| Choose Language: |
|---|
Hello there! We really hope you enjoy what you read here today! However, if it’s not too much trouble, we’d really appreciate it if you let us know what you thought of this post, through either leaving a like or dislike below, depending on if you enjoyed it or not.
It just takes a click, and it’ll really help us find out what content our readers enjoy the most.
We’re really grateful for all the support! ✨
Hello everyone, and welcome back! It’s finally time to start moving toward Page 100 60! Have you been enjoying the celebration? I admit it was quite stressful to set it up, but it has immensely worth it so far! ✨
I really need to thank EmeraldDM8 for his huge help, or most of the celebration wouldn’t have happened.
Now, for my usual “random things I’ve done this week”! I’ve spent these last few days playing Touhou Mystia’s Izakaya on my Steam Deck, after seeing it randomly featured in a Japanese games Telegram channel I follow; it looked too adorable not to buy it (plus, it was also cheap and on sale), and luckily it didn’t betray my expectations. As always, expect a Page on it soon!
But first, let’s explore today’s game!
As it looks like you appreciate me telling my personal experience in this Journal, let me do just that. This is one of those titles that I risked never finishing, having paused them for no absolute reason, then I’d randomly pick them up years later and complete them!
| Half-Minute Hero |
|---|
It’s a “pocket super high-speed JRPG” with strategy and shooter elements, released on PlayStation Portable in 2009 for both Japan and the United States, and then later in 2010 for Europe. It was then ported to the Xbox Live Arcade in 2011 as Half-Minute Hero: Super Mega Neo Climax, and in 2012 on Steam as Half-Minute Hero: Super Mega Neo Climax Ultimate Boy. I fully completed the PSP version and tried the Steam version on both PC and Steam Deck.
This title features 6 modes, starting with Hero 30; at the beginning of our playthrough, our Hero, a humble traveler, will arrive at a castle, hoping to convince the King to let him stay. Too bad that monsters are causing havoc in the plains just around the castle, thus the King will kindly ask him to kill them (does this King even have other soldiers? Oh well…). Thus, our Hero quickly exterminates them and goes back to the castle. Yet, of course, something had to go terribly wrong! Suddenly, out of nowhere, an Evil Lord called Noire appears, and casts a newly-found spell that will lead the entire world to doom in 30 seconds! As you expected, the King tasks the Hero to kill Noire, firmly believing that a mere half-minute will be enough to kill the enemy! Our probably-lv2 poor apprentice Hero can’t help but accept the mission and try. Sadly, the timer will run out, and Noire will destroy the world…
Luckily for us, the Time Goddess appears and reveals that she will aid us in our quest by rewinding the 30-seconds timer! Nothing comes for free though, and every time we’ll use her power, she’ll demand the Hero pay her more and more cash. How could we be so unlucky and find the only Time Goddess in the entire universe who, quote on quote, “loves money ♥️”? Yet, certainly, there is no time to complain, as now the world can finally be saved! The Hero is somehow able to defeat Noire, and he can finally go on holid- Of course not, since Noire will reveal that he wasn’t obviously the only one to know the spell… time to go and defeat them all!
This first mode will span 30 stages, each one with its own Evil Lord to beat, and there may or may not be a cameo from a future playable character… In every stage, our hero will start at level 1 due to a countereffect of the Goddess’s magic and will have to find their way to the Evil Lord’s castle, solving puzzles, saving people, buying healing items and equipment, and trying to rewind time only when strictly necessary. Every battle is automatic, and we’ll just have to run in the grass and wait for enemies to be killed, after which we’ll quickly level up and earn money; battles do not pause the timer, thus to save time and kill the enemy faster you might want to press circle or B to speed up your Hero, although this will cost you some HP per second, so use it at your own risk. Luckily when you are inside a town, time will stop, allowing you to shop at your leisure… as long as you have the money. You can also buy Herbs that fully restore your HP at the press of a button, but you can only keep one at a time. As soon as your level is higher than the boss, text saying “You>Evil” will appear on the screen, and that’s when you need to strike! Just run into the castle and, if you’re powerful enough, you’ll be able to defeat the Evil Lord.
After you’re done with Hero 30, you’ll be able to move on to the next mode, Evil Lord 30, set about 100 years later, where you’ll play as a narcissistic and elegant Evil Lord, whose girlfriend Millennia was turned into a bat by that same Noire during the events of Hero 30. His castle is getting invaded by evil humans, and in order to protect his home and Millennia he needs to kill them all while trying to find a way to turn his beloved back into a girl. Sadly, as Millennia is a bat, she is not able to go into the sunlight, thus the Evil Lord promises her that he’ll be able to elegantly accomplish anything in 30 seconds of the night! Our Evil Lord has three kinds of beasts, and you’ll need to press the corresponding button to summon them, and when you’re ready, press another to make them all charge at your opponent. Just as in Rock Paper Scissors, you’ll need to choose the beast which has an advantage against the enemy, and you’ll be fine. Hopefully…
For some reason, some screenshots are glitched and cropped where they shouldn’t be…
Now for the third mode, Princess 30! In the Goddess Era 300, 100 years after Evil Lord 30, lives a pretty young princess, whose father is terribly ill, and needs medicine to survive; sadly, no one knows where the ingredients for it grows. Even so, the young princess wants to help. Too bad that her retainer is terribly overprotective, and only allows her a 30 seconds curfew…? (That’s… way too exaggerated, but okay.) This isn’t enough to stop our princess, thus she prepares her massive personality-changing crossbow, her carriage, and her soldiers, and she leaves for a high-speed adventure! Just like in a shoot ‘em up game, we’ll have to shoot at enemies to advance through the stage without our guards being wiped, do what we need, and come back to the castle before the timer runs out! In later stages, we’ll find patches of terrain that we can traverse to slightly rewind the timer, allowing us to deceive the overreacting retainer and complete our mission.
