FATE: Reawakened

I went into FATE: Reawakened knowing exactly what it is: a remaster of four early-2000s dungeon crawlers that a lot of people remember as their first proper ARPG. The original FATE came out in 2005, predating Torchlight by a few years, and its lead designer Travis Baldree would later go on to help build that very franchise. The lineage is real. The question for 2025, though, is whether a coat of paint and a bundle deal is enough, and the answer lands somewhere firmly in the middle. The core loop is classic click-to-kill: you drop into the town of Grove, pick up quests from townspeople, then descend through procedurally generated dungeon floors fighting increasingly nasty monsters, scooping loot, and leveling up. There are no fixed character classes, which I appreciate. Instead, you distribute points across four attributes (Strength, Dexterity, Vitality, and Magic) and 15 different skills on level-up, meaning you can freely build toward a heavy melee bruiser, a ranged archer, or a spell-slinging arcane cannon. Practically speaking, reviewers and players have noted that magic builds feel the most satisfying to pilot, since melee combat suffers from animation lock that forces you to stand closer to enemies than feels right. Ranged and spell approaches sidestep that frustration neatly. The pet system is one of the franchise's signature bits and it still carries its weight. You pick from seven companion types, they fight alongside you, and you can send them back to town to sell off your junk inventory while you keep pushing deeper. Feeding fish to your pet can temporarily transform them into more powerful creatures, which is charming and mechanically useful. Fishing itself is a genuine side activity rather than fluff: catch fish from dungeon ponds, consume them for timed stat boosts, and occasionally reel in artifacts and rings. It has been rebalanced in this version and some longtime fans find it slower than before, but it remains a welcome breather from dungeon carnage. The resurrection system also deserves a mention: when you die, you choose between three comeback options, each costing either experience points, gold, or a dungeon floor shift. It is low stakes but it adds a small moment of decision-making in an otherwise autopilot loop. Where FATE: Reawakened earns its honest criticism is in what it did not do. The visual upgrade is real - sharper textures, directional lighting, ambient occlusion - but the remaster made some baffling quality-of-life regressions. The quickbar dropped from six slots to four. You can no longer move while the inventory is open. Item swapping requires a full unequip before re-equipping, which is clunky. The pet can no longer pick up items or interact with vendors in the way it could in the originals on some platforms. For a remaster released in 2025, these are odd steps backward, and the community has noticed. Each of the four titles (FATE, Undiscovered Realms, The Traitor Soul, and The Cursed King) requires a fresh character, which adds replayability but also means the grind restarts from scratch each time. At roughly 20-25 hours per title, you are looking at a significant time commitment, and the combat loop starts showing its repetitive seams well before the credits roll on any single entry. This is genuinely not a game for everyone dropping in cold. If you want a narrative-driven RPG where choices reshape the world and characters have actual arcs, FATE: Reawakened will leave you hungry. The story in each title is minimal backdrop, not the main event. The writing exists to shuttle you toward the next dungeon level, nothing more. But if your definition of a good Saturday is watching loot numbers climb, fishing for a pet-transforming rare, and slowly turning a generic adventurer into an unstoppable spell-flinging machine, this collection delivers that loop across a serious amount of content. Steam players are sitting at a mostly positive consensus, which feels about right: it is a competent, occasionally buggy, nostalgia-forward remaster that plays it safe in ways that will frustrate fans who wanted more.

Monika · Scout Team

RPGs

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