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    Half-Minute Hero: Super Mega Neo Climax

    Game » consists of 5 releases. Released Jun 29, 2011

    Half-Minute Hero: Super Mega Neo Climax is a port of the PSP RPG/puzzle game mashup Half-Minute Hero, released on XBLA and PC. It also includes a new graphical style and an added multiplayer component.

    A Few Thoughts on Half-Minute Hero: Super Mega Neo Climax Ultimate Boy

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    Wemibelle

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    Edited By Wemibelle
    You can flee, use items, and dash through combat, but your hero fights on his own by simply running into foes.
    You can flee, use items, and dash through combat, but your hero fights on his own by simply running into foes.

    Half-Minute Hero is now one of my favorite twists on a game genre. If you’ve never played or even heard of the game, let me give you the basic idea. You play as a typical JRPG hero who only has 30 seconds in any given level to reach the boss and defeat him. As such, everything about the game moves at a blistering pace: combat proceeds with no input from the player, a dash button allows you to move around the map faster than you can even reliably control, and massive amounts of gold and experience come from every encounter. There’s not always enough time to do everything in a level before the 30 seconds elapse, so the avaricious Time Goddess can be bribed to turn back the clock. Every level is a frantic scramble to learn where the useful items and gear can be bought, plan an efficient path the boss’ castle, and level up enough to take him/her out in time.

    While nearly every level in the game follows this same pattern, it manages to never get old. The developers do a fantastic job creating differing scenarios that limit your movement and ability to earn money/XP or have tricky puzzles to overcome to reach the castle in time. The writing is sharp as well, often parodying the more ridiculous aspects of JRPGs and alternating between on-the-nose homages and expectation-defying plot points. In addition, many levels have branching paths that send you to entirely different levels, an enticing way to get you to replay stages. I was flat-out addicted to this game for a few days, particularly due to the speed of its gameplay. It was impossible to not just roll from one level into the next without pause, knowing that I wouldn’t spend more than a couple minutes finishing it too. Unlocking all the extra paths and finding all the gear in each stage had me gladly playing some stages multiple times to see every last bit of content. It’s a brilliantly-designed, addictive experience that left me wanting more when I reached the end.

    A shot from my least favorite mode, Knight 30. You have to let the NPC stand still without getting hit for 30 seconds.
    A shot from my least favorite mode, Knight 30. You have to let the NPC stand still without getting hit for 30 seconds.

    I really wish I could end this post here and just demand you go out and buy this game right now. Sadly, I can’t do that. There is one glaring flaw with Half-Minute Hero that nearly ruined the entire thing for me: the additional gameplay modes. What I described above is the bulk of the game’s content, titled Hero 30. There are also three other modes (along with a few shorter bonus modes) to choose from: Evil Lord 30, a simplistic RTS-style game where you summon creatures; Princess 30, an on-rails twin-stick shooter; and Knight 30, a basic action game where you protect a helpless NPC. While you can ignore these other modes at first, they must be completed to unlock the conclusion of the Hero storyline - Hero 300. As someone who really enjoyed that mode, I obviously wanted to see it to its conclusion and did everything I could to reach it. That was maybe a mistake.

    Each of the other modes of gameplay are bland and boring, especially when compared to the brilliant design of Hero 30. They all have their own unique problems. Evil Lord 30 doesn’t give you enough control over your summoned forces, making the harder levels that require finesse a bit too touchy. Princess 30 is actually TOO fast for its own good. As the level scrolls, I found it difficult to hit enemies without getting hit myself. Knight 30 is just frustrating, for various reasons. The controls are awkward, as one button is used for multiple important actions. Enemies can’t be killed in this mode, only stunned temporarily. Finally, you have a limited amount of stamina to guide your NPC around, making levels with aggressive enemies a complete nightmare. All of these modes are disappointing, especially after experiencing Hero 30 from beginning to end. While I really wanted to see the last stages of Hero 30, in retrospect, I can’t say that the effort was worth the payoff; these other modes are just too hard to stomach when compared to such a solid main gameplay experience.

    There's an updated visual style for the XBLA and Steam versions of the game. It's nowhere near as stylish as the original style (shown in the other screenshots).
    There's an updated visual style for the XBLA and Steam versions of the game. It's nowhere near as stylish as the original style (shown in the other screenshots).

    I also have one other small nitpick, this one (possibly?) unique to the Steam version of the Half-Minute Hero. After each stage, your time is automatically uploaded to leaderboard servers, so you can compare your time with friends. While this is a fine idea in concept, it slows down the pace of moving from level to level far too much, as you must wait a few additional seconds for the upload. To make matters worse, I had one evening of play where the servers weren’t working at all. This made the end of each level take over a minute as it tried to push data over the Internet and eventually failed. Consider the irony that some of the levels could be completed more quickly than a minute and you’ll see the problem. For a game where speed is so key to its identity, this was absolutely intolerable. I had to stop playing that night just because the waiting felt so antithetical to the experience I really wish that there had been an option to turn off the automatic leaderboard submissions, since the ability to bounce from level to level is so critical to the spirit of this game.

    Half-Minute Hero is one of those games that I feel ashamed for not playing earlier. It’s been enticing to me ever since I first saw the Quick Look for the original PSP version, but I just never got around to playing it before now. If I had, I would have been convincing people to try it out far before now. Hero 30 features one of the most novel gameplay systems I’ve seen in a game in quite some time, parodying the tendencies of JRPGs to drag on and on by being as hasty as possible. It’s backed up by solid writing and a fantastic variety of scenarios to puzzle out and overcome. Thankfully, its worst elements--the other gameplay modes--can be entirely avoided if one just sticks to the Hero 30 mode. Even without being able to reach its conclusion, there’s still a great deal of enjoyment to be had. If you’ve never played Half-Minute Hero, I urge you to give it a shot. You don’t know what you’re missing!

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    thatdudeguy

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    Great post! I also tried getting into the game and similarly loved the Hero mode but slogged through the others. It's totally worth the steam sale price even if you only put a few hours into it.

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    Wemibelle

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    @thatdudeguy: Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it. If you aren't aware, I discovered that the second game--Half-Minute Hero: The Second Coming--is also on Steam. Even better, it sounds like the whole game is the Hero mode! Maybe you should check it out if you enjoyed the first one.

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    eddiephlash

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    I loved this game on PSP! I would be interested to hear if the second one is worth checking out. I remember the guys were not that impressed with the quick look.

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