The Longest Five Minutes may falter in the lack of difficulty that it poses the player with, but the game will upend your expectation in how absorbed you will become in the story that it unravels.
It's a clever mix of sentimentality and satire, structured in a way that's quite unusual for JRPGs. With most games in the genre, the end boss is the goal and triumph. The Longest Five Minutes is a love letter to the genre that wants you to remember that you're meant to enjoy the journey in a JRPG, too, and I certainly walked away from this game with a renewed appreciation for the spirit of adventure in these games itself.
The writing in this game is top notch. Characters are funny, with an enjoyable story. The game play is very fun with its traditional turned based battle system. I wish it were more challenging. I often found myself not bothering to buy any new weapons or armor because I would find the same stuff in the upcoming dungeon, and I would win all the fights anyways. I like that chapters are self-contained, and there is a checklist you can refer to to make sure you did all the important stuff. I found myself addicted to the story and the silliness more than anything else. As a JRPG fan, I found this to be a refreshing change of pace.
First off: I really couldn't decide whether to rate this game at 7 or 8. It is just really in the middle there: a good mediocre game or an almost really good game. I like a lot of the choices that were made for the game. A story about lost episodic memory told in small episodes, a game about memory that banks on nostalgia with the choice of design. The ideas were great - though I feel my personal opinion to like the game is based on my own interpretation - but the game play is average (at best). Yes this plays like an old game and it makes a lot of references, but if I wanted that game play I might pick up Final Fantasy IV or something similar.
Ultimately it is a short game that possibly needs you to be in the nostalgic mood. I would not recommend it to someone who expects and likes a deep and challenging RPG or someone who does not like retro gaming. For me as a nostalgic person it is borderline good, but I guess for others it could be borderline bad. After all it is a full price game and today you can get more worth for your buck.
Thanks to a very well crafted plot and soundtrack, this game adds something new and welcome to the catalog of the Nintendo Switch. While its combats could be more involving and the game's price is too steep for what it is, this is a very well designed piece of work that deserves its place.
The Longest Five Minutes certainly has some good, and surprisingly original ideas, but it just never takes them far enough to be something really special.
The concept of The Longest Five Minutes is undeniably intriguing, and its retro-styled visuals, quirky personalities and dialogue, and moments of inspired, emotional storytelling give it a lot of inherent charm. But charm can only go so far to make up for a game’s flaws, and far too often, The Longest Five Minutes falls victim to stereotypical old-school JRPG drudgery like endless random encounters and annoying dungeons--the exact sort of thing it wants to deconstruct. Though its ambition is admirable, it ultimately doesn’t live up to the promise of its clever premise.
Unfortunately for all the minor smiles and well-orchestrated music that accompanies one’s travels, The Longest Five Minutes feels mostly like a sterile assembly of classic JRPG’s least-appealing necessities. Its premise of losing one’s memory and the relation that has between past and present occurrences could have been an interesting twist on RPG mechanics to uncover, but it ends up being little more than a stale alternative to what is a rather unaltered series of common JRPG affairs. The Longest Five Minutes heralds some pleasantries and quirky moments of respite at points, but with a near-offensively easy combat system, brief dungeons and a lacking overworld to trudge through, competently made it may be, The Longest Five Minutes sadly ends taking up a much shorter breadth of your attention.
Se siente como una oportunidad perdida: buenas ideas, mezcladas con otros aspectos muy mediocres y que afectan al disfrute del titulo. Aún así, si eres fan de los RPGs puede interesarte echarle el guante de oferta si lo encuentras por 5 euros o así (no vale ni de lejos su precio de salida).
Lo mejor de este extraño RPG es su historia y el sistema de juego que deriva de ella. Empezamos el juego frente al jefe final, con la particularidad de que nuestro protagonista acaba de sufrir un ataque de amnesia que borra todas sus memorias, no sabiendo que es un héroe, ni que narices ocurre para estar en la situación que esta. Sus compañeros dándose cuenta de lo ocurrido, aunque sin entenderlo tampoco, intentaran ganar tiempo para que a lo largo de 5 minutos podamos ir recobrando nuestras memorias y con ellas nuestras habilidades, jugando en flash backs del pasado, hasta llegar a la situación actual. Estos flash backs dependen en parte de cómo actuemos enfrente del jefe final, siendo algunos de ellos opcionales en función de nuestras acciones, y no recordándolos de manera ordenada como sucedieron (aunque si la mayoría). El juego en ultima instancia tiene 3 finales en función de nuestras acciones y la historia tiene mucho sentido cuando descubres porque no tienes tus memorias y lo que esta sucediendo en realidad, siendo el punto fuerte del juego.