In the fourth mode, Knight 30, set 100 years later, we’ll be a formerly-dead knight, who needs to defend his friend Sage, a massively overpowered being who knows a spell to destroy everything in the surrounding area that needs 30 seconds to be charged and a reviving spell, yet dies to a gust of wind and is annoyed by the sound of… bells? Our poor knight, who can’t kill enemies but only stop them for a while, will need to carry the Sage to safety, hoping no one kills him as he sings the spell. Every time the Knight runs with the Sage in his arms, he’ll spend SP, and the chanting will stop, so we won’t always be able to run as we’ll need to recharge SP and let the Sage finish his chanting; if the Knight dies, the Sage will revive him, assuming the Knight reaches the Sage before he gets destroyed by enemies… During their journey, they’ll try and find a way to truly stop the True Evil Lord’s awakening, and will attempt to find all the heroes… yet something goes wrong, as you’ll need one more final battle; the last single-episode mode Hero 300!
Our Hero has been awakened, hoping he’ll be able to defeat the True Evil Lord’s new spell, which will lead the world to doom in… 300 seconds? Sounds easy, right? The map will be divided into 5 parts, each in a different time period, and you’ll have to cross all of them in 60 seconds each, and every second you save up will add to the following area’s timer. During this mode, you’ll need to gather all the previous playable characters to form the best team ever, and hopefully win! It plays just like Hero 30, but you can’t rewind time, and it’s actually quite hard; even if it looks like you have plenty of time, that is not the case, as you’ll need to be as quick as possible without wasting time and money, as you’ll need it to amass as much equipment as you can (apparently, while in other games you can just save up to get an op weapon, in this mode all weapons permanently add points to your attack stat, thus you’ll need to buy as many as you can, and the same goes for the rest of the equipment), and unless you save up at least 50-60 seconds before the final boss, you won’t be able to make it in time. To make your life easier, I’ll tell you that the “You>Evil” text appears when you’re level 40, there’s a hidden weapon somewhere, and I’ll advise you to grind as you go instead of stopping close to a city to do it (it’s perfect to get easily healed, but we don’t have enough time for such a luxury). But once you’re done, have your usual plot twists, and the game is finally over! you could try the extra mode Hero 3 too, but that’s too hard, even the game knows it.
And now, let’s finally talk about my own experience with the game! I found it just after buying my PSP in 2019, while I was watching a video about the best PSP JRPGs (I mean, this one is the best PSP one of 2009 according to IGN). I started it shortly after finishing Final Fantasy X, naming all my characters after my favorite ones in FFX, and completed the first three modes, extremely enjoying them, with their stupidly epic music and witty dialogue. After a while, though, I started playing other games (*cough* Shenmue and Yakuza 0 *cough*) and left this one to gather dust. I attempted picking it up again on my old HP laptop through the Steam version, but… tough luck, I left it there again. Tried once again in 2021 on my newer Lenovo Legion laptop, and it was then that I found out that the Steam version might be extremely annoying to boot… it was working fine on the HP laptop, but would refuse to boot on my gaming Lenovo device! Then in 2022, I got my Steam Deck, and somehow it was working… at least, until it once again stopped working about a week later, for seemingly no reason. There had been no game updates and I was using a specific version of the Proton compatibility layer. Will this game ever work?
At long last, a couple weeks ago, while I was browsing through my Launchbox library and setting background music for every Steam game I had, I saw Half-Minute Hero, and felt an immense urge to just finish it, after 4 years of procrastinating over it! Instead of trying it on my current gaming desktop, I charged my poor PSP and finally completed the last modes on there! It was honestly weird to have finally completed it, and I really enjoyed my time with it. Curious to see if the Steam version was finally working, I tried it on my Steam Deck, and… it currently works? 👀 Well, play it now or find a way to fix it for your PC, I guess! (to whoever is wondering why I’m not using the HP laptop… it has been having problems for a while) Too bad that I don’t currently have a way to get screenshots from my PSP, so I had to copy my save to an emulator and take them there. But now everything is fine, and I’m not regretting my journey at all! I actually already miss this game, time to attempt Hero 3…
At long last, should you play this? Of course! Apart from you most probably having to play it on PSP (luckily Steam will refund you if it doesn’t work), you’ll have an exciting time with this game, especially if you are fond of JRPGs, as you’ll see a parody of many of its tropes. Plus, it’s short and allows for quick play sessions, so it’s perfect for busy people!
I hope you enjoyed this Page, see you in the next one!
This site, and all the content on it, is for entertainment purposes only.
Additionally, we try to provide a link to all content we use that originates from outside sources, but if we have missed a credit anywhere, then please let us know and we would be happy to rectify the issue immediately.
All rights and credit go directly to its rightful owners. No copyright infringement is intended. Please support the official release.
| Sources: |
|---|
| Wikipedia – Half-Minute Hero: > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-Minute_Hero |
The Blisscast Journal 
Leave a comment