Fate
Originally released back in 2005, Fate is a dungeon crawler in the vein of Diablo and Dungeon Siege, only with a friendlier presentation and a less intimidating learning curve. It’s also the brainchild of Travis Baldree, the man who went on to create the successful Torchlight series alongside members of the original Diablo development team. This means that Fate shares many similarities with its more ambitious descendants, not least of which is the ingenious pet system, and while it’s hard to recommend this relic over Blizzard and Runic Games’ latest achievements, there’s still something to be said for hitting the 200th floor with your pet unicorn in-toe.
While it’s not uncommon for a dungeon crawler to randomise its many floors, Fate takes the idea to the extreme by randomizing just about everything. The one part of the story that’s set in stone is the name of the central town, Grove. This sleepy hollow sits atop a labyrinthine dungeon that’s essentially bottomless, and while the initial objective is to reach around the 50th floor to slay some mythical beast, the name and form that beastie takes is entirely random. The same is also true of the many side-quests that you can accept from Grove’s citizens.
In keeping with the game’s almost overwhelming open-endedness, character creation and advancement is less scripted and more progressive. There are no archetypes to choose from as each character begins the game as a blank slate. You can then invest your experience points into four basic Attributes in addition to 15 more specialized Skills – ranging from Critical Strike and Hammers to Spell Casting and Charm Magic. This results in a combat system that feels a bit one-dimensional, partly in the sense that the numbers feel very close to the surface and partly in the sense that the melee and magic is lacking in personality. A touch more creativity in this area would have been appreciated.
It seems disingenuous to criticise Fate for its plain competency, especially considering its retro standing and the modest price point it originally retailed for, but there are elements of the game’s design that haven’t aged as gracefully as we might’ve hoped. Thankfully, the much lauded pet system isn’t one of them. You start your adventure by selecting a cat or a dog. This un-killable familiar will aid you in battle and can even make a trip to town while you’re still plundering the dungeon’s depths. This means you can offload all the weapons and trinkets you’ve accumulated without returning to the surface.
Considering how much loot the game throws at you, the pets are a welcome convenience that diminish the need to micro-manage your inventory. This helpful attitude is also true of the three-pronged death system. You can either trade some of your experience points to be brought back to life on the spot, exchange some of your gold to be transported to a random (but nearby) floor or give up all your gold to be resurrected three floors up. The third option ets you reclaim your lost earnings if you can make it back to your corpse – similar in principle to Dark Souls, but without forcing the issue.
When you’re not trading blows with ogres, demons and undead creatures or being caught out by a chest-shaped mimic, the game offers you the chance to relax with a fishing minigame. Far from the reeling delights of Sega Bass Fishing or even the more streamlined approach of Ocarina Of Time, fishing in Fate is just a case of clicking on the appropriate button once you get a nibble. You don’t ever need to bait the hook or change the lure – just like in real fishing! – and far from going down the Pokémon route of different-tiered rods, you’re stuck with the same pole from start to finish.
This lack of angling variation feels like a missed opportunity. The fatigue that sets in after clearing ten floors in quick succession would have benefitted greatly from some worthwhile downtime, but as it stands, the fishing is just a brain-dead way of gambling your time for some useful loot. Unsurprisingly, the most common thing you’ll find on the end of your hook is a fish, but surprisingly, these are mainly used to turn your initially innocuous pet into a more formidable beast. This can be anything from a lowly Tunnel Spider or moderate Dire Wolf to a more formidable Venomous Wyvern or a clublugging Mountain Ogre.
When you take into account the Retirement system that lets you shelve your current character before filling the boots of their descendant, Fate is the sort of game you could theoretically play forever. But while this re-release offers the usual Steam benefits, including trading cards and achievements, it’s also superseded by its own expansion packs. Fate: The Traitor Soul, in particular, upped the stakes by including all the content of the original game and the first expansion pack in addition to a wider range of pets, a new dungeon and even an auto-sort button for the inventory.
The fact that Fate was and sadly remains a single-player game, coupled with the fact that you can still download The Traitor Soul from the WildTangent website for less than a tenner, makes this a nostalgic venture at best. The original game is still infinitely playable and may even coax a smile or two from those who experienced it in their younger years,but considering the low yet not insignificant asking price, it’s hard to recommend this as anything more than a history lesson in dungeon-crawling. If you want to experience the origins of Torchlight then be our guest, but otherwise, you may want to hold off till the next fated Steam sale.
Details
FORMAT: PC
ORIGIN: US
PUBLISHER: WildTangent
DEVELOPER: WildStudios
RELEASE: Out now
PLAYERS: 1
MINIMUM SPEC: 800MHz Processor, 512MB RAM, 16MB Graphics Card, 400MB, DirectX 8.0
ONLINE REVIEWED: N/A
