The renowned martial arts adventure game series Fate Seeker launched its latest sequel, Fate Seeker: Journey, on December 12th. Unlike the two previous titles focusing on stories and puzzle-solving, Fate Seeker: Journey has further developed the combat system with Roguelite elements, making this series more exciting than ever.
Hades with Chinese Kung Fu
In Fate Seeker: Journey, players continue the story as the protagonist from Fate Seeker II, Zhuge Yu, the hero detective that saved China in the Song Dynasty.
In the game, some accident has rendered Zhuge Yu unconscious and without his memories. Our young hero wakes up in a mysterious space crowded with enemies and challenges, and he needs to fight his way out to unravel the secrets behind how he ended up there.
The game uses the same combat system as Fate Seeker II, but the developers removed the limitations between each weapon type. Players can now experience swords, knives, fists and spears freely with all the martial arts abilities available in the game.
Fate Seeker: Journey’s combat design has very clear ideas; the martial arts abilities and schools span six combat styles, including Crit, Weapon switching, elemental damage, attack, combo attack and controlled attack.
With the four weapons mentioned above, players can theoretically finish the game with any 1 of 24 different combinations as their build.
Like other Roguelikes, this game allows players to get stronger from one run to the next, bringing special items into their next attempt to upgrade weapons or unlocking buffs for Zhuge Yu after they have defeated specific bosses or recovered important memories.
Old friends, new stories
In Zhuge Yu's quest to retrieve his memory, he encounters many NPCs that showed up in Fate Seeker II. Some of them already have an extensive history with Zhuge Yu, but the setting opens a brand new story because of Zhuge Yu's memory loss. For players who have played the previous game, this is very refreshing and builds upon the story in a satisfying way.
On the other hand, for players who only want to experience thrilling martial arts moves and do not know the previous stories, Fate Seeker II is still a good choice. The development team did not focus on storytelling, and the most attractive part of the game is always the well-designed combat and rich choice in builds.
Whether as a standalone Roguelite martial arts action game or a short side-story sequel that complements the extensive combat scenes lacking in the previous adventure title, Fate Seeker: Journey is a great way for Chinese video games to close out 2022.