The game begins with the Evil Lord cackling in triumph, having just begun to unleash the powerful destruction spell, capable of destroying the world in 30 seconds. In only half a minute you, the Hero, must battle with monsters, earn gold, purchase weapons and armor and stop the Evil Lord’s dastardly plan. That is the premise of the main game of “Half Minute Hero,” released on PSP, a quasi-puzzle game that presents the image of a role playing game, only without conventions like character building and a storyline.
Not that there isn’t a storyline at all within the game. There’s a way more powerful Evil Lord that is traveling around the countryside, teaching random Evil Lord’s the powerful destruction spell. And you, the Hero, travel with the Time Goddess from battle to battle to stop him. It is through the Time Goddess that the stages can be both complex and syill be possible to complete. By finding a statue of her you have the option to pray to her (and pay her) so that she could reverse time back to the 30 second marker. You just need the cash, because she’s got shopping to do. Her words.
As you travel around the larger islands you’ll find strange bosses and bizarre enemies, all detailed with graphics that would have looked bad on the Super Nintendo. “Half Minute Hero” is the kind of budget game that aims directly at the nostalgic in it’s presentation. Everything is pixelized so badly that most of the character’s faces are indistinguishable blobs of color.
Aside from Hero 30 mode, the main section of the game, there are also two other modes of play available right from the get go. There’s Evil Lord 30 and Princess 30, and like Hero 30, must be completed within thirty seconds. Both the Hero and the Evil Lord have decent reasons as to why they must complete their quests in thirty seconds. The Hero has to stop the end of the world and the Evil Lord’s mutated bat girlfriend will die in the approaching sunlight. The Princess has a curfew given to her by her mother. She has 30 seconds for her caravan to race off, battle demons and monsters, grab a cure for her father’s illness and come back, before her mother shuts the gate.
If you can get into the quirkiness of the game, there’s a lot that’s available. There’s three more modes available to unlock, along with all of the art and music within the game. The quests are entertaining, and it’s strangely appealing building up an unstoppable warrior, saving villages, finding comrades and doing battle in minutes. At the very least, this prevents the game from being flooded with hour long cinemas like most modern day role playing games.