GameLight Review - Half-Minute Hero

I bought Magicka & Breach for PC, tried out Modern Combat Domination for PS3, and beat Half-Minute Hero last night.  I accomplished a lot for one night, haha.  Anyways, I'll be doing some game reviews since it's been quite a while since I've done one (a month), and I wanted to do it on Magicka and Breach; however, I think I need a bit more time with it to give it a fair review.  Even though I'm very late at giving a review for Half-Minute Hero, I think it deserves some recognition.

Developer: Marvelous Entertainment
Publisher: XSEED Games
Platform: Sony PSP
Release Date: October 13, 2009
Genre: Action-RPG, RTS, Shoot 'em up (It will make sense, don't worry)

Upon first glance, Half-Minute Hero seemed like a silly parody of RPGs with the nostalgia of pixel-based art; however, I now realize it is much more than just a short laugh and a tiny gimmick after completing the game.  It tells an epic tale spanning 500 years of a never-ending war with charming characters, catchy music, and fast-paced gameplay suited for playing in short and long term durations.

Source: Youtube Channel TheGamingCriticz

Story
I wasn't expecting any sort of real story out of a game based on having each mission lasting 30 seconds, but there was a story and it really added to the game (surprisingly).  The game tells of a tale that spans over 500 years of constant conflict between the Time-Goddess and the Ultimate Dark Lord who tries to destroy the world by casting a spell that activates in 30 seconds.  The story is told chronologically through four individual characters with each one stopping the Ultimate Evil Lord from being resurrected into the world.  The structure of the story is generic, but is done so in parody of typical Japanese RPGs.  There is a main antagonist trying to destroy the world to rid a life of fear, sorrow, pain, and such but along with happiness, love, and tranquility.  Heroes of different time periods approaches and stops the efforts to destroy the world.  More detail on each character's story will be explained in gameplay.  I liked how the narrative is separated 100 years from each other with different characters and gameplay each time.  It created a distinctive bridge between each character's story and brought it all together at the end.  Each character had a unique personality to them (maybe except the hero parodying the silent protagonist) that connects with the player after playing their story for a while.  With each mission lasting only 30 seconds (more or less, depending on the mode) and each character having their own little story, the overall feeling doesn't seem all that grand.  But near the end, everything is brought together and shows how pivotal each character was to the peace that is finally realized at the end (I'm trying my best not to spoil anything).  It could be just me, but the ending of the whole story truly moved me and it was a good feeling after finishing the game.  For a game based on small proportions on gameplay, the story had a rather big impact to the whole experience.  Story: 9/10

Graphics
This will be a category that will be a bit more difficult to determine a score for since the graphics were more pixelated than a Nintendo Entertainment System/Famicom on a system capable of rendering 3D graphics.  The only fair way to judge this is by giving my own opinion to its design of the game rather than on how far the developers went with the capabilities of the hardware.  I personally loved the pixel-based graphics for the game because it's easy on the eyes, takes zero loading time (except for loading a save file), is distinctive from the way RPGs typically look now, and has a nostalgic charm to it.  Alongside the pixel art are images of typical Japanese RPG-ish drawn characters for cut-scenes and progressing the story.  They don't appear often (except for Princess 30 mode), but it has a nice contrast to the retro art and reminds the player in a subtle way saying "hey, you're playing a new game on the PSP and not the Famicom!"  The direction of the art style in both pixel and hand drawn is appropriate to the type of game the developers wanted to portray.  I do have to admit that after a while playing the game I had the urge to play a game with better graphics.  So I guess it's good for the short term and not the long term.  Graphics: 8/10

Audio
Although the game went for the retro pixel-art, it did not go for retro 8-bit music in its game.  The sound effects is typical in an action game nowadays and works well with the format in art and design.  It's not too retro, but it's not too realistic either.  The music, though not all of them are memorable, are well composed and has that new age techno-rock genre to contrast the retro look.

