Once more, the 1001 list presents a complete unknown to me, this time in the form of action RPG Threads of Fate. It's yet another title from Squaresoft, which makes me wonder just what kind of development farm they had back in the day, such was the amount of stuff they seemed to churn out, multiple times a year, year after year.
But this isn't a familiar title. Its original title, Dew Prism, isn't familiar either. What is this about? What adventures are in store? I've absolutely no idea. Let's get going.
Fun Times
Threads of Fate opens with a choice of characters, Rue and Mint, each with a different tale to tell over the course of the game.
I am fairly certain the graphical errors are on me, and whatever emulation settings I've got going. I'll know for sure if the next PlayStation game we play looks ridiculous, I suppose. Here, though, it's just the menu that looks iffy. The game itself seems to be able to pass as a nice widescreen game, should that be your thing. I don't know if it originally was a widescreen game. No idea. Never seen it in my life. I'm waffling.
Speaking of waffles.
Mint is a princess. The kind of annoying, troublemaking princess. The kind of princess that we mean when we call someone a princess.
Frustrations
This little introduction isn't hard to follow along, and if you like the art style I suppose it isn't hard to look at either. While it is colourful and stylised, I am not a fan at all, and the writing isn't doing itself any favours either.
Mints' story is the more lighthearted and humourous of the two, but if you're not on board with the style in the first five minutes, are you going to be on board through the next ten hours? We've not even got into any gameplay yet, and I have my doubts that I'll get very far through that either.
Further story developments have us on a ship that crashes, and a first quest, I suppose, of tracking down two thugs in a forest.
This is the hub town of Carona, and it's a quiet place. It's a bland place. It's a place that sort of looks like a bunch of textured cubes and little else. We're in that scary place in video game history, where 2D backgrounds were thrown out of the window and fully three-dimensional spaces were their replacement, but they're not fully baked yet. It's early days, the hardware of the PlayStation is limited.
No. Wait. What am I talking about? Metal Gear Solid had released already, and that looked amazing. Threads of Fate looks ridiculous.
A short, safe, tutorial section kicks off the forest area, where we swing our deadly hoops into some flying blob monsters, and shoot ranged magic attacks into their face from afar. I wasn't liking the gameplay, in the same way that I wasn't liking the writing. Things were not looking good.
At this point, I paused the game to get somewhat angry over my printer. I didn't even need to print anything, but that's how life works. An hour or so later, after a customer support chat, I was ready to give Threads of Fate a second chance.
Rue has a more traditional story. He's got my memory, like every other cliched character, and is about to have his world turned upside down.
A man who is clearly right-handed has killed Claire, our wife? Significant other? Flatmate? No idea. The writing is a tad better, but this is still just run of the mill storytelling, as told by goofy looking cartoon characters.
Does Threads of Fate want to be serious or silly? I'm not attached to any character and don't care about what happens to any of them.
The two stories start ridiculously similarly, but they are different so we'll consider Rue's trip a fresh start. He sees events from a different perspective than Mint, of course, but our first quest is much the same - perhaps even identical. Thugs. Forest. Off you go.
The tutorial section highlights the differences between the characters, with Rue being able to shapeshift into the enemies that he has dispatched, giving him different abilities and so on. That's a gameplay mechanic that might have some legs - were it not a little cumbersome to do.
Cumbersome is probably the wrong word, but pushing square to enter a menu to select a character to move across a puddle slightly faster to push square to select Rue to return to the action... bit of a faff, isn't it, or am I just looking for every little thing to hate?
It's a mechanic used right from the start of the story, as we find the thugs getting all nefarious in the forest. We are clearly a massive sword-wielding hero, capable of killing all manner of monsters, so let's get this over with.
Oh, sorry Threads of Fate. Let's turn into something scarier than a boy first.
Not a 'Saber Tiger'? Are you sure? If I were a thug facing off against a Saber Tiger, I'd drop what I was doing and get the hell out of the forest. What do you want from me?
Well, it worked, I suppose. Who did we save from a hideous fate?
I don't care about you, Elena. I don't care about you finding your parents. You think I'm a monster that can transform into a human when I need to?
Final Word
Game over. No more. I'm not wasting my time with that which I don't enjoy, and I don't enjoy Threads of Fate. I don't enjoy the writing, I don't enjoy the look, I don't enjoy the controls, though they are simple enough to grasp. I suppose I do enjoy that it's a fast-paced action RPG, rather than anything turn-based, but that's no way near enough of an enjoyment to be able to get me back in front of Threads of Fate.
In another world, it could be a hidden gem, but in this one, it's not. It didn't grab me, and I'm not interested in seeing where it goes or what it does, or even what it brings to the table. Clearly, someone liked it, and enough someones like it to warrant its inclusion on a 1001 list, but I don't see it.
I might see it, should I spend an hour or two with it, but that's an hour or two I won't get back. Those first impressions count, and Threads of Fate just didn't have a good one with me. Maybe it will with you. Can't hurt to try, I suppose.
Looks alright in widescreen, at least.
Fun Facts
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (September 2013)
Threads of Fate, developed by Square Product Development Division 3, first released in 1999.
Version played: PlayStation, 2000, via emulation.