Review #204: Half-Minute Hero

 Time is money, yo!

 Half-Minute Hero is awesome. No, really. It's an affectionate parody of the RPG genre as a whole, parodying various Tropes and mechanics, condensing 30 hour games into 30 seconds. Kinda. It also contains a RTS(of sorts) sub-game, a shooter sub-game and a escort-mission sub-game. While it has that 30 second limit, there are ways to extend that limit, but stages last less than 5 minutes at most. It's a very interesting package, and makes the most of its gimmick without wearing it thin.

 The game takes place during 4 different centuries, beginning in Goddess Era 100 in which you play as Hero, who must defeat over 30 Evil Lords that have cast the Spell of Destruction that ends the world in 30 seconds. Hero gains the aid of the Goddess of Time, and together they travel together to stop the enemy that is teaching the Spell of Destruction to the Evil Lords. Goddess Era 200 has you playing as a beautiful Evil Lord, as he defeats the brainwashed humans and the one creating the tempering with the human minds. Goddess Era 300 stars a naive Princess that turns into a no-nonsense badass whenever she wields her crossbow, and must try to heal her father's illness. Lastly, there's Goddess Era 500, after two centuries of Darkness, it's up to the Knight and the Sage to resurrect the Hero and put an end to the darkness. The story is very tongue-in-cheek, as it makes fun of everything it can. There's a level that slowly turns into gameboy graphics, starring Evil Lord CATS who has 'set you up the bomb', if you know what they mean. Even at it's bleakest, the game is always trying to put a smile on the player's face, and it works, it's particularly effective if you enjoy RPGs and know what it's parodying, but even then, I think the humor would work on anyone.

 Hero30: This is the game's centerpiece, it's the most in-depth and longest game. For instance, the other modes have 30 stages(or 'quests'), this one has alternate routes for a total of 50, there's even alternate endings! While the other modes would take, at most, an hour and a half to complete, Hero30 can easily take up, as a whole, more than 5 hours of your time. As Hero, you walk around an overworld, usually, filled with random encounters, which play out automatically with the hero running towards the enemies, dealing and taking damage, and winning a fight earns you XP and money. Towns may have equipment pieces on sale, as well as healing herbs or on-the-spot healing food. 30 seconds is too little time, most of the time, to grind for experience, get better equipment, solve the quest's puzzle and slay the Evil Lord, which is why the Goddess of Time will rewind time, for a small fee that increases as the more you use her services, if you find any of her statues in towns.
 You start each 'Quest' in level 1, a side effect of the Time Goddess using time in your favor to hasten the grind, but you keep the equipment you bought on previous quests. That said, you can't use equipment earned in later stages while replaying old ones. Each quest is more than just slaying monsters until you are strong enough to defeat the Boss, stages usually have some kind of issue or gimmick, there's a stage that has no monsters, for example, or another one in which you must find a hammer so that a bridge can be rebuilt. As previously mentioned, depending on what you do, you may open up alternate routes depending on how you finish a stage. All in all, it's extremely fun to play, it's very simple and requires little of the player, but it's very engaging. The only blemish on this game is an alternate stage that requires killing 108 Evil Bosses in order to play... which means grinding the stage you can beat the fastest, even if you go around each route, you'll only end up with 50+ bosses defeated on your first time through the game. A better alternative would've been requiring you to earn both titles in every stage, since these titles are virtually useless, and it would've been a good incentive to replay levels in different ways to earn them.

 Evil Lord30: This is the game I cared for the least. As the Beautiful Evil Lord, you must summon monsters to defeat humans. The game follows a rock-paper-scissors system when it comes to battles. This time around, the Goddess will take up all the money you're carrying in order to rewind time, so you can pay her as little as 10G. The thing is, whatever money you've got after finishing a level adds up, and it's then used to upgrade the Evil Lord, so you want to keep as much money as you can!
 The reason I didn't like it as much as the others, is that, while it is fast-paced as the others, it feels slower, mostly since you have to wait in order to summon the strongest monsters, which was a bit boring. It has the best soundtrack though!

 Princess30: This one is a blast. It's a bit of an on rail-shooter, as 30(notice a trend?) knights carry the arrow-shooting Princess to her goal, an item of sorts, and then back to the castle. The Princess has a 30 second curfew or her mother will shut the castle gates, so your objective is to have your knights go as fast as they can, while avoiding obstacles and killing enemies, since losing Knights means losing speed until other knights come and take their place. You can earn more time by walking over the Time Goddess' carpet, which will slowly spend your money for more seconds.

