Half-Minute Hero
Developer: Marvelous Entertainment
Publisher: XSEED Games
Platform: PlayStation Portable (PSP)
Official website: www.halfminutehero.com

Review Summary:
Growing up on 8-bit RPGs is something that many of us have done. They are close to our hearts and XSEED Games has already roped you in because of this fact. Half-Minute Hero on the PSP has a great time mechanic and developer Marvelous Entertainment has created a fun, addicting and quirky RPG. You play the Hero, have thirty seconds to save the world and you try to succeed thirty times over. With six modes, multiples difficulty modes, does Half-Minute Hero hold up and is it worth your 30 dollars? Read on my friends.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Read the full review below.

Half-Minute Hero full review:

XSEED Games is famous for localizing quirky Japanese games that sell to a very niche market in the United States. Half-Minute Hero is one of these games and triggered many nostalgic thoughts during every minute of my playthrough. As the Hero, you are charged by the King save the world in 30 seconds, hence the name. Seemingly an impossible task, the Time Goddess allows you to restart the small timeframe for a price as often as you want. Each time you restart the time, the cost will be increased by one hundred coins. If you save enough time, level high enough, and survive to destroy the boss of each adventure, then you will move onto the next game. I thought it is a neat idea to have the credits roll after every “adventure” and you even get a closing and opening screen with an update on the story.

I can’t say enough about the great art style and 8-bit sprites that Marvelous Entertainment has created throughout every part of Half-Minute Hero. The levels bring me right back to other famous RPGs from the eighties. What hampers the experience though, over the 30 main levels, are the repetitive lands and enemies. The bright spot about the level designs are the bosses and hidden areas, because they are all drastically different from one another. On normal, the difficulty of these levels is not too challenging, especially when you find the item associated with the side-quests. I found myself dying a lot, not because of the time, but because I did not spend enough time fighting enemies or using the dash mechanic too often (which takes your own health). This was not the games fault, but my own, which is rare in some earlier JRPGs.

Half-Minute Hero has six modes, three of which are unlocked from the beginning. The main quest line is Hero 30, which takes you across thirty different levels controlling the Hero through a timed, standard RPG experience. The others are Evil Lord 30, a simple real time strategy game, Princess 30, a side-scrolling shooter and Knight 30, a simple action game. The others are variations on the Hero 3, one adding two zeros and the other taking away one. You get Hero 300, which takes away the Time Goddess and asks you to save the world in 300 seconds and the other asks you to save the world in 3 seconds. As you may have already determined, Hero 3 is difficult and somewhat frustrating. I don’t think the inclusion of any type of multiplayer would have added to the experience because like most classic RPGs, you are alone, sometimes with a party.