The Journal, Page 101:
Your New Daily Dose Of Pocket High-Speed JRPG
Half-Minute Hero: The Second Coming

─────────────────────────────────────────

PUBLISHED ON: June 27th 2024

Written By:

Blisscast

Edited By:

EmeraldDM8

Hello everyone, and welcome back to our new batch of Journal Pages! Did you miss the Journal? I surely did, however, as we said in the previous Page and in the newsletter (which you can read here), this time off has been useful to recharge my creative batteries, and to allow me to have something even more meaningful to say!

Enough about that, and now let’s go over my (I’ll try to keep it brief) list of updates. ✨ Apart from having finished multiple games (Half Minute Hero: The Second Coming, Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth 2: Sisters Generation, Astebreed: Definitive Edition, Touhou: Scarlet Curiosity, and Cupid Parasite: Sweet & Spicy Darling), and starting the Radiant Tale otome game, I’ve also watched the famous Season 0 of Yu-Gi-Oh!, which I absolutely loved!

Plus, I’ve practiced my bizarre computing skills, by “reviving” three computers; first, an old Lenovo Thinkpad laptop that belonged to my grandpa, whose main purpose is now to be an anime-watching machine when friends come over, and it runs the latest version of KDE Neon on a fresh new SSD. Then, we have my dad’s old Vaio laptop, which was incredibly annoying to get working, but now it runs Windows 10 just fine, and he can use it if he needs it. Lastly, we have… Mikyu777’s Acer Aspire 5, which, as she says, “now has two personalities”, and runs both Windows 10 and Kubuntu; it would be amazing if we put an SSD instead of her HDD, but one thing at a time. Honestly, while the first two weren’t so hard to get working in the end, it was Mikyu777’s laptop that proved to be the difficult one, as it didn’t want to recognize her wifi card; I had to use USB tethering to make it connect to the internet, and then I had to command-line my way through getting wifi working, and I had never done something like that before! After a lot of patience, I got it all set up, and she seemed satisfied with it; whilst all of that was happening and the computer was slowly updating and downloading apps, we stayed in my room watching some anime on the famous KDE Neon laptop, so we didn’t get bored in the end.

About some future blogs, I’m working on “The Secret Origin of Yu-Gi-Oh!”, LSD Dream Emulator (it will come out eventually, I promise), and GUI Wonderland #4 about PERQ, and it is very possible that Mikyu777 and I will review the first Cupid Parasite game together, as I’ve just lent her my copy of the game to play, and she has extremely enjoyed it; I’m also slowly working on other things, but they’re a bit too early-on to be announced, so you’ll have to wait and see!

Now, after this ~~longer-than-expected~~ intro, it’s time to finally delve into today’s game…

Gameplay Explanation of the First Game

In every stage, our hero will start at level 1 due to a counter-effect 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.

⚠️ Disclaimer ⚠️
As I find them particularly funny, I will refer to my three protagonists with my custom names, though I will make sure you can understand which is who.

This is a Tactical Action JRPG hybrid (or, to put it simply, a “pocket super high-speed JRPG”) developed by Opus and published by Marvelous, released in 2011 for PlayStation Portable (only in Japan, called Yuusha 30 Second), and in 2014 for Steam (for a worldwide audience); it’s the sequel to Half-Minute Hero. If you get the sequel on Steam, it will come bundled with the first game, so I recommend you get it that way. As usual, I played the Steam version on my Steam Deck.

We play as three heroes (the one-winged special operations soldier Journal, young princess GUI, and the energetic “Godslayer” ∼🎵), who are tasked to save the world from a new and dangerous menace, alongside our friendly and money-obsessed Time Goddess and some new friends we’ll meet along the way.

