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The PSP has a few odd games amongst it’s minature versions of Playstation home console titles and ports of older games – Half-Minute Hero being one of them, produced by Rising Star games. A demo is available on the PlayStation Network, and I urge you to try it yourself. But to give you an idea of what it entails, read my half-minute review instead.

The game is a sort of tongue-in-cheek mini take on the classic RPG, such as the original Final Fantasy, with a graphical style to match. The story – you are a wandering hero, and the evil bad-guy is casting a spell of destruction upon the world… the catch: the spell only takes 30 seconds to cast. So you must do everything to defeat him with only 30 seconds to do so.

It sounds strange, and it is – but once you get the hang of it, it’s more of a time-management game relying on your use of strategy and forward thinking to do everything in time. Like a classic Final Fantasy game, there are random battles with which you gain experience and level up, but these battles are performed automatically – with both sides running head-on to each other with the stronger emerging victorious in a couple of seconds. Obviously you level up to match the speed of the game, so you can easily reach level 15 or so by the end of the time limit.

Along the way there are traditional RPG things you can/must do, such as buying new weapons and armour, recruiting allies (to join the 2 second headbutting contests), and doing quests for civilians. By doing so, you can become strong enough to progress, meet the bad guy at his castle and take him down to end the stage. Although it’s said the levels take 30 seconds, that’s not entirely true – in some cases time freezes while you are inside towns (which are simple one-screen areas with people to talk to), and you can also pay a high price at towns to pay the Time Goddess to reset the timer and give you a fresh 30 seconds. Most levels really take about 2-3 minutes, average for a simple puzzle game.

It’s really quite hard to explain without actually playing it, but it really does work – sort of like each level is a super-condensed mini-RPG with automatic battles and an aim on time management. The demo consists of two levels, the first being the simpler of the two, sort of showing you how the game works. The second of the two levels available in the demo took me a couple of attempts – the first one going awry when the Time Goddess gave me a ‘loan’ on a time-reversal since I couldn’t afford it, then chose to appear and take all my equipment when I was being attacked by a huge monster to settle the debt. Nice of her…

It doesn’t take itself seriously, though – the whole game is done in a cheeky way, starting with lines such as “Oh noes! The world will be destroyed on a whim!”, with generic bad guys titled “Evil Lords” and the pixellated characters being the epitomy of in-jokes.

It’s really quite a charming little game, and is quite challenging as more of a puzzle game than an actual RPG. Although it purposely looks dated, there are some nice little touches, like the Hero’s weapon and armour changing his appearance respectively. The music sounded also like a sped up remix of typical old FF world-map music, which was a nice little bit of homage (assuming that was intentional!). I must say I hadn’t played anything quite like it before, and once I got used to the concept it was quite addictive.

The full game apparently includes three other modes where you play as different characters in different styles of gameplay – just utilising the similar 2D style and 30 second time-frame.

Half-Minute Hero is perhaps mostly aimed at older gamers who have played the old NES RPG’s and such, but even without the style its a fun little puzzle game, perfect for quick games if you only have a few minutes. If you have access to a PSP and PSN, give the demo a shot – it’s really the best way to understand it. But if you like a little bit of thinking, simple puzzles, some cute graphics and a little bit of RPG nostalgia, this game could be perfect for you.

-Leon