Source: Youtube Channel koukoupuffs


Source: Youtube Channel asukacrystalrose

Yuzo Koshiro even did some compositions in the game.  There are 65 tracks according to the music player you receive as a gift once you beat the entire game and has various composers contribute to the list.  The main theme seemed very cheesy and has that "this game is so epic!" wannabe sound to it the first time, but it changed my mind when I heard it at the very end of the game.  Some of the tracks are definitely worth listening to outside of the game. Audio: 10/10


Gameplay
So as mentioned before, there are four distinctive characters that the player takes control of throughout the game, and each character comes from a different era within the story.  After naming each of the four characters, three of the game modes will be available and can be played in any order.  The last three modes can only be played after finishing the first three the then the previous one before it.  Each mode plays differently and tells their own story that all links to a larger plot in the game.

Source: Youtube Channel XSEEDgames

Hero 30 - Goddess Era 100: The Action-RPG mode that follows a blond haired boy who thwarts the efforts of the evil lords from reciting the ruination spell that destroys the world.  Fight monsters, gain levels, buy equipment, talk to NPCs, and fulfill quests within 30 seconds.  The time-goddess offers to reverse time back to 30 seconds again...for some money (that cheapo).  Each mission consists of all the above with an evil lord at the end casting the spell.  This mode is the main game and has a nice balance between action and RPG elements such as leveling among others listed above.  Some of them are pretty difficult and forces the player to think more tactically rather than just bum rushing.

Evil Lord 30 - Goddess Era 200: The Real-Time Strategy (RTS) mode where the Evil Lord summons and commands numerous monsters to protect his beloved Millenia.  The mode is chaotic, has lots of action with the strategy, and is a ton of fun.  The mode has a very satisfying feeling similar to playing Starcraft or Age of the Empires and you see a swarm of your men decimate the opposition.

Princess 30 - Goddess Era 300: The Shoot 'em Up mode where the King of the land has fallen ill.  It's up to the princess with her trusty crossbow to fight through dozens of enemies and find a cure for her father and unite the people of the land.  The princess' personality was both light-hearted and humorous which sets up the conception of the princess being pretty crazy out in the field when she's firing 30-50 bolts a second.  The mode wasn't particularly difficult for a shoot 'em up, but it was very relaxing compared to the other three modes which required much more thinking and strategy.

Knight 30 - Goddess Era 500: The fast-paced Action mode where a lone knight must protect a pretty boy Sage who holds the power to defeating all that is evil in the world.  The concept is reversed in that instead of fighting against the clock, the player aims to have the clock go down to zero each level in order to win.  This was perhaps one of my favorite modes in terms of gameplay because of how much control is given to the player in fighting.  There's still a lot of strategy involved, but it doesn't distract the player from the action aspect of the game.

Hero 300 - Goddess Era 500: Everything is brought together to sum up the whole story and the player takes the role of the Hero once more to save the world in a final effort under 300 seconds (5 minutes).  This was hard, not gonna lie.  It was fun though, and really brought the whole game together in one final mission.

Hero 3 - No Era: Yes...3 Seconds.  Nothing to explain, it has to be played to be understood.  I beat it though.

With all the game modes put together, it's a nice distraction.  And depending on the price, it could be worth it.  The game has a fairly good replay value with a hard mode for each one, different ways of approaching a situation for each mission, and little secrets scattered around that can be found.  Gameplay: 9/10

Overall
After beating Hero 30, I didn't plan on playing the other ones and was going to put the game aside as (finished).  Once I started playing the other modes, I realized how diversified the game was and how well the story flowed once it was brought together.  I'm very glad I went through the rest of the game and beat it.  I'm not sure if I'm ready to go through the whole game again on hard mode since I've accumulated 12 hours and 47 minutes of it already and have a backlog of 50+ games I still need to finish (no joke).  Still, I'm very glad I picked up the game and gave it a go and got through it.  It was fun, charming, made me feel good, and has music I'm willing to listen to.  Overall: 9/10

As an ending note, a sequel to Half-Minute Hero is in the making but I have heard that the other three modes will not be back for the second installment.