The Longest Five Minutes

The Longest Five Minutes' intriguing premise and charming visual style is hampered by poor design elements.

The 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.

If you've a hankering for a fun Japanese RPG, then The Longest Five Minutes is a decent option. Battles can be a little lopsided, but with an intriguing story and a unique structure, these are five minutes worth experiencing for fans of the genre.

The 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.

The Longest 5 Minutes sports an interesting presentation to a basic RPG plot, and despite some shortcomings is worth a look.

The Longest Five Minutes has an interesting story premise and very good art that is marred by its lackluster gameplay.

An entire JRPG trimmed down to the length of a single afternoon, The Longest Five Minutes brings a Memento-esque experience that plays around with the plays with the concept of time and the fallibility of our own memories.

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.

So if you’re in the mood for something that looks and feels a bit like an RPG but isn’t really, and which you can easily beat in the space of a few days at most, The Longest 5 Minutes is an eminently worthwhile use of your limited time on this Earth. Just don’t expect to come out of the experience with dry eyes; the latter moments in particular go pretty hard on the emotions!

The Longest Five Minutes is an extremely interesting experience which mixes an engaging story with classic gameplay; even if it does lose a little player engagement due to this. The characters are deep and engaging, with rewarding relationships between them to be explored. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it and have decided to score it accordingly, but I simply cannot recommend buying it from the UK Nintendo Eshop at this time due to the overpricing in comparison to other versions.