increasing some of your other abilities, such as defense magic, dual wielding, sword skill, charm magic, critical strike, etc. As you can see, leveling up gives you quite a few options, and you will always have a skill or stat that you are trying to make higher in order to be stronger, or equip a certain item or piece of armor.

One interesting thing about Fate is that there are no set classes at all. If you want to be a tanker, start putting stat increase into Strength and weapon mastery. If you want to be a rouge-type/archer, start putting points into Dexterity and speed. If you want to be a magic user, start putting skill points into Magic and spell mastery. While heading towards your desired class, you will slowly start to be able to use items and equipment from that class. It's a gradual process and it is very rewarding.

The dungeon itself has all randomly generated levels, enemies, and items. It also has randomly generated quests and end bosses for the main quest. Yes, if you play this game more than once, you will fight a different boss for the main quest. In fact, I think there are a bunch of them that can get chosen at random at the beginning of the game.

Random generation of items, monsters, and levels may seem like a bad idea at first, but Fate seems to pull it off quite well and not make you feel like you're in the same area all the time, hacking away at the same monsters. There is enough variety in pretty much everything to keep things fresh and interesting for the most part.

Okay, I could seriously talk about this game for pages and pages, so I'm just going to get to a breakdown of my ratings.

Graphics 7/10

I'll be honest, Fate doesn't really deserve a 7 in the graphics department, but the less than stellar graphics don't detract from the game in any way. Just be aware, this game will not blow you away graphically. It's pleasant to look at and the cartoony graphics look very good for what they are. Also keep in mind that the game cost you less than $20.

The game has very low system requirements, so most people should be able to play it. It supports up to a 1600x1200 Resolution, which is what I played it at. The animations on the game looked smooth, and I don't recall seeing any graphical glitches in the game at all. The dungeon looks decent, but is nothing special. The random generation of levels means that you will be seeing a fresh looking dungeon every level, so you won't tire of seeing the same backgrounds.

The magic spells in the game do not really impress either. They are noticeable and look cool at first, but they are mostly pretty basic, and serve their purpose.

The enemy design is well done, but fails to stray far away from the norm of the genre. Meaning, you will be fighting stereotypical dungeon enemies for most of the game, with little extra flare. They look pretty good though, and lots of them can cast spells on you to keep things interesting.

So the graphics in Fate are about on the same level as Diablo II or Divine Divinity. Well actually they fare a little better due to a higher resolution and some smoother animation. However do not let the graphics scare you away, or you will miss out on a fantastic game.

Story NA/10

There's a story, but it's paper thin and I really don't see the point of punishing the game for not having one. The main quest is randomly generated, so it would be tough to weave a generalized story to have this all make sense on a greater scale.

It's just dungeon crawling to save a village and see how strong you can make your character, that is all.

Music and Sound 7/10

You will hear the same 4-5 tracks being played over and over. You get music for the dungeon, music for the town, and a few tunes in between. I never really seemed to get tired of them though. So it looses some points here for a lack of music.

The sound effects all sound pretty good and sound even better with the volume turned up. Your weapons will reflect their proper sounds. Swords make slicing sounds, while swinging a hammer will produce a whacking thud. The majority of the sound effects are fairly basic and sound about how they should. Meaning potions make a potion noise when you drink one, monsters let out screams when they die, and gold makes a ‘ching' sound when you pick it up.

Overall, not bad, but could have been better.

Controls 10/10

“I'm adding a Controls” section since I took out Story.
Fate is a simple game to play. Almost everything can be done with just the mouse, but there are plenty of shortcuts and hotkeys as well. Left clicking will allow you to move and attack. Simply click and hold on an enemy to melee attack until he is dead. The right mouse button is for spell casting. Once you acquire spells, you can bind them to the F1-F12 keys for easy switching. Simply select the spell you want, and right click to cast. You will need to hover over an enemy first if it's an attack spell.