 Knight30: This one is a bit slow-paced, but it's fun. As the Knight, you have to protect the Sage so that he can cast the Spell of Destruction, which takes him 30 seconds, and destroy all enemies. The Knight is fairly incompetent, so while he can wield the weapons or objects throw on the ground, he can't kill the enemies, only dizzy them. Most of the time, your weapon will be your body, as you dash into enemies in order to slow them down. It's OK if you die, just walk your ghost back to the Sage, and he'll revive you!
 You can also carry the Sage in order to take it out of harm's way, or throw enemies into other enemies as well. Before each stage you are also allowed to take items with you to aid you in buying the Sage time.

 Hero300: Finishing the other four modes opens up Hero300. As it takes place in Goddess Era 500, the Time Godess is gone, so five minutes is all you get. This one is pretty exciting and fun, it's like an extended version of Hero30, with everything that made it so good in the first place.

 Hero3: There's no story to this one, the Time Goddess just felt like challenging you, so you only have 3 seconds to save the world. Naturally, the Time Goddess is available in this mode, not that it will help much. The hardest mode in the game, it unlocks the Music Player, but it's a fitting end to the game!

 Half-Minute Hero employs a pseudo 16-bit look, sprites definitely have as much, if not more, colors as most SNES games, but they aren't as detailed as, say, Final Fantasy IV sprites. It's also done on purpose to make fun of RPG character designs, just look at the official art(Which is unlockable in-game) and compare the intricate character designs with the simple sprites! Even then, the characters manage to be impossibly charming, and everything single piece of equipment is reflected on the Hero's sprite, which is pretty darn neat. The Soundtrack is a bit small, but it sounds pretty good, particularly the Evil Lord30 music, which features heavier-sounding tunes.

 Half-Minute Hero is a phenomenal game, and an excellent reason to own a PSP... or would've been. An updated re-remake is available on Steam, as well as its sequel, which was actually released on PSP too... only in Japan. Regardless, as a PSP game it's an excellent game that lends itself to playing on the go or during short breaks, and it brought me back to the 'Just one more stage' empty promises we all make ourselves when playing an addicting game.
 9.5 out of 10

Now Playing: The Sims

 Yes, the Sims one, I'm goin' retro baby.

 Now then, I'm not much of a Sims guy. Sure, I was hooked back when the Sims 1 first released, who wasn't? But I abandoned the series afterwards, I never even played The Sims 2!

 But there's a reason as to why I went back to The Sims 1, on the PS2 no less... Multi-friggin'-player. You can play The Sims on PS2 with two players at the same time, genius. Anyways, in order to unlock classic The Sims mode you have to go through the Get a Life mode... or use a Cheat Code. For Backlogging/Completion reasons, I'm gonna go through get a life... and what can I say, it's a bit tedious. I had forgotten just how fast a characters Status dropped in the Classic Sims! You barely have time to study books when your Sim gets depressed so fast! Oh, and your 'mom' is a real... pain in the ass, so, Ok, she won't clean your messes, that's fair, but she won't clean up after herself either! What a royal.... That said, I finished the first 'house'(Mission) already, so I'm good to go.

.... And I'm wishing the game would give me a weapon and enemies to crush, just sayin'!

Review #203: Mega Man X Command Mission

 Turn-based Maverick hunting!

 What is a Mega Man, you ask your self. It used to be one of Capcom's flagship franchises, one that they milked as hard as they could, but since the quality was somewhat consistent, we didn't mind. This one time, someone had this weird idea of turning Mega Man into an RPG. No, no, not Mega Man Battle Network/Rockman.Exe, a turn-based traditional JRPG. And it worked.

 If you ever played a Mega Man game for the story, you were doing it wrong. You'd expect otherwise in a JRPG, but it isn't the case, if you play Command Mission for the Story, you'll be sorely disappointed. The story is as lame as latter Mega Man X installments, this time around it concerns the Resistance Army(X and company) VS the Revolution Army, led by Epsilon, a new villain. The story has a couple of very obvious plot twists, and a very forgettable cast of side characters. Being an RPG, it introduces new allies for X: Spider, a generic male suave bounty hunter, Cinnamon, a generic female nurse, Marino, a generic female thief(Japan LOVES this archetype) and Steel Masimmo, the most interesting character of the bunch. There's a very big issue with the cast... each character gets a chapter that introduces them, Cinnamon and Marino sharing theirs, but after X, Axl and Zero group up, which is the very next chapter after the last of the other characters are introduced, these characters fall to the wayside, never to be seen in a cutscene again, except the second-to-last one in the game. They don't even get an epilogue in the ending. The only way to get more information about these characters is to speak to them in the base during chapters, and get a couple of lines of dialogue from each. So if you expect a gripping story and deep characters, this is not your game.

