Threads of Fate: Vindicated?

[WulfeLuer]

I've been wandering up and down the interwebs, deciding on what to add to my glorious backlog of games, and came across something of a personal conundrum. I'd like some feedback, up to and including "WulfeLuer's a dumbass" if it's applicable.

Way back in the day, Squaresoft was releasing a battery of "B-list" games, and being nerdy lemmings, most of the local gamer crowd ate them up. A lot them were strange but enjoyable, or flawed but fun (oh Legend of Mana how I loved thee) but there was one that everybody seemed to hate.

That game was Threads of Fate. Nobody liked it around here, and anyone who had a copy dumped it at the earliest opportunity. I wandered into an EB about a week after release and found stacks of used complete copies for $6.99. I nabbed one and fired it up. I don't remember all that much (itself kinda damning) but I was bored and then frustrated. I banished it to the trade fodder drawer and never looked at it again. I asked some buddies for their opinions and...well I've rarely encountered that kind of bile in real life over anything. Yes, I knew people that would bash anything if they thought it'd make them look cool, and a couple of people that hated EVERYTHING that wasn't labeled Final Fantasy, but this is the only game that ever became persona non grata in the local crowd. To the best of my knowledge outside opinion wasn't all that different; internet fora either bashed it or didn't discuss it all, prices on eBay and others were consistently under $15, often $10 or less. I eventually forgot all about it.

But then I stumbled across Threads in various places online, and everybody seems to like it just fine these days. The game regularly fetches comparable prices to other releases of the time ($25 plus, with $35 plus being common), and I have yet to find a used copy in real life for the last year or so. There's not much discussion about it, but what's there is actually pretty positive.

So what's changed? Was the local crowd (and I) being soulless minions of orthodoxy and hating the game because we thought we should? Was the game genuinely bad until some point in the storyline nobody bothered to get to? Did something come to light that proved that it wasn't nearly as bad as we thought it was?

[celerystalker]

That time in the PS1's life was heavily saturated by RPGs, especially from Square. I was working in a FuncoLand at the time, and you had in just a couple of years Final Fantasy VIII, Legend of Mana, Legend of Dragoon, Vagrant Story, Jade Coccoon, Star Ocean 2, Tales of Destiny II, Shadow Madness, Suikoden II, Brave Fencer Musashi, Grandia, Guardian's Crusade, Rhapsody, Lunar, Lunar 2, Thousand Arms, Chrono Cross, Final Fantasy IX, Saga Frontier 2, Vandal Hearts 2, Saiyuki, Persona 2, Alundra 2, Valkyrie Profile, and loads more. Square was high on it enough to promote it alongside Chrono Cross and Legend of Mana with ads and even promo soundtrack discs. Think about it, though... three RPGs at the same time from the same company. You couldn't give away Suikoden II back then. Ol' Dew Prism never stood a chance.

I don't think people hated it... but I never met anyone pumped up for it. I think if you were playing all of those RPGs that were new at the time, you're probably just now getting to the damn thing.

[Edmond Dantes]

Threads of Fate isn't an RPG though, to my memory its more like either a Platformer or a Zelda-esque.

I remember finding it fun but unremarkable. I played through Mint's campaign, but had no interest in seeing the boy character's through.

[WulfeLuer]

Yes, that's a fair enough reaction. It's a little hard to believe just how big a glut of RPGs came along on the PS1 (and that was just one console at the time), and a collective 'meh' reaction is pretty understandable. But it generated a rather large amount of hate from even normally neutral players very quickly, at least from what I observed at the time. Personally I just found it kinda boring, and forgettable. Compared to what else was out there, that qualifies as crap I suppose.

Every once in a blue moon I'd look it up and see if any ever cared about it, but then I eventually stopped caring altogether about video games for a while in favor of various tabletop pursuits. But then I came back and after some fairly tempestuous times got back into a position where I could actually collect and OWN that glut of lovely lovely RPGs. And I noticed that Threads was nowhere to be found locally. There's plenty available online, though, and then I found some articles that actually painted it in a positive light. I was wondering when and if attitudes changed and why, or if it was just us local pack of nerds deciding to lose our minds the same way for the same reasons over dumb stuff for once instead of losing our minds and splitting into factions over dumb stuff like usual.

[FieryReign]

I've always known the game to be average. With unlikable characters.

[celerystalker]

Pretty sure it was your local scene overreacting on this one. At my Funco at the time, I remember quite clearly, one person came specifically for it on day one. It was a lady who always bought every new RPG on PS1, and she came in looking for Threads of Fate, but talked about nothing but Grandia for about 20 minutes. I was pretty in touch with the customer base at that time, and it was mainly buzz about Chrono Cross. Everyone wanted Chrono Cross if they were RPG folks.

The rest of the customers were basically moms asking if there were any Pokémon games on Playstation.

Oh, except for this guy who was at the time in his 40s and would come in and tell us about his D&D group even though none of us knew him... I swear, he gave me a blow by blow verbal walkthrough of Virtual Hydlide one day.

[bb_hood]

Threads of Fate isn't an RPG though, to my memory its more like either a Platformer or a Zelda-esque.

I remember finding it fun but unremarkable. I played through Mint's campaign, but had no interest in seeing the boy character's through.

Yeah, you kinda run around and shoot magic at stuff.

I think it might have recieved some hate because it featured an 'alternate lifestyle' character

[Scissors]

I bought it when it first came out and thought it was a decent game. I found it enjoyable enough to play through with both characters. I never knew anyone else who played it though.

[drtomoe123]

I bought a copy and played through it back when I got heavy into PS1 collecting around late '07-early '08. I really enjoyed the game -- especially the atmosphere. The colors, the music, the story...it all really popped and the whole package was really charming. Even now, when I look back on it I kind of think of it as an arcadey action RPG. The game even does a scanline trick to output at a seemingly higher resolution than most other PS1 releases (which really adds to the cool look of ToF).

[WulfeLuer]

Wow. So nothing more scathing than 'meh' and more positive views on Threads. I guess I was just another angry gamer lemming after all. Looks like I'm gonna add this to the glorious backlog of glory after all.

Also, thanks for the shopping list, celerystalker. I'd forgotten that wallets were afraid of spontaneous combustion.