Pros: Nice plot, two (somewhat) separate storylines.
Cons: Too short.
The Bottom Line: Threads of Fate is a quite short RPG, with two separate storylines. It's quite fun, but loses its flavor after a week. Good for a rental!
C_A's Full Review: Threads of Fate for PlayStation 1
This is yet another old review of mine. Sorry if it sucks, seriously. Haha.
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After almost a year of wait, Threads of Fate was finally shipped overseas an released in American stores. I can’t say that I was “lying in wait” for this game to come out. Hell, I didn’t know about it until last month. Anyway, Threads of Fate is an Action/RPG that has two different playable characters for two somewhat different plots. Not entirely different, as advertised on the back of the game case. There is Rue, the depressed kid with a wicked sword and a mostly serious story, and there is Mint, the most violent girl I have ever seen with a somewhat less serious plot than Rue’s.
Graphics (7)
I do not see how the hell some people can give the graphics in this game a 10. The graphics in this game are not perfect, people. This game may have had perfect graphics had it been released three years ago but now it’s “good” at best. I must say that the graphics are a lot sharper than those in Brave Fencer Musashi[den]. What I mean by that is the character designs themselves look pretty good, and not super-deformed (yay). I can not say that the dungeons were designed very well, because it just had the same scenes over and over and over in every dungeon I believe. All they had to do was reuse the graphics, not adding anything new.
The enemies in this game are not really innovative when it comes to design. “Oh wow, there’s a white tadpole with piranha-like teeth. OHH DEAR.” The guardians even look a bit corny. One of them is just a bunch of random pixels strewn together with two (or three) heads attached to it. The puppets looked more like mummies, Bubba (a big fat blob) looked nothing like my cousin Bubba….oh wait, in fact they look exactly the same. Hrm, what a coincidence?
Control (5.5)
Anyone that has played this game knows that this has to be the low point of the game. I have never hit myself so much with a Dual-Shock controller in my life. There were just some control factors in this game that severely irritated me. I usually hit myself repeatedly when I am fighting multiple enemies and I’m only aiming for a certain one. Threads of Fate has a stupid semi-automatic targeting system that really got on my nerves throughout the game.
Well, I guess I should talk about the good things about the controls. When it’s one on one fighting I suppose that isn’t so bad. Also I didn’t see anything buggy about jumping all over the place, except…
WHEN YOU’RE PLAYING THOSE DAMN MINI-GAMES. This game has the absolute worst mini-games that I have ever played. Final Fantasy VII had snowboarding, Xenogears had a 3D gear-to-gear combat engine. Threads of Fate has….. “Big Balls” and “Trumpets of Joy.” Well, the games themselves aren’t that bad, it is just the fact that you have to beat a small 2D side-scrolling level before you can play the games. These levels were designed to annoy the hell out of everyone. Jump, Jump, dodge, Jump-Kick, fall in hole. Start level over. Jump, Jump-Kick, dodge, dodge, slice, slice, almost near the end of the level, on last platform…unforeseen bunny rabbit uses magical rod to blast you off the platform. Start level over. Dislocate knee (yes, I did that. Oops.) and turn Playstation off in disgust. The sad thing is, if you play both storylines, you have to do all three mini-games twice! AHHHHHH!!!!!! Oh, and one of them four times. To quote Mint, “Ah, barfing is so much refreshing.”
So, the graphics were pretty good. They were seemingly outdated to me, but not to many others. I guess I am getting senile.
Music/Sound (6.5)
Well, I really must say that I found most of the music in this game flat and uninteresting. There was nothing there that a Uematsu or a Mitsuda could not pull off. Out of the limited track on this game, however, I did like about two tracks. They were the theme for Belle & Duke (more on them later) and the ending theme before the credits.
I’m not one to pay attention to sound effects as much as the other people out there, so I can not complain about the sword slashing, the magic blasts, and the doors closing like picky people. Since I did not pay attention to the sound effects one bit, I’ll just sound like an EGM guy and say they were great. Overall, most of the music was flat and regular, with a few exceptions.
Gameplay (6.0)
After pondering for three whole seconds as to how I was going to explain the gameplay factors in Threads of Fate, I decided to just split it up between the two characters, Rue and Mint. They both have completely different setups when it comes to fighting and abilities.
Rue
Rue’s basic set-up is to hack and slash at things until they die. What sets him apart from Mint (and everyone else, for that matter) is the fact that he can transform into most of the monsters that he defeats. This becomes essential to getting past puzzles and such. Or you could use these abilities to gain an advantage over certain baddies. Yes, you can even transform into the tadpole piranha and my cousin Bubba.
Mint
Mint’s attacks are using her gigantic rings to beat the crap out of people and a somewhat cute jump-kick (that happens to be used in a lot of the cut-scenes). Mint has the ability to use a crapload of magic, as well. She can use fire spells, water spells, ice spells, and others as well. Mint gets different elemental types of spells as she finds them in dungeons or if someone just flat out gives it to her. Her magic gets more powerful when she finds certain items (which sometimes you have to go through utter hell to get). Damn, I didn’t get any of these items until the second time I played through Mint’s story.