 Now then, gameplay, that is where it's at in this game. The game is divided in Chapters, each one sending X and his allies to a different location in order to find a Maverick at the end, except that X doesn't get their powers this time. While the game is very linear in that regard, you are free to explore previously visited areas at any time, in order to retrieve missed goodies or open up previously locked doors to get better weapons by fighting challenging hidden bosses. The Energy Tanks return in Command Mission, you start the game with one E.Tank, but you can collect more throughout the course of the game, and they can be used in or out of battle to heal your characters by spending their contents. It's a fairly interesting mechanic, since there are no other health-replenishing items in the game(Besides revival items), and Cinnamon needs to spend her Weapon Energy(More on this later) in order to heal her allies, and it can only be done in battle. Energy tanks are replenished by finding Yellow Crystals on the ground, or you are sometimes rewarded with E.Tank energy after a battle, so you must choose carefully when to use them.... Or return to base and sleep, which also replenishes all your E.Tanks.

 Lastly, there's no traditional armor equipment in this game, you can arm your characters with one main weapon and two side weapons, but the real customization comes in the form of 'Force Metal'. Each character has a different amount of slots(For instance,X has 4, while Massimo only has 2) and a different numbered total Erosion. Each Force Metal has a different number of Erosion, and while you can exceed the max amount of Erosion, it will have negative consequences on your character. These Force Metals have different attributes, some raise your Strength, some your Life Energy, others give you resistance to certain Status Effects or there are some that give you bonus Weapon Energy per turn.

 The game used the infamous Random Encounters, meaning that battles are triggered at random by walking through dungeons. The Encounter Rate is fairly inconsistent, sometimes you may get another encounter just a couple of steps after the last one, while other times you'll be able to walk through an entire zone without triggering one. Battles play out fairly similarly to Final Fantasy X, you can see the turn order on the bottom of the screen, so that you can plan your moves, and you can press L2 on one of your character's turns to swap him out with another character, without losing a turn. On your turn you can use items, either of your Sub Weapons(Consume Weapon Energy(WE)), Special R2 skills(Which consume WE), attack normally or engage HYPER MODE.

 Characters are fairly unique, which makes combat very engaging, you have melee attackers like Zero, Cinnamon and Massimo, ranged fighters like X and Axl, while Marino's attacks depend on her main weapon! Flying enemies are weak to ranged attackers, while some enemies need to be hit with melee attacks to damage their shields and allow ranged characters to deal more damage. Each character starts each battle with a different set amount of WE, and they recover WE each turn, this WE can be used to unleash the powerful R2 attacks or the sub-weapons. The R2 attacks are unique on each character, Zero has you inputting different commands in a set amount of time, X's only needs you to hold X to charge your buster, Cinnamon requires you to spin the right analog stick, etc, and each R2 attack is unique to each character. X's damages every enemy(And if you use 100 WE, it's a guaranteed critical), Cinnamon's the only healing skill in the game, etc. Furthermore, Hyper Mode is unique for each character, although only the S-Rank hunters(X, Axl and Zero) get the more interesting ones, X and Zero even having unlockable alternate Hyper Modes. For example, Axl's cloaks him, meaning every attack will miss, if you equip him with the 'bait' sub-weapon, you can make your entire party invulnerable since they'll keep aiming at him. X's and Zero's make them even stronger(X gets different R2 and Sub Weapons while in Hyper Mode), and their unlockables are game breakers.

 The game is very colorful, and character designs are, in my opinion, some of the best in the franchise. X's new design is particularly badass, and Epsilon looks like something you want to destroy. That said, the models aren't particularly good looking, the mouth animations are particularly cringe worthy since they aren't synced to the audio, and even if they were, their mouths flap around very eerily. Music is really good, it's not as good as some of Mega Man's finest, but it's certainly a pretty good soundtrack, and fits the X series to a tee. Voice acting ranges from passable to terrible, but then again the story isn't very good, so I didn't mind it, no matter how convincing the Voice Actors could've been, they wouldn't have been able to sell me on the game's plot.

