Rent-A-Hero No. 1

Review by FRIEDSTRUCK

"Lent A Heeeeeroooooooooooooooooooooo!"

One night while being thoroughly bored in class (my professor is awful at lecturing, in addition to the fact that I already knew the terms "foreground," "cut," "jump-cut," et al when it comes to film), I decided to look up a game I always wanted to play; Rent-A-Hero! In looking it up, I saw that it had a full translation guide, so I leaped at the chance, picked up the first (sealed at that!) well priced copy, and within a week, I was writing down Kanji, and laughing my guts out! Rent-A-Hero is an awesome game, there is a ton more I could say about it, beginning with game play.

Game play: 9/10

While you WILL need a guide is you do not understand Japanese, even with the guide, Rent-A-Hero is a VERY easy game to get into. Let me start off by saying that for years this game has been considered an, "Action RPG;" that, is false. While, like Shenmue, Rent-A-Hero has you talking with a lot of NPCs, fighting here and there, and completing tasks (more on this in a bit), you do not have a level, you do not upgrade your weapons/items via battle, and you have no stats outside of your battery power, and health. Rent-A-Hero is an Action Adventure title through and through. Anyways, the main purpose of the game is to work jobs, and they can range from delivery of food, to body-guarding, to rescuing trapped citizens; the game is not too limited in the jobs you can perform. Of course though, a major portion of the game will also be spent fighting, in the fashion of a 1v1 fighter (eventually expanding to more than 1 fighter, at times). Using the Spikeout engine (another Sega game), the fighting is superb, and works well within the constructs of the game. Again, there is not much to worry about during game play, except for your health and battery power; there is no place to fully heal these two bars, and you must fill them using items (I too thought this was weird, and frankly, impossible. However, there simply is not a place to fill these two stats). If this quite large need was addressed, then Rent-A-Hero would easily have gotten a ten for game play. Not much else to talk about, thus on to story.

Story: 10/10

The Japanese are truly innovative; Taro Yamada is a normal teenage boy, and as a gift, is given a suit of armor to perform jobs with. At first there are only a couple of Rent-A-Heroes, and they too perform the same wide array of tasks that Taro performs, however the power of the suits eventually becomes too valuable for a certain corporation to pass up, and that leads into the second half of the game, where the story takes off, with many twists, and random things! Great stuff, as are the graphics.

Graphics: 9/10

While not in the top 10 Dreamcast titles, its most certainly in the top 20; SUPERB graphics are found in Rent-A-Hero, from the locations to the characters; like other adventure titles, EVERY character is different from the other, and none of them wear the same two pairs of clothing. Each Rent-A-Hero also looks different, with little variations in their armor and clothing, as well as being different colors (which makes sense). The locations are truly top notch though; street corners (for example) are sharp, and crisp, the sky looks breathtakingly real; graphics are no doubt a strong point of Rent-A-Hero, as well as the sounds.

Sounds: 10/10

Sounds so hilarious and awesome, and music so great I went out and bought the soundtrack! Sounds are probably THE high-point of Rent-A-Hero; the music is just awesome to listen to, and the sounds (no voice acting, surprisingly, though it was a budget title) are very well done, with the little fighting sounds, and fighting voices adding a ton of color and atmosphere. That music though is just great; the early job theme is incredibly catchy, and lots of fun to listen to; you will be disappointed when you hear it less and less in the game's second half... Is Rent-A-Hero a replay-able game though?

Replay ability: 8/10

The game totaled just under 20 hours for me (the clock said 13, however I do not know why game clock's DO NOT take into account the time spent from the previous save, until when you die, etc.), and if you're willing to brave the guide, you could come back to it again; however with no unlock-ables or new things, there's not much here aside from the large chunk of time it will take you to beat it...

Buy or rent?

Being a semi-big franchise in Japan, I am sure you could rent it there, however being Japanese only restricts this to importers in the West.

Rent-A-Hero is a great game, and is worthy of anyone's time who is willing to play a game with a guide; its tons of fun, its got a ton of atmosphere, and if you are a Sega fan, you will more than love this game, as it is another with the classic, "Sega Charm." All of the little in-jokes towards Sega and pop-culture is superb as well, and just makes you enjoy the game even more. The game was also released on Xbox in Japan, and the translated version (which was due for a Western release) was leaked online a couple of years ago; give it a shot, you will not be disappointed! "I'm Casey Hogan. I work for a computer company called Macrosoft. Right now, we're working on software called Bimbows, it's almost complete. Taro, do you have a computer? Do you use the Internet? You need to get on the Internet, you're missing out, man!"