Goddesses Are Greedy

It’s been a couple of weeks since I said anything about one game in particular. You could say that maybe I’ve developed a mildish case of Attention Deficit Disorder in my later years and some generous soul created a handheld game that even I can play! Today we fight for about 30 seconds!

Half Minute Hero’s Hero 30 starts out pretty standardly: you are a youth with spikey blonde hair who might have to save the world…until a 30 second timer appears on the top of the screen, runs out and the world ends. Out of nowhere the Time Goddess shows up and tells you that she can reset time with little effort and will help you in your quest, as long as you pay her increasing rates she’ll refrain from letting the universe collapse on itself. Evil Lord 30 has you taking the role of one of the many stage bosses from Hero 30 who’s searching to turn is beautiful (she’s the only creation more attractive than he) girlfriend back into a human from a curse that made her a bat. Princess 30 has a young girl leave her castle while being carried by soldiers to collect something and return before her 30 curfew is up. Finally, Knight 30 involves a valiant soldier protecting a sage in 30 second escort missions. There are plenty of different game modes to mess around with while the meat of game in Hero 30, which is the most realized of the lot.  I’d recommend skipping around rather than binging each mode to keep it fresh.

Hero 30 is a total blast to experience with a copious amount of self aware dialog, secrets, titles, and hidden paths throughout the campaign. The graphics are some kind of pixelated awesome from a time before we were over saturated with them in indies. There’s the option to go back and play previous missions (but you can’t bring equipment from later, cause you know…logical time lines in video games) and roll through the random battle that play out like early Y’s bumper car matches. Time stops when you enter a village to let you purchase life restoring items, equipment, and time extensions. This portion of the game knows exactly what it is and does what it needs to do, you couldn’t ask any more from it.

Evil Lord 30 is an interesting rock/paper/scissors RTS styled attempt. You summon monsters to do your bidding which usually consists of defeat all enemies or destroy statues. The minions you summon come in three varieties of strong, fast, and ranged mapped to a different button: strong beats fast, fast beats ranged, and ranged beats strong. The Time Goddess is back, she’ll take all of the money you’ve picked on the current level to return the clock to 30 seconds. There are no experience levels, titles to collect, or alternate paths and it really hurts the replay value in and otherwise fun to play mode.

I’ll get this out of the way; Princess 30 is the worst of the bunch. The story is cute; she’s trying to help her kingdom by retrieving essential items that seem to be only a short trip outside the castle while wielding her magical cross bow that changes her personality. It plays like a shmup, and I’m a huge scrolling shooter fan; it’s just a not a very compelling design. There seems to be more of an emphasis on moving into time extending zones and dodging trees than shooting things. 30 soldiers carry our princess on a litter and fall out when you take damage affecting her traveling speed; naturally you have 30 seconds to complete your task so each servant is crucial. Once again, there are no bonuses or reason to replay any of these stages at all; this may be a blessing in this case.

You must protect the Sage in Knight 30 while he casts a 30 second spell. It’s pretty much a glorified (30) escort quests. Pick the Sage up and move him around, set traps to thwart enemies, and body slam your way to saving the world one chanted spell at a time. This set of levels in the game is fairly forgettable compared to the greatness of Hero 30, the difference of Evil Lord 30, and the offensiveness of Princess 30; as expected by now there’s no need to try and remember by playing it later.

I loved the time I spent with Hero 30 (and later Hero 300 and Hero 3). The entire experience is crafted in self aware humor that takes jabs at convention. It was obvious that a ton of time went into the planning and production (the concept art alone is awesome to see before the bosses were pixelized) to make the game wonderful. I just wish the same care could have been put into the other modes, or they should have been cut entirely to flesh out the Hero campaign even further. The game has had two re-releases on Xbox Live Arcade and Steam that I've never played that have needlessly updated the graphics and focus primarily on the main Hero levels. A sequel was released in Japan in 2011, but it never left the country; I know PSP games aren't region locked, but it’s a franchise that definitely benefits from the witty Western localization. I encourage anyone to pick some form of this title up, you won’t be disappointed with most of it!