 Command Mission is a very weird game. It's a RPG spin off from a Platformer series, and it's a JRPG with a terrible plot, that manages to be good thanks to the gameplay. It's hard to recommend to either X fans, because this is a slow-paced game that plays nothing like other X games, or to RPG fans, because the story is so dull. That said, the gameplay is really good, the Force Metal and Sub-Weapon system is very engaging, battling is a blast, the locations are appealing and fun to explore, character design is very neat. It's pretty good, just not for the reason an RPG is supposed to be good.
 8.0 out of 10.

Now Playing: Half-Minute Hero

 Saving the world in 30 seconds or get your money back.

 As the goddess says, 'Time is money', yo! I just beat both Stage 5 of Hero30, and it's pretty good. It's like playing a bite-sized RPG in small bursts, it's.... it's more fun than it sounds like. I love the art style, and how equipment pieces reflect on the miniature hero. I haven't been able to give the other modes a try, but as my break-game, it's pretty good.

Archile's Grab-bag: Xrd Edition

  As I usually say... ' I don't often do these for this kind of small packages but...' Xrd is a game I've been looking forward for a while now, so it deserves one of these.

  Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja 4: I stopped liking Naruto after about... the Pain Saga, in my opinion it got worse and worse and worse, the Ninja War was particularly bad. That said, back when it had finished I was hyped, I get hyped very easily, and I kinda bought this. Right now, said hype is gone so I'm left wondering.... Why did I ever care about this?

 Guilty Gear Xrd - Sign: My first foray into the GG series was with X on the PC. The first time I had heard about it was on ads on Xpert Gamer and Gamepro Magazines. Thing is, I was sold on the art style of both games, and when I tried playing X on my PC... the sprites would flicker, if not outright disappear. My PC wasn't good enough, so X was one of the major reasons I upgraded my PC. I spent countless hours on the series, I would later continue onto the XX series on the PS2, and eventually went back to Guilty Gear on the PSOne. Needless to say, Guilty Gear is a fighting game franchise I'm very fond of, and this game is one I've been looking for ever since I heard about it. Sure, they ruined Ky, they added characters that look straight out of Blazblue( Ephelt? The naked last-boss chick? Really? I don't want Blazblue on my Guilty Gear, Blazblue is a terrible fan-service driven series(At least the gameplay is ace) but the gameplay seems pure Guilty Gear. And it looks, visually, amazingn.

Review #202: Retro Game Challenge

 This one's a real charmer!

 Y'know about the fantastic Game Center CX, right? Y'don't? You are missing out. It's a video-game themed show starring comedian Arino as he is challenged with beating certain games, sometimes under certain conditions, it's also filled with visits to Arcades, game developers and with interviews to said devs. It's a pretty funny show. For some reason, someone thought it'd be a good idea to make a game out of it. Whoever that guy is, give'im a medal.

 In this game Arino is the bad guy and the sidekick. At the same time. Arino's role as the villain has him becoming the 'Game Master', a disembodied head that takes you back in time to 1985 and tasks you with fulfilling certain challenges on certain games. However, the place in 1985 to where you are taken to is kid Arino's home, and him being a good sport, lets you play his videogames. As you clear the four challenges per game, the story moves forward by months of years until a 'new game' gets released, it's a pretty neat set-up.

  The game really goes out of its way to sell you on its premise. For instance, every time you press 'continue' on the main menu, you'll be taken to Arino's room, where you'll see both your avatar and Arino slowly walk in front of the Famicon look-alike and sit down to play. As the in-game time moves forward, by clearing challenges, issues of the videogame magazine 'GameFan' get released, and Arino being a nice kid, lets you read them. These issues contain 'fake' interviews to 'fake' game developers, 'fake' previews and reviews of games, notes from the 'fake' editors and even cheats for the games in the game! Not only that, each game has a 'fake' cartridge mock-up, alongside a 'fake' instruction booklet. It's a very charming game. Furthermore, whenever you play a game, it's played on the DS's top screen, while you see both Arino and your Avatar play below, with Arino egging you on as you play. You can also press R+X at any time to 'look below', allowing you to look up on the magazines, or on the in-game note pad for cheats or tips on how to get through a certain part. It's these little details and small touches that really sell you on the game.

 The game selection tries to ape other popular games. There's:

 Cosmic Gate: A Galaga/Space Invaders homage, it's pretty fun. Has 64 stages, but there are numerous warps to jump around faster.

