Not sure how many people even remember this game. Dewprism, or Threads of Fate abroad was a late Action-Rpg developed by Squaresoft for the PlayStation. The game revolves around a world where an ancient civilization known as the Aeons mastered the arts of magic and stored them in artifacts. The greatest one is simply known as the Relic (Dewprism in Japanese). The game has two different protagonists with their own scenarios that cross paths with each other. Rue is an amnesia young boy who has the strange power to transform into monsters he encounters. He was rescued by a girl named Claire who raised him like he was her brother. Before the story begins proper, their home is attacked by a cruel figure known as the Arm of Death. Claire is killed protecting Rue, which sets him on a quest to find the Relic to use its power to bring her back to life. Mint on the other hand is a the spoiled princess of the East Heaven Kingdom who is oddly afraid of pumpkins of all things.. Due to her selfishness and arrogance, Mint's younger sister Maya takes the throne instead and exiles Mint from the kingdom. Though Mint is a powerful mage, she can't defeat her sister as long as she uses the Book of Cosmos. So Mint seeks out the Relic to take back her kingdom before going on her grand plan to conquer the world itself.Obviously one story is more serious than the other, but both plots are actually pretty good.
The game plays similar to Brave Fencer Musashi with a combination of platforming and use of a hub town for all the story parts. Rue and Mint play very differently as Rue is more of a straight up fighter who can collect coins dropped by vanquished enemies which he can then use to transform into said monster to use their attacks or abilities for platforming purposes. Mint gains color coded magic that she can mix and match with various spell effects like Wide range or Power to produce various spell effects. MP can be charged by both characters from simply using melee attacks while HP is gained by taking damage like FFII. Stats are bought in store similar to SaGa 1.
The game actually had a pretty interesting staff help develop it. The producer was Hiromichi Tanaka of FFIII, Chrono, and FFXI fame. The game was directed by Koji Sugimoto who seems to be an established animation director in the anime scene and also worked as a character or visual programmer on Chrono Trigger and the two FFX titles. The games core designer was Makoto Shimamoto who worked as a battle planner on Chrono Trigger and Xenogears before jumping ship to Monolith Soft where he's been a battle designer for all of the Xenosaga and Xenoblade titles as well as a game designer for Breath of the Wild. Music was done by Junya Nakano who worked on various arcade soundtracks for Konami before joining Square. He's primarily worked on side games for Front Mission before joining as one of the co-composer's for FFX. He also worked on arrangements for the DS FFVI, The After Years, and FFXIII. The scenario was done by Daisuke Watanabe who went on to work as a scenario writer on FFX and XII, as well as the majority of the Kingdom Hearts series. So the game has a pretty interesting pedigree to it.
I looked at this game on the shelf over and over when it was new, but i never picked it up. The Toys R Us amazingly had a demo of this running, which looking back, couldn't have been that common.
The two different story lines sounded interesting, and even though I never played the game that much, I remember the princess was called Mint.
I actually remember Media Play having the demo of this game as well, which I played and thought was okay. Funny enough, I only got the game because my best friend in high school bought me a copy, which I imagine was simply his copy he gave to me. It's also how I got Deception 3. I had a blast with it though, and when you finish both story modes, you unlock a secret ending that gives the game a serious sequel hook that never came.
Wow that animation with Mint using her rings to launch Rue up to a platform makes me think they had more ideas about them working together. That would have been really neat. The most you get of that is that short sequence where Rue busts Mint out of the dungeon, and because they were working together that was one of my favorite parts.
Threads of Fate turned 20 this year!
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