Video Game / Half-Minute Hero

Time waits for no man, unless you pay her enough.

Describe Half-Minute Hero here in less than 30 seconds.

Half-Minute Hero is a Retraux Puzzle Game / Eastern RPG for the PlayStation Portable.

You are a Hero. During an otherwise normal adventure, an Evil Lord attempts to cast a spell that will destroy the world. The spell takes thirty seconds to cast. Therefore, you have thirty seconds to Save the World. But you can't grind enough levels or even move fast enough to get to the Evil Lord in time! You fail, and the world is destroyed. But that's when things change. As you lay dying, the Time Goddess appears to you and makes you an offer: she'll turn back the clock, give you another chance, and speed you up. In return, you save the world from the Evil Lord by preventing him from casting the Spell of Destruction...and also give her all your money. When you successfully do so, it turns out that there are other Evil Lords, and someone is giving them the Spell of Destruction. Your job has only just begun.

This is the cornerstone of Half Minute Hero, a game which condenses all of the standard RPG tropes into thirty frantic seconds of level grinding, side-questing and monster slaying. Do you rush through the map in order to reach the Evil Lord as fast as possible, at the risk of not being strong enough to defeat him? Or do you chance a time-consuming detour for that Infinity +1 Sword? What about that Quest Giver who could possibly open a shortcut for you? Or the Time Goddess, from whom you can (literally) buy more time? You'll need to think fast if you want to succeed; no-one ever said being a hero was easy, but it is quick!

In addition to this mode (known as "Hero 30"), there are five other modes of play available:

• Evil Lord 30 is a Real-Time Strategy game where you play as the Evil Lord, searching for a way to lift a curse on his beloved Millennia. In the process, you have to summon monsters to fight against the humans who stand in your way.
• Princess 30 is a side-scrolling Shoot 'Em Up where a cheerful princess is searching for items that could possibly cure her father's mysterious illness.
• Knight 30 (which is only unlocked after the first three modes are beaten) is a Hold the Line Escort Mission where you, the Knight, has to protect a powerful sage so that he can cast a spell to wipe out all of the enemies in the area.
• Hero 300, unlocked after completing Knight 30, is the climactic 5-minute finale.
• Hero 3 is a 3-second extra stage unlocked after finishing Hero 300. It's as hard as it sounds.

  Each "Something 30" mode has 30 missions.

The original game got two Updated Re-releases, one for XBOX Live Arcade called Half Minute Hero: Super Mega Neo Climax, released on June 29th, 2011; and one for PC called Half Minute Hero: Super Mega Neo Climax Ultimate Boy, released in September 27, 2012 on Steam and Playism. A sequel under the title Yuusha 30 Second was released in Japan in August 2011. It was released on Steam in April 4th, 2014, under the title Half Minute Hero: The Second Coming.

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Tropes that apply to the Half-Minute Hero games:

General

• And Now for Someone Completely Different: Each of the game modes have its own protagonist, though Evil Lord shows up in a few others.
• Exact Time to Failure: It's right there in the title.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: All of the main characters' "names", as well as the evil lord Badbat.
• Excuse Plot: You have 30 seconds to [do X] before your game is over. That's all you need to know, really.
• Fanfare: A fast-paced, but epic tune, as fitting this game.
• Graphics Induced Superdeformed: Somewhat parodied. Take a look at the concept art, and look how much detail is put into the character's clothings, accesories, etc.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: The Hero, Evil Lord, Princess, and Knight are all nameable (when you play their respective modes), but everyone except the Hero has their name reset to its default during Hero 300.
• Noble Demon / The Dandy: The "Beautiful Evil Lord". Despite his designation as an Evil Lord, he doesn't show much interest in committing any kind of evil.
• Overly Long Gag: It's fair to say that each level of an individual game within Half Minute Hero is based around the lampooning the same tropes as many times as there are levels.
• Retraux: Most of the game's graphics are low-resolution sprites, but there are a few modern images shown in cutscenes.
• Sequence Breaking: The games run in chronological order, but the first three can be completed in any order.
• Shout-Out: The game is filled with them. For example, the item descriptions in the Goddess Room include references to Monty Python, One Piece, and plenty of others.
• Talking Is a Free Action:
  • The story dictates that the objective must be accomplished in 30 seconds, but the timer stops during dialogues and in towns (in Hero 30 Normal difficulty only).
  • If you use your desperation maneuver in Hero 30, giving the Time Goddess all your money without actually having enough to rewind time, then she'll still rewind time. However, time doesn't stop anymore, and when you get down to 10 seconds, you lose all of your equipment. Used carefully, it can win the stage. Used stupidly, well, there's always that "retry" button.
• Timed Mission: The central mechanic of the game, you have to save the world within the time limit.
• Time Title: The titular protagonist dies after that amount of time.
• Word Salad Title:
  • The Xbox 360 port is called Half-Minute Hero - Super Mega Neo Climax.
  • The PC port extends it further: Half Minute Hero: Super Mega Neo Climax Ultimate Boy.

