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RPGs are a time investment. They’re great when you have a lot of free time to sink into a game, but difficult to complete when you don’t. SNK has an interesting solution for RPG fans that can’t commit dozens of hours to a single RPG. Stories in Kimi no Yuusha can be completed in half an hour. In the short amount of time you go through story sequences, a world map, towns, battles, and an epilogue. However, you can’t “beat” the game during one lunch break. Kimi no Yuusha contains 25 story missions and 50+ side story missions. If you want to complete everything expect to spend around 35 hours playing the game.
OK, Kimi no Yuusha is a time investment too, but the difference is you get the momentary satisfaction of completion after finishing one of the episodes. I think this system could be a good way to introduce someone to the genre since there can’t be much grinding in half an hour. The combat system looks pretty neat too. It has the familiar good guys on the right, bad guys on the left look and it introduces a combo system where the four party members can juggle monsters on the top screen. You can take a look at some of the attacks here.
Japan gets Kimi no Yuusha on October 23 and this looks like something SNK could market in North America. All they need to do is slap a label on it like RPG Trainer: Master a Quest in 30 Minutes a Day. On second thought that sounds awful.
Images courtesy of SNK.
