...is that it?
Every little piece of Half Minute Hero requires you to at least have some knowledge, nostalgia or love of old school games and sensibilities to fully appreciate the game, which is very evident when you boot up the game for the first time. Anyone else would be wise to steer clear.
The game has you playing as multiple characters: The Hero is someone who has to defeat a dark lord in every level of the game. The Hero's story is done in a rapid, simplistic version of a Japanese RPG. The Evil Lord's story has you trying to turn your bat girlfriend back into a human, which is played out in an Real Time Strategy type of game. Fianlly, the Princess has you finding a cure to your fathers illness, which is played out like an old school shoot em up.
The catch, of course, is that you have to conquer each level in 30 seconds or less. The fast pace of the Hero and Princess games make this to be a fun, quirky and somewhat satisfying game. The Evil Lord, however, feels like a way too stripped down RTS that boils down to spamming one button until your objective is done.
Sounds daunting? Well, it really isn't that difficult, since the Time Goddess can come and refill your time before you run out. This takes some of the frantic edge off of the game, but there is a dash of strategy that is implemented into each game when it comes to refilling time.
Then again, each and every game are as simplistic as can be. In Hero, all you do is power level, which is easy since the battles are a breeze to play (you basically do nothing but watch your hero run into monsters). In Evil Lord, you spam any of the face buttons to defeat opponents to produce monsters that exploit the weakness of your enemies. In Princess, you make sure you stay on a specific road and hold the O button to shoot forward.
This is where the problem lies with Half Minute Hero: despite it's relative simplicity being a strength to the game, it's also its greatest weakness. Even when you beat one of the story modes, you really don't feel like you did anything at all. Everything is too automated to feel satisfying, so you're left with reading the funny dialogue and satirical storylines the game hands you.
Another problem the game has is its price. Much like Holy Invasion of Privacy, this game more than likely costed next to nothing to produce and despite their being a sustainable amount of gameplay, $29.99 seems pricey for a game that looks very cheap, even though the gameplay and story is lovingly crafted.
In fact, Half Minute Hero suffers from exactly what Holy Invasion of Privacy has: identity crisis. Making a game look like a simplistic, no frills old school game has its advantages, but when you make no allusion that there's more to the game than that, you're left with a confusing mish-mash of sensibilities.
And even though Half Minute Hero is much better than Holy Invasion, it has one more thing in common that hurts it some for the time being: It's $10 more than it should be. Half Minute Hero is charming and fun to play, just for the lunacy of what it does. However, paying full UMD price for the game seems to be a stretch.
(This review was written when the game costed $30. You can now purchase it for $20)