Pretty little dungeoncrawler; and a pretty shallow timewaster too.
Graphics-wise, Fate is by far among the prettiest dungeoncrawlers out there, bar none. From character and monster models, lighting, and spell effects, there's very little to find fault with. Also, the palette is fairly strong, giving things a colourful look which manages to neatly avoid the twin traps of looking drab on one hand or cartoony campy on the other. The only minor complaint would be that at times, the overhead view gets obstructed by walls, making navigation through the dungeon slightly tedious.
For dungeoncrawlers arguably loot plays a very important role -- it's the main reason you'll be repeatedly diving down there -- and I'm happy to say that Fate delivers, and delivers in spades! High praise coming from me, and you know I usually manage to find fault in most RPG games because they use a stupidly linear "wood sword, stone sword, iron sword, steel sword" progression. Fate can't escape having a progressive base item system, but it shines in it's mods: instead of crappy "+1 health" low-end mods you see in almost all games of this genre, Fate sports generous 3% -30% and even HIGHER modifiers! It's not uncommon to be sporting mods on your items that practically double your base stats. And best of all, there are plenty of mods; dozens, hundreds. From linear +X mods to +% mods, and for both stats AND skills (not to mention derived skills such as defense, which itself is dependant on some other stats and skills too).
I cannot emphasise this enough: Fate's item mod system is where RPGs should be at. Enough with the old-school +1, +2, +3 stupid lazy programming system. In those days computers didn't have much in the way of storage (both memory and disk), so it was understandable that early RPGs only had a few basic items. But there is no excuse nowadays. A 3D model of a monster has WAY more data than a simple array of item modifiers. You'll get tired of killing the same monster 100 times, but you'll never get tired of getting a new item out of the 100. And in Fate, I'm talking about millions of permutations.
Yes, MILLIONS: remember Diablo and it's clones, which had a "prefix" (item) "suffix" style? So you probably saw "Strong Leather Armor of the Fox", where "strong" and "fox" were 2 mods? Well, in Fate, each item can have DOZENS of mods. Yes, I've seen items which had so many mods you had to move it to see them all. I sh!t you not. In short, Fate is the ultimate paradise for you item hoarders. You'll go crazy upgrading your stuff, and this is GOOD, compared to most other weakass games of this genre where you'll be wearing the same tired ol' armor for 10 levels before finding a better one.
The only drawback? It's a dungeoncrawler, period. There's practically no story whatsoever, the randomly generated NPC quests are as random as they get, and even the main quest ends with thanks from an NPC, same like the others. And there's no multiplayer, big ouch. It's like a huge, elaborate game of Solitaire. Crazy fun as hell, but still Solitaire.
The makers of MMOs and RPGs should learn from Fate's intricate item and mods system. Other than that, Fate doesn't have too much going for it, unfortunately, so you'll most likely be playing it between other "heavier" (as in, actually contain a story) RPGs. I would've rated it as "masterpiece" or "instant classic", however, as good as the item mod system is, it isn't really NEW. Fate just polished it up, polished it up real good. For that, I'm giving it "highly addictive" and two thumbs up, way up!