Hero 30

• Acceptable Breaks from Reality: Some standard video game examples are Lampshaded in the post-quest summaries, such as a carpenter fixing a bridge with just a hammer or a soldier recovering from serious wounds by taking medicine.
• Anime Hair: Especially in the case of the twins Kalfa and Polter. They each have hair shaped like one wing on opposing sides.
• Arbitrary Head Count Limit: In "Another Goddess", you're limited to three allies, most of whom require payment to use their services. No such limit exists in Quests 19 and 30, where all of the characters you've met up to that point will lend a helping hand.
• Badass Cape: Lord Bosch sports a tattered, purple cape.
• Barbarian Hero: Donovan, the axe-wielding bandit leader.
• The Bard: Richard. His music doesn't actually do anything, but he's got a wolf to make him slightly more useful as an ally.
• Bling of War: There are multiple pieces of golden equipment. In a subversion of the usual video game variety of this trope, they are really expensive but absolutely useless as equipment, just like real solid gold armor would be.
• Bonus Dungeon: [PSP version] Quest 25 "Another Goddess" will likely not be available when you first reach it, as the stage will end immediately after starting. When you do get to access it, it has a completely different format than all of the other stages. The par time is 4'30" for a very good reason.
• Bubblegloop Swamp: Swamp and Witch contains sticky spots in the swamp that require a few attempts to get out of.
• But Thou Must!: Lampshaded when you meet the Time Goddess for the first time. She says, "Has there ever been an RPG that begins when you say 'no'?" Incidentally, you can. The world ends because nobody took her up on her offer.
• Camp Gay: Older Brother(?) . . . if he's a man.
• Cash Gate: In The Have-Nots, all the Random Encounter enemies are flat broke, and you have to perform various jobs to earn enough money to buy your way past a guard. That is, unless you can find another path...
• Cast From HP: Hero's Dash ability. It speeds you up and prevents random encounters, so in a game where time is critical, it's certainly worth the HP loss.
• Cerebus Syndrome: As fun as the game is most of the time, things get really bittersweet in the last two missions.
• Closing Credits: To an excessive degree... the credits roll after every single level. Thankfully they can be sped through by holding X.
• Collision Damage: Battles are conducted by ramming the hero(es) into the enemy. Both parties take damage on contact, similar to Ys.
• Combat Sadomasochist: When the Catfish Evil Lord is defeated, says that it feels "gooooood". He even ends his sentence with a heart emoji.
• Cool Horse: Hero can get a horse in some levels, which allows him to dash without consuming HP. Also, Black Knight Lord Zain, in addition to wearing all black, and wielding a black sword, has a black horse.
• The Dandy: In addition to the Beautiful Evil Lord, there's also Lord Dantes, who even sports a top hat!
• Deal with the Devil: One path has the Hero making a deal with a powerful demon and gaining huge stat and HP boosts. For the rest of the mission and the next three in the path, this power makes the Hero nearly unstoppable. In return, the Hero must give the demon his soul at the end of final mission in the path. The Time Goddess saves him from this fate (at a hefty price, naturally).
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: If you die, you're teleported to the start of the map with 10 HP and no further penalty. The only way to lose in most cases is to run out of time.
• Department of Redundancy Department: Evil Lord Dantes mentions destroying the bridges around his castle with his 'Electrical Thunder'.
• Determinator: The Beautiful Evil Lord. Even if you defeat him in battle (which takes ridiculous amounts of grinding), he still refuses to stop the spell until he gets Millenia back.
• Dragon Rider: Lord Papillion. And you, for a while, once you meet Syldonix.
• Dual Boss: Kalfa and Polter, Evil Lord Gemini.
• Dual Wielding: Barbara carries two spears with her to combat.
• Earth-Shattering Kaboom: The Spell of Destruction causes one of these. And takes thirty seconds to cast. Best start running...
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": "My name is Knowsall XXX! Everyone calls me Professor!"
• Evil Is Petty: More than a few of the evil lords have extremely trivial reasons for attempting to destroy the world, which the Time Goddess will often lampshade.
• Excalibur in the Rust: Appears in mission 29. It turns into the ultimate weapon if you refuse to kill Sasha.
• Forged by the Gods: The Brave Sword, along with the Brave Crown and the Brave Vest, which are all obtained in the last quest.
• Fridge Logic: In-universe example: "The giant evil lord's weak point is his feet?! Why was Sebastian having such a hard time?"
• Genre Deconstruction: Makes you wonder why you spend hours and hours grinding in almost any other RPG. Takes the Overworld Not to Scale trope and its apparent ultrafast travel to its logical conclusion, by allowing the hero to cross whole continents in less than 30 in-universe seconds.
• Global Airship: Can't have a console JRPG without one! Only in this case, it doesn't prevent random encounters and it's actually a dragon.
• Green Hill Zone: Hero's Departure is set in a nice grassland, and has you start off killing fairly weak Grass Fiends.
• Heroic Mime: Notably, Hero is the only one of the game's four main protagonists who exhibits this trope.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: [XBLA/PC versions] The first encounter with Demon Overlord Hol (who appears at the same relative time as the PSP's Goddess of Judgment). Regardless of how much grinding you've done, you'll still get killed in one hit.
• Human Popsicle: In the ending, the Hero asks to be sealed by the Time Goddess at the cost of everything he acquired on his journey. He is awakened 400 years later by the Sage from Knight 30 in response to the Ultimate Evil Lord's revival, thus starting Hero 300.
• Indentured Servitude: One scenario has the player forced to enter into one of these arrangements via But Thou Must! means. The town you're sent to is a scam with a system that makes it impossible to make enough money to leave, ideally keeping you a slave forever. Of course, your Timey-Wimey Ball abilities make the scam breakable.
• Infinite Stock For Sale:
  • Possibly averted in the multiplayer; you can set shops to have their stock limited to one item, forcing people to race for them.
  • In single player, generally averted for gear and played straight for herbs and food. There are a few occasions where it is averted for herbs and/or food as well.
• Informed Equipment: Averted, despite the very low-resolution sprites. Your character can be reduced to his underwear if he loses his equipment or starts without any.
