- Publisher: NIS America
- Release Date: Feb 13, 2018
- Also On: PC, PlayStation Vita
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- Critic score
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- By date
- Unscored
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Apr 8, 2018The 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.
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Feb 6, 2018The Switch has had a surprisingly large RPG library in its first year; already it feels like there’s more RPGs on Switch than were on its predecessor and they just keep coming. Where The Longest Five Minutes stands out is that despite the name, it is fast. I did a lot of exploring in the environments looking for treasure and still managed to roll credits in under 12 hours. Given the Switch’s propensity for roguelikes and exceedingly long, story-driven games, this is a minor miracle. Not every game has to be a seven-course meal; sometimes you just want a light snack. On that front, Longest Five Minutes delivers.
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Feb 6, 2018The Longest Five Minutes embraces bits of the best and worst of old-school RPG nostalgia at times, then kicks them all to the curb with its own twist. RPG fans will find it worth playing for the superb music, adorable sprites, and the enjoyably unusual structure of the tale as a whole.
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Feb 6, 2018The Longest Five Minutes uses a truly gripping concept, throwing the classic RPG formula on its head by having you put the pieces of an already existing story together as you go. While the combat and general gameplay are almost too easy-going, the story, characters, and overall aesthetic had us always wanting more, never wanting to put the game down. The asking price is perhaps a little steep for the amount of content available, and the strange take on a usually well-understood genre may throw some players off, but there is an indescribable charm that is worth exploring here.
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Feb 6, 2018It'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.
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Feb 6, 2018A JRPG that will keep us company for at least thirty hours to (re) discover the lost memories of Flash, in a wonderful journey in memory, both of our Hero and of us gamers, that every fan of the genre should undertake.
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Feb 6, 2018Calling The Longest Five Minutes a deconstruction of 8- and 16-bit RPG tropes is only half-true, as it turns around and reconstructs those same tropes by journey's end. Still, it's a brisk and amusing adventure that knows how to play to its strengths.
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Feb 6, 2018The Longest Five Minutes features a beautiful story, although its gameplay mechanics are too simple for a game of the RPG genre. Definitely worth a try if you own a Switch and love the RPG games that have good stories.
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Apr 2, 2018The Longest 5 Minutes isn’t really the most innovative RPG, despite its presentation, but it’s a short and fun game to play through. You may not be surprised by the plot or challenged by the gameplay, but for genre fans, it’s still worth the playthrough just to see how the unusual situation of a hero losing his memories at the end of the game (rather than the start) is handled.
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Mar 19, 2018Thanks 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.
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Feb 12, 2018There's certainly an argument that The Longest 5 Minutes could be considered more of an interactive visual novel than an RPG, but it's a good one. Though the gameplay is very basic, the events and dungeon-crawling sections do enough to convey the actual adventure, and it ties in nicely with the events of the final battle. The game plays to its strengths and mitigates its weaknesses well, providing an enjoyable experience that feels more involving as the timer ticks along.
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Feb 12, 2018The Longest Five Minutes is an interesting RPG that has a non linear story with some interesting classic JRPG mechanics that also suffers due to some tedious design decision.
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Feb 11, 2018If you miss old-school 8-bit RPGs, this is a very interesting option. It isn't perfect and has some aspects that need to be improved, but all in all it's a very enjoyable adventure.
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Feb 6, 2018The Longest Five Minutes certainly has some good, and surprisingly original ideas, but it just never takes them far enough to be something really special.
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Feb 6, 2018The Longest Five Minutes is almost the standard definition of an RPG, brought to life with one of the most interesting storytelling techniques for any Switch game.
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Feb 23, 2018The Longest Five Minutes does some things right, like the original starting premise, but soon all tends to be very simplistic in gameplay terms. At some points it seems as a visual novel with light game elements that were introduced in the last minute. Anyway, if you like the genre, the good stories and the 8 bit RPG era, you will enjoy it.
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Feb 13, 2018The Longest Five Minutes does well with its unique premise, but falls short in providing a fun gameplay experience. Most of the gameplay is a waste of time and only serves as an obstacle to experiencing the story. Flash Back's adventure is only worth it for the good art and final revelation.
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Feb 13, 2018The 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.
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Feb 12, 2018The Longest 5 Minutes sticks to its original promise: delivering a classic J-RPG adventure, starting by the final boss. Its unrestrained rhythm from start to finish and its soft writing may please you during the 10-hour run needed to conquer it, but we sure could have hoped for a more surprising structure in the end.
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Feb 6, 2018Quotation forthcoming.
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Feb 11, 2018The Longest Five Minutes is a promising JRPG with endearing characters that'll make you happy to experience their tale yet it simply doesn't offer enough fruitful gameplay to satisfy genre fans' gaming sensibilities.
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Oct 12, 2018The novelty of the thing wears off kind of quickly. And once it does, there’s not much to do but wait for the flash-forwards to reveal the game’s ending. It’s a shame, because The Longest Five Minutes starts off so well — but, at the same time, it makes the title oddly ironic, since the five or so minutes in which the game seems genuinely interesting and fresh are over far, far too quickly.
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Feb 19, 2018Many cons and few pros in this new work of NIS that arrives in Europe for that specific audience.
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Feb 5, 2018The Longest 5 Minutes suffers from a lack of originality and from a lack of a sense of progression due to questionable choices made by the developers. For these reasons, the game is hardly recommendable even for die-hard fans of the genre.
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Apr 16, 2018The basic premise on which the game is based is excellent and well constructed. The first minutes of the game are intriguing, promising. However, all the episodes where the main character has to reconstruct his memories are absolutely insipid and poorly written. Sadly, the interest in the story falls down after the high point reached at the beginning.
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Feb 27, 2018The Longest Five Minutes is an interesting take on a nostalgia trip, but by splitting the game into the individual memories it does a huge disservice to its RPG nature. If only these memories had been fleshed out, giving the main characters a little depth, some side quests, some hidden quests… anything to make it feel like the games it is monkeying, instead of being such simple little, objective-based stages. There are moments that shine, but they are marred by the numerous issues and make this Nintendo Switch release somewhat of a disappointment.
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Feb 6, 2018Unfortunately 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.
| This publication does not provide a score for their reviews. | |
| This publication has not posted a final review score yet. | |
| These unscored reviews do not factor into the Metascore calculation. | |
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Feb 13, 2018The Longest Five Minutes presents its basic fantasy tale as a series of flashbacks experienced by its amnesiac main character during the game’s final battle. It takes an otherwise generic retro turn-based RPG and turns it into something special—but it could have been so much more.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 9 out of 17
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Mixed: 3 out of 17
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Negative: 5 out of 17
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Feb 17, 2018
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Feb 26, 2018
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Feb 17, 2018