 Haggle Man 1 & 2: In Haggle Man you play as a Ninja Robot that must stomp on every enemy of each stage to clear it. You can go inside doors to flip them, and every door of the same color as the one you went in will flip alongside you, killing every enemy that's standing in front of them. Haggle Man 2 is the same game, but more refined, enemies are harder, stages are larger and other tweaks. Both of them are pretty good. Haggle Man has 8 stages and Haggle Man 2 has 9... but you must go through each game twice in order to 'complete' them, in the same vein as games like Ghost and Goblins which would make you play through the game again, this time harder, in order to attain the true ending. Cheap!

 Rally King & Rally King SP: Top Down racers, I didn't like them very much. Making the car turn feels pretty stiff, luckily there are cheats to make the other racers disappear and make yourself invulnerable! Both of them have 4 tracks. Rally King SP is based on the many 'promotional' Famicom re-releases that would slightly tweak the game, often times for promotional purposes. Easily the worst games of the bunch.

 Star Prince: A vertical shooter, it's pretty fun. There's many different weapons that you can outfit you ship with, and later down the road, Arino gets a 'turbo controller', letting you use Y to rapid fire. It has four stages, but just like Haggle-Man, you must go through it twice in order to 'complete' it.

 Guadia Quest: A bite-sized RPG styled after Dragon Quest. You play as three characters, that must save the kingdom. It has a little gimmick in the form of Guadias, monsters that you can recruit to aid your heros. Probably among my favorites, it tries a bit too hard to be like RPGs of olde... which means a lot of grinding is involved, even Game Master Arino mentions it. Even the damned magazines lampoons it!

 Haggle Man 3: A Ninja Gaiden-meets-Metroidvania game. It's the best of the bunch. It probably plays on the 'darker and edgier' trope, as the cutesy Haggle Man characters have been badassified, and the gameplay is much better. Sadly, it's only three stages long, but they are pretty lengthy, and at times a bit labyrinthic. It also has grinding in the form of nuts, the game main's currency, since the mandatory items that you need to advance must be bought.

 It's a pretty decent game selection, with a little bit of everything. You've your shooters, your racer, and RPG and some platforming for good measure, it's everything 80s! The game progresses in a very linear manner, Game Master Arino will send out the challenges one by one... which can be a bit annoying, as you have to start from scratch(Except in Guadia Quest, one of the only two games that allow saving.) each time, even if you could've cleared the new challenge on your previous run through the game. It's specially annoying in the Haggle Man 3 challenges, since the levels are kinda long, and having your progress deleted is a bit annoying(Haggle Man 3 only saves when you clear a stage). There's four challenges per game, and after you finish the last one, Haggle Man 3, Arino challenges to beat all 8 games... but you can use cheats to aid you. Besides Story Mode, there's also Free Play, which does away with Kid Arino's shouts, and the progress in the games in these mode is kept separate from Story Mode, plus it keeps track of more minutiae, like how many times you pressed A or B buttons!

 The game tries to emulate NES/Famicom games, so naturally it doesn't really look as good as it could. That said, it looks better than any NES/Famicom game of the era, thanks to the wider variety of colors available and smoother animations, plus, no flickering! The music is not particularly memorable, but it fits each game pretty well.

 Retro Game Challenge is a real gem of a game. It has an original premise, a huge amount of charm a and the execution is top-notch, at times a bit too good, there was no need to emulate the tedious grinding a lot of NES demanded! Sadly, it didn't do too well over here, which made Game Center CX2 a Japan exclusive. Woe is us.
 8.5 out of 10.

Now Playing: Mega Man X - Command Mission

 It's pretty dope!

 On my way through Chapter 2, and the game is pretty good. 'But duuude, what 'bout the Mega Man-athon?', well, 'dude', I'm gonna marathon the Sidescrollers, this is an RPG, plus, this game is a bit hard to place in the Mega Man timeline, taking into account X's redesign, it probably takes place after X8 but before the Elf Wars. Speaking of the redesign, X looks badass. The new enemy Robot Masters look badass as well, it makes me wish we could've gotten a sprite of this new X, as in having a Mega Man X9 with this sprite or something. And how cool would've been if Axl and Zero got the badassification as well?

 Still, I like the mechanics, I like customizing each character with Force Metals, the Hyper Modes, the Unique special attacks and the side-arms mechanics. The Encounter Rate seems a bit... random, sometimes you'll get a Random Encounter seconds after the last one, yet at times it can take a while. One thing I'm really digging is that Status Effects appear pretty early in the game. I played, what, 2 hours? And enemies are already attacking X, who is my only party member at the moment, with Poison and Blind! It's cool little RPG, I like it.