Hotkeys will open all of your menus, but it can all be done with menu at the bottom as well. Everything is laid out well, and it's simple to find stuff, and quickly get back to the action.

When you start the game, you will get a basic tutorial for the game, and you will get hints and helpful tips at loading screens. It's a really simple system to use and master. It's quite honestly the easiest and most fluid use of keyboard and mouse controls I have ever seen in a PC RPG game, which is why I chose to give it a 10/10

Gameplay 9/10

What can I say, this game thrives off of its incredible gameplay. I have not enjoyed playing a PC RPG this much since Divine Divinity. Fighting through the dungeon with your pet at your side is super addictive, and you will not be able to stop once you get into it. Before quitting, you will always want to clear a level of the dungeon, or finish one more quest, or get a level up so you can finally wear that piece of armor you've had for a while.

Another good thing about Fate is the pacing of enemies in the dungeons. You are never just mindlessly clicking on stuff to kill it. When exploring, you may go a few corridors without seeing any enemies at all, yet there are times when you will be ambushed and be forced to retreat. So it's not so much a constant grind, but it's varied a bit.

Getting new equipment in Fate has to be one of the most exciting parts of the game. It sounds dumb to those of you that have never played it, but finally getting the proper stats to be able to wear that cool looking armor you have, is priceless. The change will affect you in real time too. So when you are carrying around a giant, saw toothed sword, you actually get to see it slicing through your enemies, which is nice.

Most of the quests are to take down Elites of various monsters, but the quests never seem to get old, since the spoils are pretty good, and you can always use the experience for leveling.

“Fame” is another thing that affects you character. Your character has a separate stat, which is called Fame, and it's basically how famous you are. You gain Fame from finishing quests, or you can pay an NPC to spread you name around. The later is very expensive, so you are better off doing quests. Once you have a certain amount of Fame, you can equip certain high level weapons and equipment. This becomes important later in the game.

The end boss for the main story line is randomly generated and is somewhere between floors 44-50 I think. However, once you are done, the game does not stop. You can keep going for as long as you like. The game will continue to give you new quests and items to acquire. I've heard there are people that have been to level 10,000 of the dungeon.

Now, most of the stuff in Fate is not all that unique, or awe-inspiring, so why does it get a 9/10 for gameplay? Everything in Fate just blends together nicely. It's really hard to describe if you have not played it. Everything from the simple item management, to the fast load times, just makes the game feel well polished and well made. I could name good things about this game for a long time, but my review is too long already. All you need to know is that Fate is one of the best playing PC dungeon crawlers around. It's simple, yet deep enough to keep you glued to your PC for hours.

Replay value and Longevity 10/10

Fate is quite possibly the most re-playable single player game that I have ever come across in my gaming life. I say “single player” since Fate has no multiplayer mode to speak of, yet there is so much replay value here that one can not deny it.

The randomly generated dungeons can keep you playing this game for months and months. You will be getting random equipment drops with random stats, and be fighting random enemies. The fact that the dungeon never really ends, yet remains interesting for as long as you want it to, shows how solid the replay value is for this game. Heck, I'm playing Fate for the second time, which is not common for me in this day and age of my gaming life.

When you complete the main quest, you have another option as well. You can retire your character and pass an heirloom down to your offspring. You will then play as your offspring in the next game, and start the game with the stat increasing item and a certain amount of Fame since you are the offspring of a hero. You can keep passing down heirlooms as many times as you like and retire as many characters as you like.

This game just has tons of stuff to do. While it does not have any multiplayer, the single player game offers more than enough for anyone who wants to play this, at any time, for however long.



Okay, I'm going to level with you here. If you play PC dungeon crawlers and you have not played this game, go buy it. It's great. It's a simple game that has enough depth to keep you playing for months and months. Yet, you can still sit down with Fate, play it for 15 minutes of your time and make some progress.

It's really a well made game, and it really is cheap. Fate comes highly recommended by me.

My review score 9/10

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 05/19/08, Updated 06/04/09

Game Release: Fate (US, 05/18/05)