• It's All Upstairs From Here: You're going to have to scale a tower in The Nun and The Devil if you want to get the Dragon Egg.
• Lampshade Hanging: A lot of them. "This is a large battle axe. Wielded by cute little girls more and more these days."
• Lethal Lava Land: Fire Mountain deals with a village situated directly below an active volcano.
• Level Drain: As a side effect of the Time Goddess using her power to shorten your grind time, the hero's level is reset to 1 after each level.
• Level Grinding: A core game mechanic, but extremely accelerated compared to other role-playing games. It's not unusual to gain a dozen of levels within a minute. Missions can generally be completed with minimal grinding, but getting certain items, titles, and alternate routes effectively requires spending a few loops grinding.
• Limited Wardrobe: The Time Goddess complains how her only outfit is unsuitable for the snow-covered northern region.
• Loincloth: One piece of body gear. When Hero gets it, the Time Goddess asks if he's cold.
• The Lost Woods: In "Through the Forest", there's a patch of forest containing monster encounters that you can't skip using your Dash ability.
• Love Makes You Crazy: The Beautiful Lord went nuts after Millennia was kidnapped.
• Metal Slime: A few maps have a rare monster in a specific tile that drops huge amounts of gold. The money is usually for an expensive piece of equipment in the same level.
• Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: A few of the Evil Lords are using the spell of destruction to find out what it does. And some of the Card-Carrying Villain type have rather silly reasons for destroying the world.
• Money Spider: Played straight in all but two quests: "The Have-Nots", where you can only earn money from completing quests (and even then, only up to 10 times each), and "Turtle and Hermit", the only quest without any Random Encounters at all.
• Muck Monster: Lord Sludgy, as well as a few overworld monsters.
• Mystical 108: The number of evil lords you need to defeat to unlock Quest 25: Another Goddess in the original PSP version.
• Non-Standard Game Over:
  • A few instances can lead to a premature end of your journey, such as not breaking the dam in "Change the Current" to regulate the currents, or not giving the Goddess the money she requires to break your Deal with the Devil.
  • There is at least one voluntary Non-Standard Game Over, in the level "Treasure Island," you can decide to just end your quest there and bathe in the riches.
• "Not So Different" Remark: The final boss tells Hero, right after he defeats him, that he isn't so different from the Evil Lords.
• Palette Swap: A few Evil Lords on the southern continent share sprites with earlier Evil Lords. Lampshaded for all its worth.
• Pals with the Time Goddess: Besides gladly taking your money to reverse time, she's also a member of your caravan.
• Poke the Poodle: In addition to casting the spell of destruction Lord CATS is spreading Game Boy-esque graphics across the land. Nobody really seems to think of it as a real threat.
• Power-Up Mount: The horse, and later on Syldonix the dragon.
• Random Encounters: There are actually a couple of quests without them, and it's a problem because you need them for money and experience.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: One of the (joke) endings is Hero and Goddess retiring mid-adventure to recline on piles and piles of money.
• Shifting Sand Land: Infinite Desert is set in an Impassable Desert.
• Shock and Awe: A few Evil Lords use lightning-based attacks.
• Shout-Out:
  • One retro-themed level has a boss named CATS quoting the infamous Zero Wing opening and changing the graphics to be reminiscent of the original green-screened Game Boy.
  • One path provides references to Turtle Hermit and Catherine the witch.
  • The PSP game's hidden quest "Another Goddess" changes the "Hero 30" logo to "Valhalla Knights 30", and the enemy in this mission is not a Dark Lord but the other game's Goddess of Judgment.
  • In Quest 14 (on the Demon Route), you defeat monsters in desert whirlwinds to restore a forest.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Avalanche Pass is set on a snowy, avalanche-prone mountain. Getting caught in the avalanche strips you down to your briefs. There's even some Yeti living in the mountain!
• Super Swimming Skills: If Hero doesn't have a boat, he'll just swim across the ocean.
• Taken for Granite: All your allies are turned to stone to form the Point of No Return in the hidden side-path quest The Return Of Hol.
• Temporal Paradox: If you retry a stage you've already cleared, you're limited to using only equipment you got before reaching that point. The Time Goddess notes that taking items from future stages will cause a time paradox. Trying to play the stage anyway will start you with no equipment.
• Theme Naming: The Bandit Trio are named Larrie, Mo and Cully.
• Time Keeps On Ticking: Hard difficulty keeps the countdown running inside towns.
• Timey-Wimey Ball: The Time Goddess seems to be able to selectively turn back time to the Hero's benefit. Destroyed villages are restored, avalanches are reversed, and forest fires are reset, but the Hero's own hard work is generally unaffected. You get to keep your gold, experience, and items, Non Player Characters you've rescued stay rescued, minibosses you've defeated don't return, etc. This is used to great effect in one plot branch: if you pay her enough, the Time Goddess erases your Deal with the Devil, but not anything you did with the Devil's power.
• Videogame Cruelty Punishment: If you try to go to the Goddess Statue without enough money to pay for a time reversal, you'll still get the clock reset to 30 seconds, but you'll lose all of your equipment after 20 seconds, and the timer no longer stops while you're exploring towns. Good luck trying to finish a level after that happens without doing a lot of Level Grinding beforehand.
• Walking Armory: Lord Francisca. She's actually out to get more weapons, and will steal the purchasable weapons in that quest if you aren't quick enough.
• Weaksauce Weakness: The giant evil lord Degash's weak spot...is his feet. Given a massive lampshade, of course.
• When Trees Attack: Lord Madwood and Lord Sarasenis.
• With This Herring: You start the game with nothing more than the clothes on your back, are told the world is going to be destroyed in thirty seconds and find out that you're going to have to pay for the privilege of granting yourself the time to save the world. Does the king offer to help in any way? Ha, no.
• The World Is Always Doomed: You can't seem to go anywhere without coming across someone threatening to destroy the entire world within the next minute.