Similarly to the first one, this sequel wants to make a parody of classic JRPG tropes, turning the usual long game you expected into pocket-sized missions, which technically have a 30-second time limit to be completed; each Hero has their own Era they live in, with new specific characters and events. Unlike the first game, all the characters have the same gameplay, and you won’t find the missions in a menu, as all of the three heroes have several overworld maps they can explore, where they’ll find each of the about 80 missions you can play; once you’re done with a quest, you can freely explore the map you’re in to fight some enemies, buy some of the equipment found in quests, and tackle secret dungeons. The addition of an overworld is actually a huge difference from the first game, as every level you will gain (albeit very slowly, compared to what happens during the quests) will be yours to keep, and you’ll start each quest with your so-called “global level”; while it may sound like cheating, especially as, in the first game, we started at level 1, this sequel is balanced around it, so you won’t be feeling overpowered unless you spend hours grinding (which is truly pointless, as you can gain levels immensely faster during a quest than in the overworld). Whilst many players didn’t like this change, I didn’t mind it, as it turned the game into a more cohesive yet still pocket-sized adventure. Moreover, something else that was completely different is the fact that now all heroes play as a JRPG parody; once again, several others thought it made the game repetitive, and, despite it certainly being a possibility, I myself appreciated how this choice let the game further develop what made it special (the JRPG aspect). Finally, for an apparently small but significant addition, it is now possible to see (and avoid, if you want) enemies on a map, and to tell their strength compared to yours, so this opens up yet more tactical possibilities!

Moving on, let me tell you something about my relationship with Half-Minute Hero: The Second Coming; honestly, I was afraid of playing this game. Whilst I was somewhat scared of yet another Hero 300 (which was the previous game’s immensely difficult ending mission), I was mostly worried that this sequel would have ruined the amazing gameplay of the first one; add to that something called “random life events and other games to play”, and here I am, about 1 year later! As I wanted a break from Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth 2, I decided to start it, and I can say that I was incredibly impressed; it felt like I was playing the first one all over again and for the first time!

Whilst the game tends to be more serious about its story and characters, it all feels like the first one did; you have your wacky heroes, your Time Goddess who tries to make you forfeit all your mortal finances to her, and your countless small missions full of puzzles! Some were strangely hard, while others weren’t, but even so, they were all intriguing to play (such as one where certain parts of the map were mirrored, another that made you completely invisible and you had to avoid enemies, one where the entire screen would turn white and you could only see yourself, and a DLC one with a section that reminded me of Space Channel 5); my favorites are actually the ones from the “Classical Japan” questline, found in the game’s only DLC pack (which must still be bought separately, yet is completely worth its 0.50€), where you have to help Zapan (yes, Zapan with a “z”) and its samurai prevent an otherworldly invasion.

Moving on, let’s briefly cover the other modes; we have Boss Rush (but limited to your usual 30 seconds), alongside your usual multiplayer PvP, some time trial challenges, and, most importantly, the Map Editor! It was such an amazing addition, as you can make your own custom map, choosing from a myriad of characters, enemies, tilesets, and events; you can customize almost anything in these missions, plus, you can give a name to each of the items you put in, and even write your own dialogue! Finally, when you’re done, you can upload it to the Steam Workshop. At first, I just wanted to give it a small try, and had no intentions of creating something in-depth, though I unexpectedly ended up spending about 2 hours making and playtesting my marvelous Froggy map; you see, our Princess GUI, who is scared of frogs (which we see in the actual game), must beat the ultimate Evil Lord King Froggy and its Froggy minions, thanks to her samurai-styled Anti-Froggy armor and Ultimate Froggy Slayer hammer! She’ll traverse a small island surrounded by sakura trees, stop by at two villages to have a Froggy Tea or a Froggy Snack, and once she goes through a cave, she’ll finally be able to beat the Evil Lord; plus, in the fashion of the first game, she starts as level 1, and must get as close as possible to level 99 to beat the boss (it’s not too long though, as I playtested it to make it all flow fast enough)! If you want to try it, you can find it here.

My dazzling Froggy adventures aside, while I was playing this game, I truly thought that it was a worthy sequel to the first one, despite the lack of the non-JRPG modes, and I’m so glad I finally decided to play it; honestly, though, given how cheap the two games are (and the fact you get both in one package), I think it would be a waste not to try both out! Thus, if you love JRPGs and wish they were shorter and wackier, but without taking away any of the challenges from them, then this is the game you were waiting for!

As always, thank you so much for reading this, and I hope I’ll see you in the next Journal Page, or anywhere around the site!

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.

If you enjoy what we’re posting, but don’t want to have to make a WordPress Account to follow us, then please feel free to have a look at our Social Media pages. If you follow us on any of these platforms, then you’ll be able to keep up with our new posts as soon as they’re available.

Don’t have Social Media?

Or, if you don’t have Social Media, then you can also follow us through the site itself, in which case you’ll be sent an email every time we post something.