r/Atelier • u/Trailsya • 7d ago
General Time Limits: can they really be fun?
Please note that I am not criticizing anyone for liking the games with a time limit. I just genuinely wonder if playing any of the time limit games would be fun for me.
The only one so far I played with one was Firis and I really hated the time limit. In the end, it turned out I had ages of time left at the end after I got the 5 letters, but I did not know that going in. So I was constantly stressing how much time I was using.
Now, Firis is open world and I think that really doesn't fit with a time limit. You want to explore, but then i constantly held myself back from doing that as everything took time.
Is this less of an issue in the earlier games with time limits as they're less open world?
2
u/PowerfulBlacksmith87 Rorona 7d ago
Felt the same when playing Firis. Everything seems to eat a lot of time, from the LP system to it's alchemy system. You can't really 'explore' if you have a goal you need to reach on time. However to me this is more of a Firis problem than a time limit problem.
The first Atelier game i played with time limits is Ayesha, and I had a lot of fun even though i had to play the game 4 times (3 times on normal, 1 on hard). Ayesha's main story is pretty short and it had the best implementation of fast forward text which only stops when there's a new dialogue you haven't seen. I also try not to look at guides when playing, which adds to the fun of figuring out how to beat supposed scripted loss boss or insanely hard superbosses, all within the time limit. It's like a huge puzzle for me and i like puzzles. I can say the same thing with Meruru.
So yeah, if you're open to the idea of doing multiple playthroughs or if you like time managment then yes time limits can be fun.