Evil Lord 30

• Breaking the Fourth Wall: When you first meet the Time Goddess, she'll tell you to play Hero 30 if you want to know about her and Noire.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: The Evil Lord is a vain idiot obsessed with his looks and beauty, but hes also a force to be reckoned with, as anyone who underestimates him soon learns.
• Four Is Death: The Evil Lord states that all in his profession must have four attendants.
• Little Bit Beastly: Since Millenia's curse isn't broken all at once, she ends up as this once Noire is defeated.
• Love Redeems: Millenia is responsible for turning him from an actual Evil Lord into a vain protector.
• Made of Iron: Your Evil Lord can't be killed, but colliding with enemies will reduce the size of his mana circle. If it gets too small, he will only be able to summon weak monsters until the stage ends. Or you reset the time.
• Morality Pet: Millenia is one of the main things preventing the Evil Lord from actually being evil.
• Mr. Vice Guy: Evil Lord is Egregiously vain, but he's still one of the good guys.
• The Power of Friendship: "Is this what they call 'friendship'? I must admit, it is quite beautiful!"
• Sunglasses at Night: The Time Goddess wears shades in this mode only, in which stages start in the night and end at sunrise as time runs out.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: Bill the Assassin . . . probably. The effect is rather spoiled by the low-res sprites, anyway.
• Weakened by the Light: Millenia is averse to sunlight.