Huh? What was that? How could I play through her story twice this quick? To tell the truth I have beaten the game three times as I am typing this (8/4/00). That was quite a low point to this game. The first time I played as Rue and beat it in about 9 hours. The next time I played as Mint and beat it again in 8. Then, I played as Mint again and beat it in 6 and a half hours. It was a pity this game wasn’t longer than Brave Fencer Musashi, but it took me 6 and a half hours to beat that game too, but oh well.
As I mentioned before, the dungeons in this game were bland to say the least. First they have the base of the dungeon, and then they use the same part of the dungeon over and over again somewhat. A good example would be a level of the game called the “Tower of Maya”. It’s just “up the stairs, up the stairs, outside, annoying puzzle.. up the stairs, up the stairs, outside, annoying puzzle” in an endless loop until the boss fight. Also, Rue and Mint mostly go to the same exact dungeons throughout the game, except for one or two. That did not add much variety to the advertised entirely different storylines. Sorry, I can’t help myself. That one line just makes me so mad.
I never truly understood the items in this game until the third time I played through it. Yes, yes, I am that damn pathetic. I just sold everything that came my way. Books, stones, legendary armor, all that crap. What I did not know was you could give this crap to certain people in the town and they would give you huge discounts at their stores or power you up a lot. I would rather get a 25000 dollar discount on rare items than sell something for a mere 500. Wouldn’t you?
Side-quests? Um, there were not any side-quests to my knowledge. There was none of any importance, that is. That was another disappointing thing for this game. It was quite a bit linear. “You need to do this next, and then this and this and this. No, you can’t do that. Go there.” Bahhhhh.
The gameplay overall was better than average, but nothing to be really proud of. The shortness of the game was what really brought down the score. Come on, if one of the storylines was 20 hours by itself, this game could have been a blockbuster.
Difficulty (5.0)
Hrm, now I see why this game was rated E for Everyone. Threads of Fate is a damn easy game if you play it enough. 95% of all the enemies in this game can be defeated easily just by punching and kicking them. Also, the guardians/bosses in this game are not to be taken seriously at all. It takes a good 20 to 30 seconds to figure out their entire stupid strategy. The only boss in this game that you can’t figure out is Rod. Well, you can figure him out the first 25 times you fight him, anyway. Then he becomes a strong and unpredictable force to be reckoned with. Hell, even the final boss is easy compared to this guy near the end of the game. I went through the final boss during my second and third time playing through this game without losing a single hit point. Bah, short ‘n easy is not how I like my games. I prefer them to be long and somewhat challenging at least.
Story/Plot
Ahh hell, I can’t give a score for both stories combined, so I have decided to give separate scores. One for each story. I am doing this because they differ so much in scores.
Rue (8.5)
I particularly liked Rue’s story. Wait, I need to ask some dark guy in the corner something. “Can I spoil the first three minutes or so of the game?” “OK.” There, now that is settled. This is the story of how Claire, Rue’s sister-figure (someone that is like a sister to him) is killed by a rat bastard with a huge and fat claw that’s 9 feet long. Rue then mopes around for three years, in hope of finding a relic, an item with unimaginable powers. This story went kind of deep and was much more involving than most Action/RPGs I played.
Mint (5.0)
I guess you could call this the comic relief story of the game. The basic plot is that Princess Mint is kicked out of her castle because she’s a lazy, clumsy, and overly violent person. She then decides to get a relic, in order to get revenge and dominate the entire planet. Although I gave Mint’s story a low score, that does not mean that it was bad. Only the plot was lacking. Every thing else was pretty much funny as hell. I guess this storyline had a great “atmosphere”, or whatever those professional people call it.
There were a few side-characters in this game, too. Like Belle and Duke. For about half of the game they were enemies also looking for the relic, but after a while they give up and occasionally help you. Their theme is pretty basic to most but it’s all good when I listen to it.
There’s also Rod, the Blade Star. He is known as the “Weapon-Making Swordsman”. He makes his own weapons and tests them out in battle himself. He is more like an optional boss fight. I only fight him because he gives you a thousand dollars if you whip his sorry tail. Most of the other characters I could care less about.
Overall, if you are looking for a serious story, play Rue’s. If you are looking for one to laugh at and fall over for no reason, Mint’s story is the way to go.
Replay (6.0)
For reasons unknown I will probably beat this game five more times before I trade it for some game that plays more than 30 hours. I guess it is the comical attractions that make me want to play this game a lot. Too bad I will have to endure those damned mini-games several more times. Unghhhhh….give me the Pepto.
Overall (6.3)
I argued with myself whether I should have given this game a 6.0 or 6.5, so I just said, “To hell with it” and gave it a damn 6.3. Threads of Fate featured good graphics, irritating control, fun gameplay, a flat soundtrack, and two varying storylines. If you are one of those hardcore gamers, I do not suggest you buy this game for the retail of forty dollars. Go to blockbuster and rent it for 5 days. That should give you time to beat both storylines.
Rod: “She’s the Pulsar-Inferno Typhoon Omega!”
Mint: “What an ugly boat.”
Rod: “She’s not a boat! She’s the Pulsar-Inferno Typhoon Omega!”
Mint: “Ohh that’s too long of a name. Let’s see, P – In – T – O! Pinto!”
Rod: ”Hey, don’t give my baby a stinky name!”
ITEM CONDITION: This ORIGINAL "Black Label" (NOT "Greatest Hits ") version Game is BRAND NEW - FACTORY SEALED and in flawless MINT condition.There are...More at eBay
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