Half-Minute Hero Review

If you have played enough Japanese role-playing games then you know that many of them use the same tired plots and story elements. Good thing for us that Half-Minute Hero: Super Mega Neo Climax has come to the Xbox Live Arcade; the game turns the tables on traditional role-playing games and churns out something completely new.

Storyline

Half-Minute Hero begins with an unknown hero that must prevent an Evil Lord from obliterating the world. Sounds simple enough, right? Well there is one catch: the Evil Lord has a special destruction spell that, when cast, will destroy the world in 30 seconds flat. Luckily for us, there is a Time Goddess that rewinds the clock by 30 seconds, allowing our Hero the opportunity to save the world. This is the tone for the rest of the game as many other evil-doers would love to destroy the world for one obscure reason or another.

The game encompasses more than 30 different quests, including main storylines and side missions. Most missions have the same overall goal: stop the Evil Lord from destroying the world in 30 seconds. At the start of each mission, the Hero is only at level 1, but thanks to the Time Goddess’ time acceleration techniques the Hero can level up at a faster rate than usual. All of the game’s battles are played out automatically as your character charges into piles of baddies until they are defeated.

If time starts to run out and you sense the end of the world coming faster than expected, just stop at a village alter and pray to the Time Goddess, where she can rewind time by another 30 seconds. But, be sure to pack some gold if you’re planning a prayer session because the Time Goddess’ love doesn’t come cheap. This nifty little drawback keeps players from depending on the Time Goddess too often and soon enough you won’t have enough coins to buy the Time Goddess’ leniency.

Your character has to move fast and you must carefully maneuver your way into the Lord’s castle, lest your Hero becomes too weak from lack of battle. Sometimes you’ll get the feeling that Half-Minute Hero is more of a puzzle game than an RPG. Half-Minute also has its fair share of humor, as it makes fun of Japanese RPG stereotypes like overzealous characters and fetch quests.

Artwork

The XBLA release of the game very closely resembles cutesy anime characters with flowing colors. The game does allow the option to go for the PSP release’s original sprites though. While it may seem like a good idea to enlarge sprite characters designed for a portable system, it’s probably not. You’ll find that some of the characters are completely indistinguishable after blowing them up, so most people will probably opt for the new designs.

Most of the missions are relatively short, but there is enough unique content in the game that most players will find themselves satisfied for quite a while. Definitely go out and buy the game if you’re sick of the traditional Japanese RPGs and want to go for something more interesting.

Wired