Princess 30

• Asteroids Monster: The giant slime boss.
• Exact Words: The Princess promises that she will absolutely not read the secret Ninja Scrolls. She has guards to do that for her!
• Extra Eyes: The King apparently has a Third Eye that sees everything.
• Fairy Companion: There are four different-colored fairies that act as Power Ups.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Max. He survives, though.
• Highly-Visible Ninja: Shinobu and Shinobi. The only reason the Princess is surprised to learn that they're ninja is that she doesn't know what ninja are.
• More Dakka: When armed with an Automatic Crossbow she has a ridiculously high fire rate. One particular fairy power-up allows her to deal death in all directions for a few seconds.
• My God, What Have I Done?: The Princess after Max's Heroic Sacrifice.
• No Sense of Direction: The Lumberjack's wife.
• Pimped-Out Dress: The princesses' dresses are quite elaborate.
• Precision F-Strike:
  • "Woohoo! Feel the power!! Now I can tear everyone a new ***!"
  • More generally, the Princess in "Crossbow Mode" is a Precision F-Strike for the rest of the game.
• Pretty in Mink: The princess's dress in the sequel is trimmed with white fur.
• Real Men Wear Pink: The King is a huge, buff, giant of a man . . . who wears pink flowery pajamas.
• Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense: The Princess has hardly ever left that castle before, so she has only a blurry picture of the outside world.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: You play as the Princess, armed with a crossbow, and escorted by the knights in order to accomplish the quests.
• Shout-Out: SPOON!!!
• Super-Strength: The crossbow also seems to have this effect on the Princess, as she can carry the Hard Mineral effortlessly.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Hugh, for Max. Justified, since the two are brothers.
• Those Two Guys: Johnny and Max/Hugh.
• Upgrade Artifact: The crossbow radically alters the Princess' personality to make her more arrogant when she holds it. The "Hard Material" and "Very Hard Material" make your crossbow more powerful.

Knight 30

• After the End: The scenario begins with Noire killing the Time Goddess, ushering in two centuries' worth of darkness.
• Back from the Dead: Your knight.
• Box-and-Stick Trap: How the Time Goddess is captured in the opening cutscene.
• Cerebus Syndrome: This scenario marks where the game gets Darker and Edgier.
• Collision Damage: The only way to defend the sage initially is to get yourself killed by colliding into the enemy.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: If you die, you need to return to the Sage to get revived. This happens as the clock runs down, so it's possible to finish a stage while walking around as a ghost.
• Dumb Muscle/Good Is Dumb: Knight.
• Enfant Terrible: Rosier.
• Geo Effects: Some maps have special tiles that amplify the Sage's magic, making the countdown run at double rate.
• Hold the Line: Unlike other modes, this is the only mode of the game in which running out of time is a good thing, as the sage's spell of destruction wipes out every enemy in the level.
• Implacable Man: Bullwood.
• One-Hit Kill: If Bullwood gets her hands on the Sage, it's instant death for him, and Game Over for you.
• Pretty Boy: The Sage. Not to the same ridiculous extent as Evil Lord, but multiple characters refer to him as "pretty". He is a goddess, after all.
• Sprint Shoes: Like Hero, Knight has a Dash ability. In his case, it depletes stamina instead of HP, and stamina regenerates quickly, so it's less of a trade-off. However, it does have the downside that if Knight completely runs out of stamina, he'll fall on his face.

Hero 300

• Big Damn Heroes: When you lose the first fight with the Ultimate Evil Lord, you're teleported to a small island with no exit. Syldonix, the dragon you rescued in Hero 30, arrives shortly after to return you to the battle to try again.
• Bishōnen Line: A lot of the evil lords are pretty ugly and/or inhuman, especially the higher-level ones likes Noire and Overlord Hol. The Ultimate Evil Lord, on the other hand, looks like a more colorful version of the Time Goddess.
• The End of the World as We Know It: For serious this time. The world will be destroyed in 5 minutes, and since the Time Goddess was killed, you don't get to turn back the clock at all. She gets better, but not until the ending.
• God in Human Form: The sage is actually a mortal incarnation of the Time Goddess.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: Noire, the first time. His attack and defense are pretty much unbeatable until after you lose, and the sage weakens him for the next round.
• Informed Equipment: Averted again. You start with no equipment (having lost it all in the ending of Hero 30) and have to fight your first few battles in briefs.
• Marathon Level: The world this time is a collection of compressed areas representing the continents of each main character. Each area has a hard time limit. At certain points in the timer, time freezes in each area and you lose if you don't escape it before then.
• Morality Chain: When Millenia's curse suddenly worsened, Evil Lord lost his mind and went on a rampage.
• Putting the Band Back Together: A variation, as the band all lived in different eras and never previously lived at the same time, save for the Evil Lord.
• The Starscream: Noire. After you defeat the Ultimate Evil Lord, Noire absorbs her power and becomes a god.
• Theme Music Powerup: the final battle with Noire
• Time Keeps On Ticking: Just as in Hero 30.
• Trippy Finale Syndrome: As opposed to the ocean or mountains usually serving as non-land background, everything below land in Hero 300 is a swirly space-like void.