Los personajes, aunque son bastante tipicos, están bien construidos y se hacen de querer, así que este seria otro punto positivo del juego.
Cosas que estarían en la mediocridad serian los gráficos (de RPG maker..., aunque al menos juegan con algunos efectos especiales que hacen ciertas partes más llamativas), la música y sobre todo el sistema de batalla y exploración.
El hecho de que el juego lo juguemos en flash backs quiere decir que en cada porción de la historia pasaremos a tener el nivel y las habilidades de los héroes en ese punto temporal de su periplo. Esto quiere decir que no podremos subir este nivel ni aprender habilidades mientras jugamos cada fragmento del juego (y si jugamos posteriormente uno del pasado, perderemos habilidades de hecho). A este nivel del "momento" se le suma un nivel de "recuerdo" que si lo iremos subiendo conforme matemos enemigos y hagamos quests, el cual, eso sí, solo subira nuestras estadisticas sobre el nivel base del flash back. El problema no es el sistema de niveles, si no el tema con respecto a los objetos y las habilidades, ya que los primeros nos son dados al principio de cada capitulo como base de ese momento (pierde asi la gracia de conseguir un determinado arma por ejemplo, ya que cuando cambiemos de flash back la perderemos) y el hecho de que nuestras habilidades no cambien en el capitulo, restando una gran parte de estrategia al titulo, lo que se traduce en su baja dificultad hasta el punto de que el combate es aburrido y monótono. Quizás, si en este aspecto se hubiera priorizado que el juego fuera más como un puzzle en las batallas (muchas más habilidades, cambiar mucho más la composición de grupo en cada capitulo, etc) en lugar de como un rpg clásico, seguramente este juego hubiera brillado mucho más.
La duración del juego es bastante corta para ser un RPG, apenas por encima de las 10, pero en este caso eso es un acierto ya que sus dinámicas no invitan a dedicarle más tiempo.
So I have been waiting for this game since its first teaser for the japanese version. I was very excited to finally get this game in my hands. I was expecting it on the vita, but when I saw it was on the switch, I thought, hey even better.
Keep in mind I am only half way through this game, but I don't see much changing my opinion.
This game is not good. I am very disappointed with this game. This game would have received a much different score if it was a $20 dollar game, but for $40 I have to judge it more seriously.
Pros: the retro styled pixel graphics are really nice, and I think they add a nice kind of change to the modern gaming scene, the story telling is probably one of the best parts about this game. There is a lot of dumb humor but its enough to give this game a charging feel.
Cons: for a game that is considered an RPG the combat is awful, because you don't keep your levels from memory to memory, there is no real reason to grind, which makes every random encounter you fight, pointless. Even the boss battles are too easy, I set the battle style on auto, and left the room to use the bathroom, and when I came back I saw that I won. There isn't enough depth to this game.
Pretty much the best way to describe this game is like a simple pixelated Life is Strange but with really **** combat. The combat is just so pointless, and everyone knows that combat is half of an RPG. Don't buy this game until it goes on sale.
Not much of an rpg.
I really liked the premise of starting at the final fight without memories, then going through your memories as you play out the game. Unfortunately, the premise was the only thing I liked about the game.
The writing & dialogue was lackluster at best, boring & tedious most of the time.
The combat was far too easy to be interesting. There were skills and such as an rpg should have, but there was no point in exploring any of the combat system because everything died so easily.
All items refresh at the start of each chapter/memory. This in addition to the combat meant that progression was completely meaningless.
SummaryOur hero faces the origin of all evil, the Overlord himself, but suddenly loses all memories of his adventure.
His finishing moves, the name of his hometown, and even the reason he's trying to defeat the Overlord in the first place, all gone. Our hero feels as though he's letting his allies down...
In the midst of battle, his allies' w...