Kyrandia is in trouble again! But this time it's not that easy to determine where it comes from. The realm is slowly disappearing bit by bit. The royal Mystics don't have a clue what to do (that rhymes ;). But fortunately, a giant hand has obviously experienced this phenomenon before: someone needs to retrieve the anchor stone from the center of the world. On the hand's diagram of the world, you can clearly see a lot of lava there, but who cares? The youngest member of the mystics is chosen for this mission: Zanthia.
The plot is once again painful! A hand? It's presented without the tiniest bit of irony! The center of the world? Oh well...
But at least the characters do have character this time! Brandon, Kallak, Darm, Malcolm and all the other people in part 1 were just boring types of persons without personality. Zanthia, Marko and the other protagonists in part 2 have a bit more background. That doesn't mean they're really deep characters. But at least they have their own typical signs.
Westwood also succeeded in making the game funny. In part 1 the jokes were boring and annoying, they didn't seem natural. But here they fit. Not a masterpiece of modern humour, but guaranteed to make you smile once in a while (again ;).
The game's engine is basically still the same though. The inventory is still limited, but to 20 items. That's enough most of the time. Still it's incomprehensible why this limit exists! The one-click controls suck. But the impact on the puzzles aren't as bad as in part 1, because Westwood stresses a new kind of puzzle: brewing magical potions. Most of the time you walk around collecting ingrediences of which there is an (at least sometimes) unlimited number lying around. Interesting.
The downpoint is you can still die, so you have to save as often as possible! But at least I didn't encounter any dead ends anymore. They are still there. To find them is virtually impossible though. You really have to be extremely stupid to eat several objects until you have none left to use...
On the whole, Hand of Fate is a nice Adventure for beginners. It's easy to solve, there are no brain-killers. The graphics also have improved very much. And even the plot (while still far from good) is not that stereotype anymore. But just don't expect Lucas Arts quality...


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