Hero 3

• Brutal Bonus Level: Go on, try if you have the skills to save the world in 3 seconds.
• No Plot? No Problem!: Most of the game was composed of only Excuse Plot, but Hero 3 has absolutely no plot. It's just the Time Goddess daring you to beat this level.
• Red Sky, Take Warning: In Hero 30, the sky gradually turns red as time runs down. Here, it's red all the time. That is, all the time when it's not purple which is an even more threatening situation.
• Ridiculous Future Inflation: Since the world is going to end in such a short time, all of the vendors happily gouge their prices by 500% or more. Good thing all of the monsters in this mode are Money Spiders.

The Second Coming

• Amazon Brigade: The Venus Seven.
• Anti-Climax Boss: The game attempts to invoke this on the 100th boss in Infinite Battle mode: Francisca. Subverted that she's actually hard to due to random equipment shops sell and the increasing gold cost to rewind time.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Francisca was simply one of the many Evil Lords you fought in the last game with very little importance. Here, she's an ally and forges weapons for you.
  • Reaper Lord Lamde also has a much larger role in this game than he did in the first. He's responsible for manipulating Yusha into destroying the eight Elements, releasing the Evil Lords in the process. He also turns Yashu against Yusha.
  • In the original game, Sasha was simply an optional sidequest NPC whose survival wasn't even necessary to complete the stage she's present in. Here, she is now an Angel and Hero/Geezer's wife, making her Yusha's mother.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Giant enemies and bosses start appearing from Judgement onward. These defeat the normal-sized hero immediately upon contact and can only be fought by the mobile Hero Castle.
• Babies Ever After: Retroactively for Hero and Sasha. Sadly, "ever after" lasted only until the backstory for the game saw the barrier between the human and demon worlds breached.
• Back from the Dead:
  • Several Evil Lords that were in the first game were revived in order to take out Yusha.
  • In the Destiny chapter this is the case for Yusha himself, and after a particular scene you can reverse the plot mandated deaths of a dozen NPC allies.
  • Since the Timestream is the same thing as lifeforce, the Time Goddess can essentially revive people at will as demonstrated with Coo.
• Background Music Override: The final chapter of Ragnarok will always play Coo's Song, even if you have the music player unlocked and set to a different song.
• Badass Family: The hero's descendants. Hero's no slouch himself, and neither is his wife.
• Banana Peel: One can be used as a "death trap" to weaken the Evil Lord Weapon in a Revolution quest.
• Betting Mini-Game: The casinos have slot machines which require you to buy in with Goddess Coins.
• Bishōnen Line: At first, your opponents become more and more monstrous as the game wears on. However, this begins to reverse in the Ragnarok scenario; most members of the God Nine are humanoids, and the Venus Seven, who you fight right afterwards, are all Cute Monster Girls.
• Bonus Dungeon: Global dungeons are scattered across the overworld that you can enter to gain some powerful items.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Ragnarok ends on a depressing note, with quite a few sacrifices made. During the credits, the Time Goddess suddenly interrupts the roll and declares that it can't end this way. She turns time back, with the credits scrolling back as a rewind symbol appears on-screen.
• Brutal Bonus Level: There's a Hero 3 quest in this game too, and once again gives you just three seconds to save the world. Even worse is the following quest and true final challenge of the game, ABYSS, which follows the standard format but is populated by fiendishly tough monsters and requires you to gather the maximum amount of gold possible before you can even face the boss.
• But Thou Must!: Lampshaded again—you can say "no" to the Time Goddess a ridiculous amount of times, even earning you a title if you do it enough times, but she still refuses to take "no" as an answer.
• Captain Ersatz:
  • Nanako and Tetsu are essentially Lucca and Robo.
  • Silveria is an amalgamation of General Leo and Celes.
  • Emperor Golvadis is Emperor Gestahl in all but name... except there isn't a Kefka around to hijack his plan.
  • General Richter is the spitting image of CATS, from Zero Wing.
• The Cameo: Several characters return from the first game.
• Cap: Level is capped at 255, HP is capped at 999, and gold is capped at 99999.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Enemies far above your level flash red, enemies that pose some challenge to fight flash yellow, and enemies far below your level and can be defeated by just walking into them flash blue.
• Cutting Off the Branches: To nobody's surprise, the good ending to the first game's Quest 29 is canon.
