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| Your hero, on his way to the castle to fight the evil lord. Note the giant timer at the top telling you you have less than thirty seconds. |
Someone is going around the world and giving evil lords the spell
of destruction, which takes thirty seconds to recite. The Goddess of Time gives
a passing hero the power to rewind time by thirty seconds and sends him off to
stop the evil lords one by one, and find whoever is teaching the spell.
Hero is very
similar to most traditional role-playing games. You go to an area where
something is wrong, like a forest that has been magically turned into a swamp,
or a town that has been taken over by bandits. Whatever the problem is, it is sometimes
blocking your way to the evil lord of the level, who you have to kill to get to
the next area, though other times the problem is more of a side quest.
Fixing the problem usually requires going to the nearest
town to get information, then running to someplace at the other end of the map,
fight a bunch of monsters, and collect an item, or several items.
You get money and experience points for fighting monsters
that randomly attack in the field. Get enough experience points and you get
another level, which increases your strength, resilience, and speed. The
computer does all the work for you, your hero just runs at the monster and hits
it until it or you die. Fights usually take a couple of seconds.
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| Sometimes you can recruit NPCs to help in your several second battles. |
You need to reach a certain level before you are strong
enough to fight the local lord; the game tells you when you reach a high enough
level. You level goes back to one when you kill a lord and go to the next area.
You can buy new equipment like swords and armor that makes
you stronger and tougher, or find equipment in chests.
The catch is that in each area you only have thirty seconds
in real time to deal with whatever problem there is and kill the lord. The only
time when the clock is paused is in towns. You can reset the timer at a Time
Goddess statue for a fee, which doubles every time you pay, and you can only
find the statues in towns.
So basically, you spend every area running desperately from
one end of the map to the other, fighting monsters and picking up stuff, then
running to another town before the clock runs out, trying not to waste what
money you have on items and not dawdling on whatever your goal is. Completing a
level usually takes between half a minute to three minutes. There are thirty
main levels, and several side levels.
The time limit is challenging, but not impossible. You will
die a few times from not managing your time better, but no level has anything so
spread out that you will only get by on luck. Even though Hero is emulating old school games, it never feels cheap like those
games could.
The problem that affects whatever area you are in, except
for ones that block your way to the local lord, do not give you much reason to
play through them. They are usually simple parodies for RPG stories, but
nothing more creative than pointing out how unusual these scenarios are, and
not in a funny way. When you fix the
problem you usually get a new piece of equipment, but you will just replace it
with something new in the next level anyway. The only real reason to play them,
besides a desire to complete everything, is that they are a somewhat more
interesting way of leveling up than simply grinding until you are strong
enough.
There is no story besides chasing after the guy who is
handing out destruction spells. Individual areas have their own characters, but
no one is interesting. Most of the individual areas little parodies of RPGs,
which are fun at first if you are an RPG fan, but get as uninteresting as
actual RPG side stories after a while. The Time Goddess that accompanies the
hero on his journey is the only one who could be considered an actual
character. After the main game there are four epilogue levels that have more
story than the rest of the game combined, but only take an hour to finish.
I just got bored after a while. The novelty of playing
through normally tedious RPG clichés super quick got tedious in itself, and all
I wanted was a story, or characters, or a setting that was interesting. I got
pretty good at beating the clock, so that was never a challenge, which I was
thankful for. Thankfully the main game ended right when I was starting to feel
frustrated, so it is an appropriate length.
I guess Half-Minute Hero
is a good game for RPG fans and those who like a little challenge, but do not
expect a lot of depth or variety. I do not regret playing it, but I do not think
I will play it again.
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