The Hand Of Merlin Early Access Review: He Could At Least Lend One

The Hand Of Merlin was a pleasant surprise. Arthurian legend is no newcomer to the world of gaming, but this one has a bit of a twist, fusing parallel universes and… alien worlds? Does this sci-fi mash-up make it any good?

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Merlin is a bit of a busy body, but the trail hasn’t gone cold with The Greatest Wizard Of All-Time. Forget your Pratchett characters; Merlin was the daddy. Anyway, Arthur’s dead, but the sage(?) has a new task for a band of heroes, and it involves taking the Grail from Avalon through Europe to Jerusalem.

Now, having this chap accompany you would signal an easy feat. Instead, you line up a bunch of merry men (and women), and set forth to defeat the classic medieval scallywags, in addition to some abominations. It’s a challenging game, and it makes this bold statement at the beginning.

The Hand Of Merlin Early Access Review (PC via Steam)

You can choose an Easy or Normal mode. Let’s pretend that I mostly played on the latter. As a turn-based rogue-like, The Hand Of Merlin, from Room-C Games, Croteam, and Versus Evil (Hitchhiker and Cardpocalypse), is pretty forgiving and allows you to dip your toes in the adventure early on, but by the time you’re in Western Europe, it gets hairy. Well, slimy.

Beginning with a cast of three; an all-rounder knight, a ranged archer and a magical scholar, you pick a couple of core spells (new ones unlocked the more runs you commit to), then set out for an adventure. Bear in mind you can unlock new characters, but you need to get to Jerusalem on normal mode.

The world map will usually give you one or two routes you can take – some clearly state they are more dangerous than others, but with greater rewards, while other times, a supposedly peaceful path will have random encounters that push you to the limit. There are normal locations to stop at, cities to trade with, heal and unlock, and corrupted areas to free the people.

You will come to spots where you’ll have to pick a card – any card – from a hand that will determine your fate. Well, not so drastic, but you might stumble on some hunters, and to decide on what it is you hunt, you have to pick from a random card.

Pick A Card

You’re shown the cards, then they’re flipped over and shuffled in a manner where you’re unable to know which is which. This adds a bit of spontaneity to your adventure, but when you’re running low on health and supplies, this can often be an arse-clenching moment of doom. I’ve never died in these situations, but they were the catalysts for my demise in a subsequent battle.

These are awarded after a battle but also in events. Sometimes it’s worth risking to see what you get as the gold will buy you new weapons, armour, health, and relics that act as a mana-like option – usually one use per battle.

Depending on your decisions, you might be awarded gold and supplies, or if you take some humble pie, you’ll get renown (R) which goes into the XP kitty. Each time you get 50R, you can invest in your party. This doesn’t discriminate against one character as they each get a new skill. You start with two that go up to four. Once you’ve filled up your skills, you can stack them with a similar power but better.

Ideally, you’ll need to balance your party with damage dealers, ranged attacks and support. That said, with each incremental skill, you can opt for one of the three. My melee characters were usually the tanks, so investing in attacks and defence is wise, but because of their power, adding a support skill or a relic that enables them to bail out others is worth it due to their health status.

Your Turn

As a turn-based game, The Hand Of Merlin allows you to strategically position your party to anticipate an attack or rooted defensive strategy. Naturally, a ranged character can pick off enemies with buffs like double – even triple hits, 100% accuracy and so on. Even the old man has his uses as he can place temporary walls to protect against incoming attacks.

Like most games of its ilk, players can reduce the damage taken depending if they take cover or not. Standing in the open leaves you vulnerable to damage, but you do have the option to stand behind a half cover effect or full. With the latter, and projectiles from the front are nulled, but these can be destroyed by enemies – notably the abominations.

As you can expect, there aren’t health potions or consumables once you start a battle, so you have to stock up beforehand and aim to have a relic or skill that will protect you. With each run, you can invest in a core skill, and as advised, a health restoration trait is ideal for starting. 

The Hand Of Merlin isn’t brutally hard – you do get to see a good deal of the world before it all kicks off where every path leads to some heroic battle of sorts. Still, it’s nowhere as challenging as King Arthur: Knight’s Tale. A similar setting with familiar characters, the latter, while in Early Access, really does test you early on, whereas this game is a little more forgiving. But only just.

Also an Early Access title, The Hand Of Merlin boasts plenty of paths, enemy encounters and a reasonable number of heroes to play with. I haven’t been able to unlock all of these features so far as, as I said, this is a tough game but has plenty on offer at this early stage. In terms of tactical gameplay, it doesn’t reinvent the wheel. The standouts would be the storyline, multiple paths to take, and the rewarding skillsets the further you progress into the game.