• Darker and Edgier: The overall tone of the story is far more serious than its predecessor, though there are still plenty of comical moments.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Following Mestvolos's death, the demons emerge from the Dark World and make peace with the humans.
• Death Is Cheap: Thanks to everything in the universe being comprised of the Timestream, fallen characters, both good and evil, can be brought back through proper manipulation of it. See Back from the Dead above.
• Defector from Decadence: Brave General Silveria of the Empire, in a scenario near identical to that of Celes Chere.
• Desperation Attack: When your HP is flashing, a skill activation will cause a "Hero Chain" where your party uses their skills all at once.
• Demoted to Extra: Beautiful Evil Lord had his own chapter in the first game. In the sequel he has a purely supporting role handing out rewards for completing achievements. However, one of the rewards in question is him joining as a party member.
• Don't Try This at Home: In Revolution, the Time Goddess will say this after you trip an Evil Lord Weapon with a banana peel.
• 11th-Hour Superpower:
  • In the last fight of Judgement, you are unable to be defeated, as shown by your HP staying at one despite walking through lava.
  • In the last battle of Revolution, you become invincible.
• Elite Four: The Four Ultimate Kings.
• The Empire: The antagonists of the Revolution chapter.
• Endless Game: Infinite Battle mode, where the goal is to defeat as many Evil Lords as possible before you run out of time. You get a title for defeating the final boss: Infinite Lord #100, but then it sends you back to start all over again on the first map with all your levels and equipment.
• Evil Knockoff: Inverted with No. 30, an android replica of the Time Goddess. In spite of General Richter's intentions, she was so perfect a copy that she would only aid a hero. A good thing too, since the real deal has gone completely off the deep end during Ragnarok.
• Expy:
  • The major characters to the main characters from the first game. Yusha is Hero, Yashu is Evil Lord, Yushia is Princess, and Yuja is Knight with Coo as his Sage.
  • Cozain seems to be one for Grillade, at least in terms of the role he plays in the story (i.e. a persistent opponent who eventually goes through a Heel–Face Turn after being bested several times). Lampshaded with the Steam achievement unlocked through his recruitment; rather than a picture of him with Yuja and/or the rest of the heroes, it is a picture of Knight, Sage, and Grillade.
• Face–Heel Turn:
  • Yashu, due to a horrific misunderstanding caused by Lamde.
  • The Time Goddess goes insane during Ragnarok due to a dearth of Timestream energy caused by the God Nine, and sets out to destroy the world herself.
• Faux Symbolism: Invoked. The boss of one of the last stages is a headless angel statue that's half deep purple, half gold, and its gallery description notes that "the artistic symbolism is too deep for you."
• Foreshadowing: At the end of the first scenario, Yusha swears vengeance upon the one who betrayed him, and against fate itself. It isn't until the very last storyline that we learn that he was not being metaphorical when he spoke of getting revenge against Fate. The images shown in that scene also show future events that don't necessarily make sense until you actually get there.
• Giant Mecha: Hero Castle qualifies, though it doesn't look very impressive (until you start stacking castle tops on top of each other).
• Global Currency Exception: The casinos, which require you to use Goddess Coins instead of gold.
• Heroic Mute: Geezer. After all, Hero didn't talk in the first game.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Being inspired by classic era JRPGs it's only to be expected, but it's no less gut-wrenching for it.
• Homage: The game itself is one to SNES and PSX RPGs.
  • The entire Revolution scenario is a clear one to Final Fantasy VI.
  • Ragnarok can be said to take cues from the Shin Megami Tensei series.
  • The last two Elements in Prelude are a Physical dragon and a Magical dragon, housed in matched towers. This is nearly identical to the Fork Tower scenario in Final Fantasy V. The special moves used by the dragons are Physic Holy and Magic Flare, a reference to the Holy and Flare spells earned in Fork Tower's physical and magical sides, respectively.
• Heel–Face Turn: Francisca, Cozain, the 3rd Slaughter Daughter (aka Sach), and Asura Nadeshiko all end up joining the party, though Cozain and Asurako are optional and while Francisca joins the good guys early on, she doesn't become a full-fledged party member until the Ragnarok chapter.
• Human Popsicle: Geezer is found in one on two separate occasions. Much like how in the first game Hero sealed himself in case the world needed him, he did so again such that a hero in need could revive him, guessing (correctly) that his time-shifted son would find him.
• Interface Screw:
