The Longest Five Minutes (Nintendo Switch)

Powah Dunk | February 20, 2018 | Review | No Comments

The Longest Five Minutes is SYUPRO-DX’s debut console game, originally creating mobile games they have tried their hand at something a little more substancial for Vita & Switch. Is it worth spending more than five minutes on or is it a download and delete? Read on to find out!.

The Longest Five Minutes is an interesting concept, our hero Flash and his merry band of RPG protagonists have finally come face to face with the Demon King, ready to throwdown for the final time in the name of justice. Our hero Flash readies himself and thinks back fondly on his adventure, only there isn’t anything there!, amnesia strikes and leaves him paralyzed at the very crux of his tale!.

That’s the major hook of the game, you play through Flash’s fragmented memories to help him regain his power and take on the Demon King with his crew. Using this technique it allows for some memories to be embellished, played out of sync & highlight key areas while washing over the filler parts.

The writing is frankly quite charming, I have laughed and smiled more than a few times, especially at the Mage who wants to be a famous musician or how loose they play the inspiration in places. The Longest Five Minutes really is charmingly written and that is easily the strongest part of this product.

The visual side of The Longest Five Minutes is the first thing that drew me to the title, I’m a sucker for 16bit RPGs, Late Nes through to SNES golden era stuff, The Longest Five Minutes nails this down. Visual inspiration taken from all the greats of that era, Earthbound, Pokemon, Breath of Fire, Final Fantasy & Dragon Quest among many more.

On the audio side of things The Longest Five Minutes once again takes it’s inspiration from the golden oldies only with less success. Everyone knows the iconic tracks from RPG’s of that time, it’s also very hard to try and top those classics, The Longest Five Minutes sort of accepts that and has pleasing tunes alongside some decent battle tracks but they seem rather phoned in and generic. Nothing bad but nothing to really write home about.

So The Longest Five Minutes looks and sounds like a homage to classic RPG with an interesting hook but how does it play?. Very much like those RPG of old, for good and bad!. I’ll start this section by saying if you have played ANY RPG from the NES to PS2 this has the most generic combat system around and you’ll know it straight away.

The combat in The Longest Five Minutes is the basic of basic turn based combat, there is no gimmick to it and that while not a major issue but tell you all you need to know of the game. You’ll attack, or use magic or items, defend bigger attacks and take turns, the animations are kept to a bare minimum and very few require any thought and can be ran through with the “Auto” command.

The core RPG part of the game aswell is very much representation of the games it’s drawing inspiration from, for the most part it’s just generic the RPG, not damning but it is a shame they couldn’t tweak it to make more it’s own. You’ll talk to NPC’s, solve fetch quests, play classic arcade inspired mini games and upgrade load outs on your party throughout this 20+ hour tale.

The hook for all this comes in the fact that these are all Flash’s memories, this means the quest is broken into sections with clear objectives, the more of these you complete the stronger you’ll be for that final battle. Levels don’t really matter as you’re already given a level when you start a memory and it doesn’t carry over to the next memory, even if they do have a tendency to follow on!. The same is also to be said with money, items and equipment.

That aspect does aid the game in a pick up and play kind of way but it can be really annoying if you managed to fully kit out your team, finish the memory & the next memory follows directly on and you’re without said equipment. This happens more than enough for it to be mentioned!.

You’ll learn stuff about your quest and use this knowledge during the battle with the Demon King via choices in the interactive cutscene. These choices can either help or harm you in the build up to Flash regaining his memory and taking on the evil king himself. I don’t believe there is anyway of putting yourself in a hole with these questions but it doesn’t hurt to pay attention.

So despite being a homage to the golden RPG games, The Longest Five Minutes has one of the more interesting gimmicks of the genre and does very little with it, resulting in a charming but uninspired generic romp. The writing and parody content is brilliant at best but it’s driven by the RPG 101 engine and never really plants it’s own footprint.

I like The Longest Five Minutes, adore it’s charm and the fact it’s nothing special in the gameplay department doesn’t really bother me that much, mainly because it’s one of the few RPG games available on the Switch at the moment. The Longest Five Minutes is also out on the PSVita and it would be a much harder sell on there where much stronger RPG titles are available. If you have a Switch & a love of the SNES era RPG, check this title out, if on the other hand you’re playing on Vita it might be worth downloading one of the classics it’s drawing inspiration from rather than this parody.