  • One quest in the Ragnarok scenario places you in a mirror world that not only reverses your controls at certain points but literally mirrors the entire screen, HUD included.
  • A foe in Ragnarok will completely cover the screen in white at times, preventing you from seeing the terrain.
  • The last quest in Ragnarok gives you a ludicrously huge time limit of three billion seconds... but it counts down extremely quickly not too long into the quest.
• Killed Off for Real: Geezer, if you choose to leave early at the end of Revolution.
• Knight of Cerebus: Reaper Lord Lamde. He's the one who causes you to take out the Eight Elements, which causes the Evil Lords who were sealed away, to break free, and he turned Yashu against Yusha.
• Level Drain: Works a little differently in this game. The protagonists can grind without the help of the Time Goddess (very slowly), and the level they reach becomes the level they start at for any quests that are encountered, instead of just being reset back to level one after a quest.
• Level Editor: A simple one is present for you to make your own maps and quests.
• Light Is Not Good: The Gods in Ragnarok are colored in whites and golds, bear halos and white wings, and generally exhibit all the outward signs of holy, light-aligned deities. They also want to kill every last living thing on the planet.
• Loan Shark: Goddess Loans, with a perfectly reasonable interest rate of 3% per second.
• Luck-Based Mission: Nothing within the quests themselves, but the slot machines in the casino are, of course, random.
• Meet the New Boss: Not only do the Gods fought in the Ragnarok scenario also use a 30 second doomsday spell, but a few of them are near-Palette Swaps of Evil Lords seen in previous chapters. In fact, no matter what threat is currently being faced, from Elements to Evil Lords to Empire, the basic setup of the game remains the same.
• Motive Rant: Yashu in Revolution and Ragnarok will always open the battle by reminding Yushia and Yuja of Yusha's "treason".
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Destroying the Eight Elements releases the seal on the Evil Realm, which contained all the Evil Lords that Hero fought in the past, and forces Yusha to start casting the Spell of Destruction involuntarily.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: Yusha becomes completely invincible in quest 12. He can't lose HP from dashing or fighting, which is a bad thing, because the objective of that quest is to kill yourself in order to stop yourself from casting the Spell of Destruction.
• Nostalgia Level: Infinite Evil Lord mode uses maps from the first game, with pretty much the same stage gimmicks as well.
• The Notable Numeral: Nearly all of the major villainous groups in the game are presented this way.
• Optional Party Member: Most of them come from Yuja's story. Two more can be found in the Demon's Maze global dungeon.
• Overly Long Fighting Animation: The summons you can do with elemental stones parody this. They only take about ten or fifteen seconds... that the timer doesn't pause for, so you can easily run out of time if you try to use them without rewinding time before the battle.
• Pun-Based Title: Second refers to this being the second game, and a play on how you usually have seconds to finish a stage. The localized title keeps the pun and throws in some dramatic flair by calling it The Second Coming.
• Pre Existing Encounters: The game uses these instead of the Random Encounters of the first game.
• Rare Candy: One of the casino prizes is an item that instantly raises your global level by one. There's also the inverse; an item that lowers your global level. A later venue has upgraded versions that add/subtract three levels.
• Running Gag: The Time Goddess always falls for the most obvious traps in the universe.
• The Rival: Yashu becomes this to Yusha and his descendants.
• Screw Destiny: The final storyline has our heroes take up arms against Fate itself.
• Sequential Boss: The final battle with Fate has three phases.
• Theme Music Power-Up: The game's main theme plays during the final sequence of Judgment, where Yusha drags himself through a hall of scorching lava to face the Ultimate Evil Lord and finish him for good. In addition, the final boss music is a remix.
• Time Crash: In the final quest of Ragnarok, the Dark Time Goddess's ultimate plan, similar to Ultimecia's Time Compression, is to compress all of reality, past present and future, into a single crystal. An irresolvable time paradox that also results in a Time Crash occurs if you fail to stop Yashu from interfering in Yusha's duel with Metsvolos.
• Undying Loyalty: Yashu to Queen Maria, and also the heroes' allies to the heroic bloodline.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Cozain at first claims he's attacking the party out of obligation, but with each defeat more of his rage and sorrow shows through. After Yuja defeats him, Zain's shade appears to soothe his son's soul.

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